Forget the A-Team, here's the S-Team|20k Series|Deck Guide

You thought the A-Team was the best? Charlie takes over the S-Tier with the S-Team, staring The Tactician, The Con man, The Mechanician and the "Howling Mad one"

Credit: DerBK & ItsTangilicious

Introduction:

"For this job, Bonnie, I need la crème de la crème."
"Sure, sir, here's what I got for you."
"Hey there, I can fix your engine in the feistiest way.."
"Alright, it could always come in handy, I guess?"
"You call me, you hold the gun, you pay me, and I push your finger on the trigger, so you're innocent.."
"Is that how it even works?"
"Greetings Mr Kane, I'm an experienced hunter.."
"Wait, are you even from the same planet? Your face is freakin' green! - Hey, what's that lass doing behind the window?"
"WITH IRON AND SALT, WITH WATER AND FIRE!"
"Ok, Bonnie, I think we've had enough..."

This series is a celebration of the 20k points on ArkhamDB to thank you all for all the support received.
I will release a new standalone-ready deck concept every week on Friday for the following months, so stay tuned and keep pressing the ♥ button if you want to see more!

Let me know which investigators you would like to see next in the comment!

Table of Contents:

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Fighting

• Use dead turns to investigate

• Consistency

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

Overview:

Main Strategy:

• Use Trigger Man and Eye of the Djinn's base value increase to become a normal investigator.

• Use Lonnie Ritter, Michael Leigh and Grete Wagner (3)'s static boosts and icons on top of that for ridiculous skill values.

• Spam the Switchblade (3) 5 times per turn thanks to the Trigger Man (readied by Bonnie Walsh, combined with Michael Leigh's additional damage to deal up to 11 damage per turn.

• Use Eye of the Djinn, Grete Wagner (3), and Michael Leigh's boosts and icons to investigate 3 times per turn, with 9, 9 and 7 respectively, loading that many Vicious Blows on Michael Leigh.

Fighting:

Your weapons:

• Your weapon of choice is the Switchblade (3) because it is cheap, fast, and most importantly, it gives you an unlimited supply of 2-damage attacks, as your skill value will secure success by 2 or more.

  • Enchanted Blade is a perfect backup for its +2 and the +1 damage to any situation for the time you find your Switchblade (3).

  • I considered the Knuckleduster for the theme and to take the dust out of it, but you need the backup weapon the most during set-up, and this is also when you are lacking icons from your not-so-many allies yet.

  • Later, we upgrade the Enchanted Blade into Mauser C96 (2), which offers more flexibility as it can also be attached to Trigger Man if need be and when it is empty you can Calling in Favors the Trigger Man to play him again with your Switchblade (3).

Static boosts:

• Lonnie Ritter comes with 2 advantages: she comes with a static and provides a lot of soaks, especially when combined with the Heavy Furs.

• Michael Leigh and Grete Wagner (3) both come with a static .

Once these 3 Allies are on the table, this takes us to a solid 4 .

Icons:

Charlie's ability turns the icons into stat boosts with a +1.

• Bonnie Walsh, Michael Leigh and Grete Wagner (3) all come with the possibility to offer 2 icons, bringing their boost to 3 each time.

• When you don't need them for their abilities, Lonnie Ritter and Trigger Man also offer a nice 2 .

Base skill modifiers:

• Eye of the Djinn offers you one test per turn with a base skill value of 5 , to which you add the static boosts of your allies for a stunning 8 once fully set up, before even using Charlie's ability.

• Trigger Man gives you a attack with a base of 4, to which you also add your static boosts.

  • When readied by Bonnie Walsh, you can pay a second time for another attack each turn.

Example of a fighting turn once fully set up:

: Use Trigger Man's ability to fight with a base skill of 4, +3 with your allies, +2 with Switchblade (3) = 9 .

1: Fight using Bonnie Walsh's icons for a skill value of 1, +3 with your allies, +3 with Bonnie's icons, +2 with Switchblade (3) = 9 .
Use Bonnie's ability to ready Trigger Man.

: Use Trigger Man's ability to fight with a base skill value of 4, +3 with your allies, +2 with Switchblade (3) = 9 .

2: Fight using Eye of the Djinn and exhaust Michael Leigh for +1 damage, with a base skill value of 5, +3 with your allies, +2 with the Switchblade (3) = 10 .

3: Fight using Grete Wagner (3) and Lonnie Ritter's icons for a skill value of 1, +3 with your allies, +5 with your icons, +2 with Switchblade (3) = 11 .

Results:

• 5 attacks
• 9 at least
• 11 damage delivered, 13 with 2 Vicious Blows
• 1 card draw with Lucky Cigarette Case
• Fully ready to deliver the next turn.

Later improvement:

• Haste will give an additional attack per turn with a skill value of 9 .

  • Note that the ability from the Trigger Man does count for Haste, so if you ready him with Bonnie Walsh, you could do 3 attacks !!

• Garrote Wire will also add another fight action for 1 damage and at least 6 .

• I tried as much as possible to avoid another Charlie deck with Miss Doyle, but she is too good to fully ignore. If you are interested in using her, you can add Charisma and replace the second copy of Lonnie Ritter with the cat, keeping Augur in play at all times, to benefit from her icon.

Use dead turns to investigate:

Investigating will not only advance the game, but it will also store Vicious Blows on Michael Leigh.

