Sled Dog

EDIT: Due to me failing to notice a key element of one of the cards used in the combo below, this review is effectively irrelevant! Thank you to the commenters who called it out and corrected me. So feel free to ignore, or read on for a brief vignette about the perils of hubris or something.

+++

From Zerogrim's review: "...The last thing to highlight here is you CAN (with some great deal of luck) have 14 doggo's in play at the same time under your control, how you achieve this is left as an exercise for the reader, good luck! (bonus star for anyone who figures out how to get more, no matter how hair brained the method)"

I can getcha 16!

This method works for any 'gator, tho Leo Anderson can skip a step or two via Mitch Brown.

Required: 4P multiplayer.

Each player must have in play:

At least 1 player must have and be able to play Teamwork.

All gators move to the same location.

Play Teamwork.

P1 gives you their Sled Dogs AND their Rod Of Animalism. (Relic Hunter * 2 = 3 Accessory Slots, so you can hold 3 Rod Of Animalism.)

Base Slot + Charisma + 3 Rod Of Animalism = 8 (creature) Ally Slots = 16 Doggo Slots.

P2 & 3 give you their Sled Dogs.

TA-DA! You now have 16 Sled Dogs!

(At this point, if you have an Expensive Sofa in play, you must immediately discard it.)

HanoverFist · 748
I have some very bad news. Route of animalism is unique (has an asterisk next to the title) This means only one copy of the card by title can be in play at any one time. If another copy would be attempting to enter play in the first place it fails to do so. I’m deeply sorry to ruin this beautiful dream — Sycopath · 1
Rod* — Sycopath · 1
I am awarding you A+ for effort anyway, but if rods could be traded 16 would be easy to reach, and the theortical maximum would be 30 sled dogs, if someone ever gets deckbuild "all the sled dogs" — Zerogrim · 295
Wha? Well shucks, nope, didn't see the asterisk. Back to square one then. — HanoverFist · 748
Easy way to get 16: ignore the rule that you can only have 2 copies of Charisma. — Xenas · 7
Devil, Mitch, Rod, Cha x2 gives 14, I don't think there's a way to get more at the moment. — suika · 9511
Miskatonic Archaeology Funding could give you two more ally slots to hold Miskatonic assets. Currently the dogs don't have that, but maybe a future set will give us a Miskatonic Zoology Funding asset that gives all creatures the miskatonic trait. — OrionJA · 1
There's an alternative to Mitch, parallel Roland's directive. — vidinufi · 69
Now that we have Charlie Kane in Scarlet Keys, I think 16 sled dogs is possible now. Charlie comes default with 4 ally slots, you can get 2 more from 2x Charisma and 2 more from the Rod of Animalism. That's 8 slots total for 16 dogs! The only other thing you need is 3 friends willing to pack Charisma & 4 doggos and everyone to somehow manage to get all of their doggos into play. — rockmaninoff · 3
Play Charlie Kane, go Rogue/Survivor, run You Owe me One, A Chance Encounter (2), and Black Market. Commit rest of cards to draw (rabbit's foot, track shoes, drawing thin engine works well with his poor stats). Get Leo out for an extra action. Can consider haste as well since so many of your actions are "play". Eon Chart is also an option for extra action economy. Requires less commitment from your allies (they can freely discard dogs and don't need to put them into play, or you can get them through black market or buying it from their hands.). — siroma · 44
On the Hunt

Oohhh mama.

On the Hunt is a funky niche that does a bit of good when you want to avoid treacheries like the plague and when dispatching enemies actually helps you get work done, yes, we're talking about Roland Banks here. It's a super-duper niche and the worst part? It can miss!

Well. here we are for round 2! Ding ding!

1) 100% hit rate, so long as you know your mythos deck a bit. You can get that XP enemy you really wanna kill, or some easy chump to trigger benefits from.

2) It's free, and it generates money.

3) It does -most- of what it already did, just better.

4) "Wait. Most, not all? What changed?" When On the Hunt misses, it says you gotta draw a card to replace it, note that this XP variant does not include that text!

So. depending on how you navigate it, This card can get you money, get you beneficial triggers, give you a break on treacheries that hurt you, nail enemies with annoying spawns, dig out bonus XP at an opportune time, or straight up cancel an encounter draw..

This card is WEIRD, but it's got a lot of beneficial vectors going for it, if you hit enough of them then this card goes from a little iffy, to straight up amazing.

Tsuruki23 · 2577
Sweeping Kick

Love this card, so much! Oh man, it's gotten me out of some binds already!

First off, a nice big fat attack with what amounts to an average 6, 7 or 8 to hit, that by itself is a great backup move to rely on. 2 Damage deals with lots of troublesome things on it's own.

