.45 Thompson is, as another reviewer put it. The Dr. Milan Christopher of weapons. Talk about nailing it!

The thing that .45 Thompson does is create an extended capacity combat option with a large +, it is really good in the hands of dedicated fighters and 3 characters who grab it to keep their attack bonus high.

.45 Thompson is more of a niche, and it's a strong one!

As a weapon that pays for itself, it makes extended combat even easier! You can battle it out for rounds on end, you can use the extra cash to fuel hits via talent use like Physical Training or Keen Eye and/or the cash will let you keep the ball rolling by helping pay for the next gun. .45 Thompson is a good enough card in of itself to warrant a deck slot in dedicated fight builds, the kind of builds that shoulder the burden of taking on every single enemy that spawns.

In faction cards that synergize:

• Extra Ammunition pays for itself and nets you 1 bonus resource from .45 Thompson.
• Well-Maintained is a fine method to recurse the gun, it traverses the issue of cost thanks to the gun paying for itself.
• Reliable, as a gun that has lots of ammo and begs for more, Reliable is a good option.
• Other big guns! Weapons like Lightning Gun arent "banished" when you slot .45 Thompson, rather the self funding ability and great speed at which you spend ammo makes slotting other big guns a perfectly valid deckbuilding direction. All those ammo and gun-support cards you might slot alongside .45 Thompson will do the other big guns good too! Top it off with Bandolier to dual wield 2 big guns!
• Vicious Blow gains priority in a build that is limiting itself to 2-damage attacks.
• Venturer keeps the bullets flowing.

Out of faction:

• Act of Desperation can top-off the resource gain by refunding the whole damn thing! Style points if you then immediately re-equip via Well-Maintained.
• Contraband, obviously.

One important bit: You dont actually need all of those other cards, .45 Thompson by itself is a grease card thank makes your deck run more smoothly in it's enemy killing role, it doesn't need any combos to actually be good on its own.

Leo Anderson wants you to say hello to his lil friend... OK, he's reloading!

This upgrade (featuring more bullets in the artwork than the original) seems like it might be the real reason why Sleight of Hand made it onto the mutated list of taboos.

By itself, we now have a quality +2 weapon that will almost pay for itself over its 5 shots. This lets us use it early in a scenario to wipe up mooks without losing tempo in the long run, and those click savings mean it can get seamlessly replaced later on for a boss-killer gun.

An obvious combo with Venturer means that the ally essentially ends up costing 1 resource (0 in Leo). Likewise it turns Extra Ammunition (from under Stick to the Plan) into even more resources. It also turns on Bandolier in case you're Roland Banks with a couple Hawk-Eye Folding Camera or something.

This is the Dr. Milan Christopher of weapons. That should speak volumes...