Tony survives while doing 10 damage per turn.

So, I just played Tony in Return to The Circle Undone and he is BONKERS. I played a deck based on getting 4-5 actions per turn to kill everything and running a healthy quantity of survivability cards and Alter Fate for pesky treacheries that sit on the table in this campaign.

Alter Fate was good, but contextual depending of the campaign or scenario you are playing. Two Perserverance were ok at the early scenarios, the icons are more than welcome and it can save me from fatal treacheries like Rotting Remains (are they even in RtTCU), but as this deck got consistency with Lucky Cigarette Case and Friends in Low Places , two are too many copies.

I've decide to publish a version of that deck, made for playing standalone scenarios in Normal Mode alongside a more focused clueving investigator, preferably a Mystic since this deck while it can suck a lot of damage and horror thanks to Lonnie Ritter + Heavy Furs, Tony is still weak to treacheries because of his stats.

- WHAT TONY DOES WITH THIS DECK:

This is a fairly basic deck, without crazy synergies. The objective is to trigger all the broken "succeed by" effects of a bunch of items while fightning, allowing Tony to do more damage, search a ton of cards in the deck to get unparallel consistency and get extra actions.

They key to succees is your ally, Lonnie Ritter, and the consistency Friends in Low Places and Lucky Cigarette Case provide to set up your board fast and get the events and skills you need. In one hand, hunting Lonnie Ritter in early rounds will provide Tony with a comfy 3 horror soak to rely on and +1 to trigger al the"succeeded by" effects of the deck.

Hard mulligan to get, if possible, 1º Lonnie, 2º/3º Friends in Low Places and Lucky Cigarrete Case, 4º a weapon, preferably Switchblade to spend your 5 initial resources in your first turn playing Lonnie + weapon and be just fully equiped to destroy everything (at least in Normal mode), 5º Cash . If it happens to be another weapon like .41 Derringer and Tony's .38 Long Colt it is also OK, since you can afford to spend a couple of actions to get resources.

Then, you can build up from here. Using Friends from Low Places you'll fetch wathever you need, preferably Lucky Cigarette Case, since you'll get to see a lot of cards with Tony's massive 5 , allowing you to search for wathever cards you need during the game.

• Build your table with the needed weapon depending on what you need to do. Switchblade is reliable damage, shoot .41 Derringer for extra actions, play Beretta M1918 for bosses and don't forget Tony's .38 Long Colt to fuel your Bounty Contracts to kill enemies after bare punching them or just using a weapon with your other hand. If you need extra damage, just bare punch with Brute Force or add Long Shot to a weapon attack.

• Fetch "Watch this!" and Kicking the Hornet's Nest for quick cash. With 5 base + Lonnie's +1 + your one hand weapons' +2 , getting cash is just easy. Kicking the Hornet's Nest can even get you more cash if you move bounties on the enemy you draw.

• Play survivability cards. Heavy Furs for virtually infinite soak with Lonnie Ritter. This card can help you to succeed by more since you can just say no those pesky symbol tokens. You can even have protection from tokens if someone adds them to the chaos bag. Lucky! and Perseverance can save your ass during the Mythos phase if you are particulary unlucky and depending on the scenario.

• Get extra actions! Move bounties to enemies to desecrate them with a free fight/engage action. Honed Instinct can give you a extra action after you engage an enemy and it will give you a +2 bonus for that action, so you can trigger all your "succeeded by" effects in all your weapons and abuse the hell out of the Lucky Cigarette Case. This action is best used in the .41 Derringer, because succeding by 3 can give you another action (per round), or in the Beretta M1918 if you want to annihilate a boss. You can also trigger with ease Quick Thinking effect for an extra action with Tony's statblock. It is desirable to get 2-3 extra actions from a single Derringer, but don't worry if you get 1 or none, since you'll have enough actions to kill everything anyways. If there are enemies with bounties, Tony will always get 4 actions while killing them, so it is possible to get a lot of turns with 5 actions and ocassionaly 6.

It is reasonable to do 10 damage per turn when you have a lot of turns with 5 actions. If can even go further if your Beretta M1918 attacks are successful, if you use Long Shot or if you bare punch using Brute Force.

• Reload the guns you need with Swift Reload. Tony will empty his guns fast with all his actions, and you don't want to run short of ammo with the gun you're holding. There are scenarios and campaigns with a lot of beefy enemies and this is a must if the 87.5% of your weapons are guns with limited uses.

• After everything is dead, get clues. Play Kicking the Hornet's Nest for a free clue and, if possible, cash and a enemy (and the bounty cash). "Look what I found!" will usually get you 2 clues for 2 cash in 3 shroud locations and it will always do it in 2 or less shroud locations.

- POSSIBLE CHANGES AND/OR ADDITIONS:

• For standalone, In the Thick of It is just good. The consistency of this deck shall grant you Lonnie + Furs for virtually infinite soak and Tony has 9 base health. I don't see it that much for a campaign since any deck is consistent enough in the early scenario (unless you are a investigator) to pull of you soak combo and Tony's defensive stats are poor.

• Alter Fate depending on the scenario / campaign it can be a lifesave. Its a MUST in The Circle Undone. For a 29 EXP deck you can cut a Brute Force since the extra damage is nice, but not needed, and run one copy. If you run In the Breach in your deck (29+3 EXP), cut one Lucky for a second copy of Alter Fate (30 EXP) and play two Brute Force instead of two Longshot (32 EXP).

• If you are willing to push this deck for 39 EXP (29+10), consider cutting one Lucky!, two "Watch this!" and two Long Shot to add Charisma (3EXP), two Delilah O'Rourke (3+6=9 EXP) and three Easy Mark (9+1=10 EXP). You'll be even more consistent with your draws, your can be even bigger, making easier to activate your items effects while fightning, and you'll do extra damage paying Delilah.

• Two Stunning Blow instead of two Long Shot for scenarios and campaigns that punish you for killing enemies, like For the Greater Good in TCU and the whole TFA campaign with the Vengeance mechanic.

• Two Flashlight instead of two Long Shot. Tony has 3 , so with this card Tony can reliably investigate 3 shroud places and, unless you pull the token from the bag or other autofail conditions because of encounter cards, get guaranteed clues from 2 or less shroud veil places. Tony does not really need the extra damage when he can do 8-10 damage realiably during his turn, but his hands are usually occupied with weapons, so I'm not a fan. It will depend on the scenario and the campaign.