Roland Banks TAS - Revised Core Set

Hello,

This is an example deck for the investigator Roland Banks, from the Core Set. It can be built with only a Revised Core Set, and is meant to represent a general, archetypic deck for Roland.

Roland is a pretty straightforward character. He has a clear fighter profile, with a good Combat ability and full access to Guardian Class. This allows him to consistently fight and defeat enemies. But he also has an advantage over other fighters: he can discover clues by defeating enemies. It's only once per round, so this ability is stronger the fewer players are in the game. The value of a single clue is bigger in smaller groups, as the number of needed clues to advance Acts usually scales with player count.

For this reason, this deck has been built around a simple idea: let's defeat Enemies as fast and easily as possible. We have five weapon cards, which are critical to our strategy: Roland's .38 Special, the .45 Automatic and the Machete (two copies of each of the last two). We must see at least one of these cards in our opening hand. If we don't, ditch everything and draw another five. You can keep the Guard Dog and the Vicious Blow if you want to be safe, as both are good cards for dealing some extra damage to Enemies.

Then, the rest of the deck has been designed to support the core idea of fighting as fast and easily as possible. Physical Training can be expensive in the long-term, but offers safety against Enemies with high combat value, and can also boost Roland's Willpower to deal with encounter tests. Also, Dodge is a safety valve against Retaliates. Skill cards are important to boost Roland's abilities. The most important two are Combat and Willpower, so I've included Guts and Overpower, with the Unexpected Courage as backup. We have the Emergency Cache as economy tool, to pay for the most costly cards, including the Dynamite Blast, which can be hard to play optimally, but can make very explosive plays (no pun intended). Finally, I've included a couple more cards to obtain more clues, such as Evidence! and Working a Hunch.

The upgrade plan for this deck is very straightforward as well. We want to prioritize becoming an even better fighter and defending Roland's weakest point, which is Sanity. For this reason, there are three upgrades which are critical: upgrading the Beat Cops to level 2, adding Extra Ammunition and adding the Elder Sign Amulet. Also, Charisma would lets us run two allies at the same tame. This would be enough to notably upgrade Roland's potential to be a great fighter.

---UPGRADES---

2x Beat Cop (2) for 2x Beat Cop (0)

2x Extra Ammunition (1) for 2x Dynamite Blast

2x Elder Sign Amulet (3) for 2x Physical Training

1x Charisma (3) -Permanent-

2x Police Badge (2) for 2x Overpower

If you have expansions, you can consider the following alternatives:

Dynamite Blast can be replaced with:

Prepared for the Worst (Dunwich), Shortcut (Dunwich), Scene of the Crime (Forgotten Age) or Logical Reasoning (Carcosa)

Physical Training can be replaced with:

Art Student (Dunwich), Smoking Pipe (Dunwich), .32 Colt (Carcosa) or Survival Knife (Forgotten Age)

Unexpected Courage can be replaced with:

Inquiring Mind (Dunwich), Take the Initiative (Forgotten Age) or Eureka! (Carcosa)