"Skids" O'Toole: Late Game Katana Bless Deck

Quick Math

Okay, I need to start this column not with an intro or a tie-in short story, but with how you pilot this deck, for it is not simple or intuitive. Picture this, you are playing "Skids" O'Toole. In your play area is:

• Katana
• Sacred Covenant
• Favor of the Sun
• Knight of Swords

In your threat area is a 3 fight, 3 health enemy. The optimum outcome would be to fight it with Katana and defeat it in 1 action, meaning you need to succeed by exactly 2. You get +2 from Katana, and you exhaust Favor of the Sun to resolve a as your first token draw, meaning another +2 skill value on your base of 3.

3+2+2=7. The enemy has 3 fight, so you are 4 up on the test.

• Suppose you draw a 0. You are about to succeed by 4. Exhaust Sacred Covenant, essentially cancelling the token. Instead, you have now succeeded by 2, dealing three damage.
• Suppose you draw a -1. You are about to succeed by 3. Exhaust Sacred Covenant, essentially cancelling the token. You would now succeed by 1. Now, trigger the on Knight of Swords to get +1 skill value. You have now succeeded by 2, dealing three damage.
• Suppose you draw a -2. You have succeeded by 2, dealing three damage.
• Suppose you draw a -3. You are about to succeed by 1. Trigger the on Knight of Swords to get +1 skill value. You have now succeeded by 2, dealing three damage.
• Suppose you draw a -4. You are about to succeed by 0. While your assets cannot help you now, should you draw 1 token before revealing the -4, or you have Daring Maneuver in your hand, you gain +2 to your skill value, thus you would succeed by exactly 2, dealing 3 damage.
• Suppose you draw any number of before revealing any of the tokens above. Since Sacred Covenant lets you return any number of blesses to the chaos bag, you have fine control over how many you want to resolve. As a result, drawing 9 has the exactly same outcome as drawing 0, as well as any number in between.

This covers the majority of tokens in the chaos bag, meaning you can make Katana a late game viable weapon. Sometimes you fight 4 attack enemies. In such cases, a Quick Thinking, "Watch this!", or eventually a Strong-Armed can bring you back to an optimal starting value. Against 5 fight enemies, Wolf Mask is your solution.

Now, why go through all this trouble to achieve what Steady-Handed does for 1xp? One, Steady-Handed only covers you if you are 1 off succeeding by exactly 2, whereas this pool of cards covers nearly the entire range of tokens. And two, no investigator who can take Katana and Steady-Handed has a good value to make use of Katana's action. Skids can, and thus outperforms investigators with Steady-Handed against enemies with 1 health.

Blessed Success

Don't think this deck is a one-trick pony built entirely around making Katana viable. tokens and succeed by X cards synergies very well together.

Generation:

• Absolution
• Purified
• Priest of Two Faiths (lvl 1)
• Hit and Run counts as a bless card too, in that it is extra copies of Priest of Two Faiths.

Naturally, blessed decks work much better with other bless decks, but so long as you can seal 3 on Favor of the Sun when the time to fight arrives, this deck is self-sufficient. Eventually Absolution will leave the deck, as it is sub-optimal bless generation. Replace it (and Gregory Gry) with Priest of Two Faiths.

Dependent Cards:

• Favor of the Sun (lvl 1)
• Sacred Covenant (lvl 2)

4 experience is all that is required to start increasing your odds of succeeding by exactly 2. These should be your first upgrades.

Succeed by X Cards:

• Lucky Cigarette Case
• Gregory Gry
• Grift
• Honed Instinct
• "Watch this!"
• Purified
• Quick Thinking

Extra resources, tokens, card draw, and actions stand to be gained from succeeding by a lot. Once you have Knight of Swords, your odds of succeeding by 2 or more become much higher.

Resource Cards:

• Gregory Gry
• Investments
• Grift
• "Watch this!"

Skids is a money hungry investigator and needs his economy. The deck itself is quite lean, and will drop Gregory Gry and Backstab eventually, further tightening its belt. Investments is uniquly suited to Skids, as it essential banks up additional actions for the final part of any scenario, but it too will likely be swapped out. Grift and "Watch this!" are here to stay.

Defensive cards:

• Absolution
• Calculated Risk

A few answers to tests and horror are needed if your are a 2, 6 sanity investigator. Calculated Risk helps with cards like Frozen in Fear, and absolution contains emergency horror healing. Between that and ally soak, you should be mostly okay.

Damage Cards:

• Katana
• Backstab
• Sweeping Kick (lvl 1)
• Radiant Smite (lvl 1)
• Strong-Armed (lvl 1)

The main weakness of this deck is its reliance on Katana, with Backstab as an emergency measure to be able to do damage should it not show up. At lvl 0, it is a concern, so you should supplement it with Sweeping Kick and Radiant Smite early in your exp spending. Once Lucky Cigarette Case (lvl 3) shows up in your deck, you will be able to dig deep for the assets that did not show up in your opening hand, and so you can depend on Katana enough to include Strong-Armed. Strong-Armed is especially useful for its ability to re-roll the token you take, until you get one that allows you to succeed by exactly 2.

Capstone Cards:

• Knight of Swords
• Lucky Cigarette Case (lvl 3)
• Bewitching
• Honed Instinct (lvl 4)
• Another Day, Another Dollar

Knight of Swords has been explained for it key role in enabling Katana.

Lucky Cigarette Case (lvl 3) enables you to dive deep into your deck to fish out those stubborn assets you rely on that have ended up at the bottom of the pile. With it, you can get away with 1 copy of Wolf Mask (to make room for 3 copies of Honed Instinct).

Bewitching thins out your deck, making Knight of Swords more likely to show up in your opening hand. However, you need to take Sweeping Kick to have a third Trick event to place under it, alongside Grift and Hit and Run. Sweeping Kick is a great for this deck regardless; testing at base 7 skill value makes it a good place to commit Purified and for getting the most out of Lucky Cigarette Case (lvl 3). Replace Backstab with it.

You need only impulse control and force of habit on Honed Instinct to get what you need out of it. You don't need any other trigger if you're already planning to succeed by a lot, and I'd actually advise against getting sharpened talent, as it can throw off your carefully controlled during Katana tests.

Another Day, Another Dollar is just extra resources. If you can find the space in your deck, Unscrupulous Loan is also a viable option.

Total exp: 30

Beyond Katana

30xp is a comfortable amount to reach by the end of a campaign, but it would not be unusual to hit 40xp or more. By then, Katana may start to feel insufficient as a weapon to rely on. Fortunately, rogue has two options for weapons that like to succeed by a lot: Beretta M1918 and Sawed-Off Shotgun. You'll likely need some ammo replenishment too if you get that far, if the form of Swift Reload and/or Contraband (lvl 2).

Finally, A Home Rule

Katana is not a good card by any means, but I did get it to sing during a 4-player campaign with me as primary fighter. However, for full disclosure, I should reveal that a home rule was in effect when using the weapon. See, both actions on Katana exhaust it, meaning you can use one or the other, but not both. This is salt in the wounds for this low-tier card, because even after finding the best investigator to take advantage of both abilities, and crafting a deck and play-style entirely around it, you are left unable to do the cool thing you'd think fighting with a Katana would try to make you feel, i.e. perform multiple, rapid slices. So for the sake of feel, my friends allowed me to ignore the exhaust condition on the action, and instead treat it as a once per round effect instead, meaning you can take down a 4 health enemy in 1 action with 2 successful attacks, one with and one with .