Boosting your skill value:

• Michael Leigh and Grete Wagner (3) give you one static each and +3 when using their icons.

  • While Michael Leigh exhausts for the damage, he does not exhaust to collect evidence!

• The Eye of the Djinn also helps set your base skill value to 5 once per turn.

Example of an investigating turn once fully set up:

1: Use Eye of the Djinn for a base skill value of 5, +2 with your allies = 7

2: Use Michael Leigh and Bonnie Walsh (ready Michael Leigh) for a skill value of 1, +2 with your allies, +6 with the icons = 9 .

3: Use Michael Leigh and Grete Wagner (3) for a skill value of 1, +2 with your allies, +6 with the icons = 9 .

Results:

• 3 clues
• 3 evidence stored on Michael Leigh for future uses.

Later improvement:

• Later in the campaign, Haste will give an additional clue per turn.

• Adding Miss Doyle and Augur to the mix, and you have another investigation with a base skill value of 5, +2 with your allies, +2 with Miss Doyle's icons = 9 , which can be used with the additional action of Haste.

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Consistency:

Resources:

Because using the Trigger Man and Lonnie Ritter regularly costs resources, we fill the rest of the deck with resource generation.

• Lone Wolf is excellent in this deck as you are highly independent and can even investigate high-shroud locations reliably.

• Speaking of the devil, "Watch this!" is a fantastic 3 resources that are easy to secure with these ridiculous numbers.

• Faustian Bargain gives you resources and tokens.

  • Why would you want the latter, you may ask? Your skill values are going so high that you will not mind the . Also, you will want to use Heavy Furs to bounce them back, to damage it and be able to trigger Lonnie Ritter, and also because they give you an additional action when pulled during Eye of the Djinn tests!

  • If you do not know what to do with your end-of-campaign experience, you can also purchase the False Covenant to add another chance for the to be drawn during the Eye of the Djinn test, as well as protecting our teammates and helping them using Promise of Power and Deep Knowledge.

Tutoring:

• Calling in Favors and Motivational Speech speed up your set-up time which can be extremely heavy (but largely compensated afterwards with insane tempo and skill values).

  • Calling in Favors is evident and perfect here because most allies share the same cost.

• As we upgrade the deck, we go for 2 Backpack (2), which can find Lucky Cigarette Case, Eye of the Djinn, Heavy Furs, and Garrote Wire.

• Black Market shines here for multiple reasons:

  • Finding Motivational Speech in the market can play an ally from your hand, or the other way around, Motivational Speech can play an ally from the market.

  • During the turn of the market, your deck is significantly smaller, making search cards like Prepared for the Worst and Calling in Favors much less likely to whiff.

  • Haste gives you an additional action on play actions, for events and asset alike.

  • The deck is pretty low in skills.

• There is a limitation to all of this, unfortunately. The Switchblade (3) has to be in your hand by the time you play Trigger Man.

  • This means that it doesn't matter in which way the Trigger Man man is played, whether it is with Calling in Favors, Black Market or Motivational Speech.

  • But as the Trigger Man man says "Attach an Illicit asset" and not "play", you cannot play him and use the Switchblade (3) from the Black Market. The only working tutor in this situation is the good ol' Prepared for the Worst that adds the weapon to your hand.

  • This is the only reason why we do not play Backpack (2) in this deck. If you miss it, feel free to add it a bit later in the process.

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Other cards:

• Inspiring Presence is often used differently early and later in the scenario:

  • Early, it helps ready allies to use their icons twice during the same turn.

  • Later, it can be seen as a Vicious Blow as it can ready Michael Leigh for another chance to spend evidence on him while giving you another damage/horror soak, or a testless clue when readying Grete Wagner (3), or yet another use of Trigger Man! You just cannot use Bonnie Walsh's ability twice in a turn.

• Grete Wagner (3)'s clue, unfortunately, doesn't store evidence on Michael Leigh, but don't forget that it also works at a connecting location!

• Daring fits well at the beginning of the scenario when you do not have many allies and, therefore, little icons to commit. It can also help with panic evasions.

• You want to avoid as much as possible drawing Burden of Leadership once all your allies are exhausted. My advice is to use your Eye of the Djinn and as few allies as possible on your first action, trigger your Lucky Cigarette Case, and hope to draw it. Once your allies are damaged or exhausted, never draw cards anymore during the rest of your turn.

  • You could keep your tutors for the turn when you draw Burden of Leadership and still make the best of this turn.

• For that reason, too, after your first cycle of the deck, as soon as you are fully set up, you have no more interest in drawing cards as they are more enablers than pure value. On the opposite, this would bring your weaknesses back.

  • For that same reason, we purchase later in the campaign Garrote Wire to replace Lucky Cigarette Case to maintain value once we have drawn all our assets.

  • I would advise never assigning damage to Lonnie Ritter as she can heal her horror, and therefore you can use her for her icons on your first action, taking fewer risks to discard one of your key allies with Burden of Leadership.

  • Note that it has been confirmed by FFG that Burden of Leadership will receive an errata, adding the word "Must" to it. This means that as intended by the designers, you have to choose, no matter what, between exhaust and damage/horror, and if the ally is already exhausted, then you have to give them 1 damage/horror.

• We are allowed to use Switchblade (3) even though it is 3xp because the taboo list stipulates: "Each card’s level remains the same — only the experience spent to purchase the card is altered."

Upgrade Path:

Link to the 0xp deck

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Link to the full xp deck

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