Bob forces himself to be even shorter on supplies

In the Thick of It to get Versatile to get Forced Learning. Forced Learning together with Short Supply will give a massive early boost to the discard pile, which should be beautifully stocked with items, ready to be Scavenged

A few non-scavenging options for discard pile shenanigans in case scavenging gets discarded by supplies being short. If there’s no clues around, Bob can get some quick bucks by using Burglary to get some resources as well as hopefully a couple of items.

I can imagine upgrading into Joey "The Rat" Vigil and upgrading Lucky Cigarette Case to have more options of searching through a bigger deck… which eventually might feature a few exceptional items.

It’s a bit silly as a concept deck idea. At its heart, it’s a scavenging deck build for Bob to have wide discard-pile access to loads of items quickly. Forced learning increases deck size but also means you are bulking up your discard pile quickly. The risk on this over a simpler (and probably better) deck without forced learning is that it will take longer to get to the Scavenging, (or Resourceful or Scrounge for Supplies if scavenging is already in the discard pile) which are really what Bob needs to get his game going… so it’ll be a slightly slower start but hopefully better end, especially mid campaign if you want to reliably get the two or three exceptional items hidden in the upgraded deck.

It didn’t really feel right with just the 3xp from In the Thick of It so I’ve done a 19xp build with one extra weakness (22xp including the thick of it) to get those exceptional items that forced learning will help reveal.