Learning True Solo (#3) - Zero-Setup Ashcan Pete

This is the third in the series, today we'll be talking about time management in True Solo. Last time we talked about Evasion as Enemy Management using a very basic Solo Wendy and the time before that was an intro to action compression with a very basic Solo Roland.

Today we're going to talk about another time saving technique: "zero" setup builds.

Enter Ashcan Pete:

Mulligan

• dig for: any asset, but...
• keep: winging it, e-cache, but...

...the whole point is that it doesn't matter.

General Playstyle

Turn Duke sideways every turn. Discard cards to turn him sideways more. Play events like Lucky! or commit skills like Able Bodied to make sure you succeed at using Duke to fight and investigate. Play Inspiring Presence and do it again for free. Maybe play Dark Horse and just never take resources again. Revel in how much time you suddenly feel like you have.

In True Solo, the Hour is always Late

True Solo gives you fewer total actions to solve each scenario. It might not feel that way at first, since many scenarios scale the objective based on the number of investigators, but one of the most important obstacles: the size of the map is not changed by player count except very rarely. Similarly, while the clue count is typically scaled, the number of actions it takes to pick those clues often does not: in a typical guardian/seeker 2-handed pair, the seeker will often will clear a 1 clue location in one action, which is the same efficiency as a True solo will usually have.

We can get that time back by fast movement, Buying More Actions (although if you have to spend actions taking resources you'll fall behind), or Efficiently dealing with enemies in a single action...

..Or we can adjust our playstyle to only spend time directly advancing our objectives, which is basically what this deck is doing.

We're playing the other Pete (Pete&Pete) to help us manage the mythos; we're playing Magnifying Glass, and Dark Horse because these are strong effects that combine with Duke.

You don't generally want to go all the way to zero assets because Duke is an asset, and effects like Crypt Chill can still force you to discard Duke if there's nothing else in play. (There currently isn't a great way to get Duke back from the discard pile if he gets discarded, although A Chance Encounter combined with Calling in Favors will do it if you think you're in a campaign where it's going to come up a lot.)

Pretty much the rest of the deck is cards that are either good to commit, or give you things to do when Duke is sideways.

Side Deck

Ice Pick is just a better magnifying glass, and should be the first upgrade, basically. Dark Horse (5) is probably the second. If you do them in that order, you can then add two level 0 cards from any class to make the deck legal size again. Some suggestions were included.

Burn After Reading is the survivor Adaptable and it's great. if your deck is below the legal card limit after a scenario (because you burned something you didn't want anymore) you get to add level 0 cards back. This works especially well with Pete because he can grab level 0 cards from any class up to a limit of 5.

A Test of Will (2) can be helpful if you know a scenario is coming up where you can't safely deal with one of the treacheries.

At a Crossroads should usually be used for "lose 1 action, draw 3 cards" - the value of this in true solo is lower (you're only saving one action on net) but it makes your deck 2 cards thinner in effect, which will help you find any important Story Assets or the Pete's sooner.

In some scenarios/campaigns you'll want a big weapon near the end of the campaign, replace the ice picks / magnifying glasses. The best choices are probably Ornate Bow, Sledgehammer (4) and Chainsaw: Chainsaw has the best theoretical damage per round but will have the lowest skill (you'll be testing at 5 before commits, not great.); Bow can be combined with Duke for 7 total damage and tests at 7 with dark horse active; Sledgehammer tests at 8 with dark horse for us but only does 6 per round. They all have their downsides.

Remarks

I said I'd stick to one expansion plus core last time, but immediately went to a 3-4 core solution. Part of this is because "Dark Horse" Ashcan used to be a Super Popular True Solo so versions of him using just Dunwich+Core are pretty abundant, partly this is because while I was playtesting the build I wanted to showcase, Hemlock Vale dropped Dark Horse (5) and I wanted to include it in the side deck since the whole idea is "minimize setup" and if I was gonna do that, I might as well make selections from the full cardpool.

Trimming this deck down is pretty straightforward though, for the level 0 you'll want Dunwich + Carcosa + Core at minimum, you can replace Able Bodied with whatever other skill you prefer (maybe Resourceful ). For the upgrades, obviously just don't upgrade into anything you don't own, although missing out on Ice Pick will reduce the combat efficiency of the deck quite a bit in standard and hard (since the average enemy is 2-3 fight and you want to test at +2-3, you'd prefer to test at 5 or 6 when fighting.).

Next Investigator will probably be Jim Culver to demonstrate the value of token manipulation in true solo and start exploring weirder builds (since a big part of the fun in True Solo is experimentation.)