The Sadomasochist [Deck Guide]

This is a bog standard Daniela deck that you can base your own build off. It's not fast and it's not flashy, but it is guaranteed effective at all difficulties or your money back.

Why Daniela?

She doesn't carry a big stick. She ain't got no spear (being of the fairer sex), nor can she play with lightning or fire. Your favorite Gravedigger can abuse the heck out of assets by digging them up and playing them over and over again, Daniela hasn't got anything that can match that play for play.

What she does have is testless damage and evasion. Using her ability to evade completely neutralizes Massive, which is huge (pun intended). Damage-wise, coupled with Guard Dog and Aquinnah that's easily 2-4 damage testlessly each round. Beat Cop and Agency Backup, eat your heart out (damage tokens are hearts, geddit?).

Daniela's the Survivor analogue of Tony Morgan. Nobody ever said Tony was bad because he couldn't run Guardian weapons. He's got his own bag of tricks, and Daniela has hers.

Piloting

You have exactly one role, fighting. It's not rocket science — which is good because that Daniela with her 1 wouldn't be able to understand that.

Mulligan for a weapon. For this purpose, Aquinnah and Guard Dog counts as weapons, but you'll still want to have that Brand in hand as soon as you can.

Your game plan is to hit things until they die, and if enemies refuse to kneel over to your 7-8 , just engage them and tell them to stop hitting themselves during the enemy phase.

Wrench? What Wrench? I end up using it as a 3 commit a lot. The ability is useful, but try not to overuse it unless you really need to save an action, because your health and sanity (and the health and sanity of your allies) are limited resources that you'd like to stretch for as long as possible.

Card Choices

We run the bless suite of Keep Faith, Tempt Fate, and Rite of Sanctification for economy. Over the course of the game you'll be playing several allies and unlike Tommy boy your allies don't pay for their own funeral expenses when they off themselves. So you appeal to religion for a discount. "It's for church honey," Daniela says, convincing the Guard Dog to go without dog food for the greater good. Other investigators can use the discount too.

Aquinnah and Guard Dog are obvious choices, as is Toe to Toe. Flesh Ward blunts a lot of the attacks that you'll be taking. Hallowed Mirror heals you and your allies. Inspiring Presence lets you use Aquinnah twice in a turn and heals her a bit too, which is most easily done in combination with Toe to Toe.

We run Jessica Hyde with the Timeworn Brand to fight at 8 and never worry about running out of health. Why do we have to fight, you ask? Because killing enemies means you don't have to get hit by them, which means you can save your health and sanity pool to deal with other enemies. It also allows you to trigger Inspiring Presence, quickly deal with enemies engaged to other investigators, deal with multiple enemies, and kill bosses faster. Also you always need to deal with Mob Goons and enemies that deal only horror.

Flex cards

Let's first talk about some cards we aren't taking.

We don't want Bangle of Jinxes. Yes, there is synergy, yes, you are going to get hit a bunch. But frankly you don't need the +2 skill value. Getting way more mileage out of your allies (and your own health/horror pool) with Hallowed Mirror (or failing that, Cherished Keepsake) is way more important. If we had a spare accessory slot, we'd be taking Riot Whistle anyway.

We don't want Peter Sylvestre. In theory it sounds great — Aquinnah negates the damage, Peter negates the horror, what's there not to like? An ally slot is costly however and the stats aren't very useful for you. In practice with Flesh Ward out, you'll rarely be taking more than 1 horror from enemies. We're already packing healing for that.

We don't want Bandages. More use out of Guard Dog, you say? We already can heal our dogs and besides, it does nothing for Aquinnah, the usually superior ally later on in the game.

We don't want the Sledgehammer. We don't need big attacks. What we want from our weapon is a reliable way to bring 4-5 health enemies down to the threshold where our retaliate can kill them. The Sledgehammer is the wrong weapon for this purpose.

We don't really like the Chainsaw either. We're already spending quite a few actions playing out assets, so we'd prefer not to have to spend even more actions reloading or replaying the chainsaw or worry about managing ammo.

The Fire Extinguisher is an cheaper alternative to the Timeworn Brand. As with a lot of other survivor tools, it loses some of its luster when you're unable to recur it, and on higher difficulties you'll appreciate the +2 of the Timeworn Brand. Plus, you already have an automatic evade should you need it.

You can substitute Glory, Daring, Take Heart, and Inspiring Presence for cards of your choice. Those cards are included primarily for consistency purposes, to increase the speed and reliability of your set up. In their place, you can run Old Keyring/Flashlight and/or "Look what I found! (2)"/Evidence!/Scene of the Crime, gives you some ability to flex investigate. Personally, I prefer additional consistency in my main role rather than to have the ability to flex poorly, especially given Daniela's poor . Ancient Covenant and Favor of the Sun is also an option if nobody else takes it.

Note that if you cut draw and consistency options, you may want to get a second copy of Safeguard and Jessica Hyde.

The economy engine of Rite of Sanctification, Tempt Fate, and Keep Faith is highly action efficient, but if you don't have Innsmouth, Emergency Cache and Teamwork can be a substitute.

Upgrade Path

Here's a sample 0xp deck. There's exactly 3 cards that's different; the upgrade order is left as an exercise to the reader.

Upgrade Options

Nothing Left to Lose or Drawing Thin can replace Rite of Sanctification. This will free you up to use your bless tech for Ancient Covenant and Favor of the Sun, a potent combination that gives you 6 effective auto-successes each game. Combined with how much testless damage you do, you have nothing to fear from the chaos bag. Unscrupulous Loan can also be used for the same purpose, though you might have trouble paying it back.

In the freed up arcane slot, you could consider Spirit of Humanity, which gives you even more soak, as well as being a better bless generating card than Tempt Fate.

The usual Survivor luxury stuff — Lucky! (3), Alter Fate, Fortune or Fate. Note that unlike a normal Survivor you can't really recur those with Resourceful for extra value.

Key of Ys. Pair it with a Precious Memento and Relic Hunter, dropping Hallowed Mirror. Become an unkillable stat ball.

Observed is always worth mentioning for decks that don't have huge upgrades.