Charlie Kane: Oops, All Doggos

Overview:

Well, mostly doggos, at least.

This is a joke build focused on stuffing as many good bois as possible into a deck. Is it optimized? Most assuredly not. Is it playable? Eh. Is it fun? You bet!

Guardian/Mystic, built for enemy management with some light clue-gathering potential (based on your difficulty), it's relatively straightforward: play allies like there's no tomorrow, use them to get additional free actions and replace your terrible statline, and exhaust them to boost key skill tests.

Use Sled Dog to blast enemies. Use Summoned Hound to replace Charlie's base stats for fighting or investigating. Once you put a few XP in it, Summoned Servitor can also give you some replacement skill tests. Anyone who says the Servitor isn't a pupper is wrong. In the Thick of It gets you 3 XP to spend on 2X Summoned Hound and then park that third XP on either Summoned Servitor or Power Word.

Stand Together, Calling in Favors, and Motivational Speech help you pay for more allies, Medical Student, First Aid, and Emergency Aid help keep them fighting fit. Ward of Protection gives you some light encounter protection. Inspiring Presence fits in really nicely because it both heals allies and readies them, letting you tap Summoned Hound for another free action, for example.

If the Unbound Beast shows up, turn that enemy into a friend with Power Word. There, you just got yourself another dog. And with a 3/3/3 1/1 statline, there's plenty of things you can then use it for with Power Word's additional abilities.

Upgrades:

Upgrades are pretty self-explanatory: Guard Dog, Servitor, Power Word, grab Rod of Animalism for EVEN MORE dogs, Charisma if you want to have even more slots. Galvanize is another good option: you get an additional Fight action, although it doesn't have to be the basic Fight, so you could use the Hound, Servitor, or Sled Dogs' activated Fight abilities, plus you can ready a guardian asset (like the upgraded Guard Dog to re-use its ability again after engaging). If you've got a full spread of allies out on the board regularly, you could also throw in Gang Up, which would then hit for +3 fight (which you could boost further by exhausting allies) and +3 damage. Call for Backup would net you some additional actions as well.

It's worth noting that while you can't fully upgrade Power Word, you can still mark off four boxes, which would give you, for example, one of the extra abilities and Bonded, Tonguetwister or Thrice Spoken, or two of the abilities and Greater Control, or all four of the extra abilities for versatility.

Michael Leigh is also a possibility. "But he's not a dog!" you say. That is true. But if you want to (shudder) optimize more, you'll likely have experience to burn with this deck. He gives a nice boost to your two most important stats for this build (which then stacks with the replacement tests from Servitor or Hound) and, since you should be investigating at least occasionally, will have some evidence to juice your damage.o