[The ChiLo Horror] Deckbuilding 101: Roland

This is a sample deck to describe the deckbuilding process alongside my article on Deckbuilding 101.

Excerpts from the article:

The Lightning Gun seems really cool and I like Roland. But I want to make sure I see it if I spend that much XP on it, so I'll include 2x Prepared for the Worst. And it only comes with three shots so 2x Extra Ammo is going to be in there. Watch out monsters! I am impatient, though, so I'll use this for a stand-alone scenario so I don't have to play through 3 scenarios just to get the XP for this build.

If Roland is spending 12xp on Lightning Guns and Extra Ammos, he should be using them! I tell my SO that I'm going to mostly fight with Roland, picking up an occasional clue with his ability or some tricks. My SO decides to do the opposite and picks Ursula. She plans on evading a lot, plus includes "I've got a plan!" to take out an enemy or two. She eventually wants to buy Disc of Itzamna with XP to also mitigate an enemy that shows up at a bad time.

Although Roland could get by with 1x Prepared for the Worst, I keep two in the deck so I can find the Lightning Guns more easily. Inquiring Mind, which needs clues to be able to use, is situational, so I only put in one. Also, I'm nervous about Roland's low sanity, so I spend some XP on an Elder Sign Amulet (but only one, as I think my XP is better spent on upgrading both Beat Cops).

My Roland has Beat Cops to pump his combat. But he also needs horror soak, and I may want to discard Beat Cop for its damage ability. So I include Art Students to get him some clues and horror soaks.

Roland is very poor. He has these big guns and cards to get him more ammo for those guns. I'm worried Cache won't be enough, and I don't own many other cards he can take that give him resources. I don't envision him investigating enough to make Milan Christopher worth it (plus maybe my SO wants Milan). So I keep the number of assets and expensive events to a minimum. I compensate by going up to a lofty 11 skills.

Roland is looking pretty sharp. He only has two singletons, so this deck should be very consistent. He's also pretty resilient to damage and horror with four allies and the Elder Sign Amulet. After playing some Roland, I found it was sometimes hard to position myself in locations with clues when the enemies spawned, so I've included two Shortcuts to assist with that (you're not spending an action to move, so you don't provoke an attack of opportunity if you're engaged with an enemy - but the enemy stays engaged with you!). With Machete as a backup weapon, this Roland should be ready to take on any number of monsters.