Second, for the sake of fighting something big and scary (this guy), pre-emptively evading it is often the safest way to go, this card does that really well, you're chunking down the threat at the same time as you control it.

Lastly, it's actions and health saved. Often the guardian needs to run across the map and pull a nasty monster off of the hapless , or else you might be at a location together, and you simply dont have actions to get the both of you free safely. Sweeping Kick lets you pull your friend out of trouble, no matter how big, and keep yourself safe with minimal risks (beware missing the attack and hitting your friend tho).

Obviously, I need to namedrop Rita Young and Nathaniel Cho, bonus damage and evade options ETC ETC.

Tsuruki23 · 2577
Also intriguing for a Skids/Fergus deck, maybe. — OrionJA · 1
Can also be stuck to The Plan. Might not be the absolute best card there, but nice to have an emergency attack/evade on tap. — Zinjanthropus · 230
Also good for Calvin Wright — ezrk · 1
Toe to Toe

Automatic stuff is good. Resist the attack with some soak because I'm not actually sure you're allowed to cancel it with cards like Dodge, because that's cancelling the "cost of taking at attack.

You can commit skill cards, Vicious Blow for example, Nathaniel Cho gets a bonus, Daniela Reyes obviously.

Note, this might seem a steep and risky price to pay for one hit, compared to playing Monster Slayer or One-Two Punch, but automatic hits are worth their weight in gold in hard and expert, where the chaos bag is like a coiled snake, full of terrible tokens.

Most incredibly, it's level 0, a whole heap of charactes can sneak this into their decks to reap the benefit.

Tsuruki23 · 2577
Amazing early game tech for . . . I forget his name, the Cursed Survivor who starts with all 0's. — OrionJA · 1
Calvin. — supertoasty · 40
I don’t see why you can’t use dodge against this… — gazzagames · 7
Also I think this exhausts the enemy as it is an attack not an AOO… which might also be useful… — gazzagames · 7
You can't use Dodge because being attacked is the cost of the free successful Fight. If you cancel the cost, you haven't paid for the product. (You can, however, cancel the damage or horror from the attack.) — supertoasty · 40
@gazzagames enemies do not exhaust because they attack, they exhaust as part of the enemy phase, which just happens to be after they attack in that phase. This card, and anything else that causes attacks of any kind, does not exhaust enemies unless otherwise specified. — Lasiace · 23
enemies do exhaust. Only AOO will not cause enemy exhausted. Other attack actions no matter what phase will cause the enemy exhausted~ — BoomEzreal · 8
See the FAQ, p — codemonkey · 1
Bloody hell...p. 13: Do enemies exhaust after making attacks of opportunity, retaliate attacks, or other attacks (via card effects)?No. Enemies only exhaust after attacking if they perform an attack during step 3.3 of the enemy phase. Unless otherwise noted, all other enemy attacks do not cause that enemy to exhaust. — codemonkey · 1
If you are able to defeat a monster with your attack when using this card, does the monster get to attack you back or is that part of the card cancelled? — HandsomeDust · 1
Being attacked is part of the cost, so it happens before you even get to do your attack. — Lasiace · 23
So another question then can you use counterpunch or similar effect on this attack… assume you can snd then get your auto success attack from toe to toe…. — gazzagames · 7
Yeah, counterpunch should work fine, since you're just interrupting an attack and not cancelling it or anything like that. — Lasiace · 23
what if the enemy is evaded first? still attacks? able to use this card? — Krysmopompas · 366
Peter Sylvestre

One of the best cards around, here's why:

1: The ultimate horror soak! So long as you can keep him alive, It's a saved horror every turn. Because he can "fit" two at once, and horror effects typically hit in small bursts (often 2 or 3), you can "fill" up on some horror when it hits and slowly heal it in the aftermath. He completely takes the bite out of the worst horror treacheries in the game, the only real danger then to your sanity is a nasty enemy breathing down your neck with opportunity hits, or self inflicted pain (incidentally, one of the best solutions to the backlash of Shrivelling is having Pete around.

2: STATS! A +1 on two different stats is excellent for a single asset, and benefits multiple playstyles, whether you're harnessing to make evades and shoot an Ornate Bow or Enchanted Bow, or the to land spell charges like Shrivelling and Rite of Seeking, the other stats are still there and give you new options, help you pass localized tests like parlays and treachery tests, when your spells are empty you can evade.

Do keep in mind that both of his stats are "defensive stats", the vast majority of Treacheries that inflict skill tests target , and is up there as much less common, but still second place. Even if only defensively this guy is good, if you start looking down the barrel of late-campaign scenarios with some trauma in your bag, give him a look.

Tsuruki23 · 2577