O'Toole Disguises as an O'Rourke to Pickpocket an O'Bannion

Credit: Aleksander Karcz & Drazenka Kimpel

Let me tell you about an investigator you've tried to bring to the table for a long time but, after trying to build a deck, always switched to another Rogue.
This deck is not shiny, and it's not S-Tier, but will it win the game?
Yes.

Out of all the investigators in the game, Skids is, in my opinion, the hardest investigator to get to work consistently from the first to the last scenario.

• 2 means you'll fail more or less as many treachery tests as a 1 investigator
• 3 is too bad to get clues with your alone, unless a heavy set up.
• 3 makes him a poor fighter, despite what the splash suggests.
• 4 is better but hardly enough to use as your primary stat with reliability.
• Adding to or will only lead you to 7, which is not enough to satisfy reliably Succeed by conditions of cards such as Breaking and Entering (2) unless, again, investing in an important setup.
• His ability is heavy on your resource generation and doesn't bring any clear direction.
• His signature is so situational that it is often better used committed for its icons.

In Conclusion, Skids do not have a clear direction like Tony has with Fighting or Finn Edwards with evading, and building him as a focused deck will end up being just a poor version of another rogue.

Yet, after tens of trials, errors, and unfinished concepts, I finally found a concept that seemed to work for me. I made it to the 7th Depth of Yoth in Standalone mode, starting at Agenda 2 and killing Yig on the way. This is quite an achievement that is usually only achievable by Mark and the like.

This deck's idea is that it shouldn't feel like a bad Tony deck. And that's where the idea came from: Skids may not be good at something in particular, but he has a remarkably stable stat line that allows him to do more things than just killing.
This deck can evade, kill and get clues depending on what is the most adapted to the situation.

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Enemy Management

• Enable Your Game

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

• Make Your Own Deck!

• The tutor of Lucky Cigarette Case (3), Black Market and the draw of Pickpocketing (2) and Easy Mark find your cards at record-breaking pace.

• Disguise disables enemies for 2 turns, making it a one-shot for enemies that you do not intend to kill.

• Sweeping Kick, Delilah O'Rourke, Dirty Fighting and .25 Automatic use the evasion to kill enemies that need to be removed from the board.

• Get a few clues or remove some Obscuring Fog with Lockpicks.

The early days of the game gave us the impression that the one and only efficient way to manage enemies was to kill them. As the game evolved, evasion became better to the point that it now seems like killing anything and everything is not necessarily the best option to manage enemies anymore.
This deck offers the possibility to "disable" enemies for long enough that you do your thing and then leave them behind and forget about them. Or kill them when it's more advantageous.

Evading as a Winning Strategy:

• Disguise gives you +2 when evading, which turns your poor stat into a skill value that you can rely on. That is the main reason why we are interested in it.

  • Exhausting an enemy for 2 turns is icing on the cake. It means that a hunter enemy will start moving only during the 3rd enemy phase after the evasion. This is often enough space to enter a room, get all the clues and leave.

  • Having an enemy exhausted for 2 turns allows you to use Delilah O'Rourke twice on that enemy and gives you more time to shoot your .25 Automatic.

  • Evading with your allows Hatchet Man to turn into another Vicious Blow.

  • Evading with a higher skill value is, of course, good to get the quadruple benefit of the duet of Pickpocketing (2).

Cleaning the nuisances that cannot be ignored:

In one action, you can:

• Evade using Disguise or Sweeping Kick when you need the 2 damage.

• Dirty Fighting rewards your evasion with an action to fight, which is used by the .25 Automatic for another 2 damage.

• Delilah O'Rourke can deal 2 damage in exchange for the resources gained by Pickpocketing (2) during the evasion.

• Sprinkle a few Vicious Blow/Hatchet Man

With this, you are able to deal up to 8 damage in one action on anything that would cross your path.

This deck shines by its reliability and relatively low set-up time.

Tutor:

• The Lucky Cigarette Case (3) is arguably the best tutor in the game. Not that it searches the best, but it searches every turn.

  • Lockpicks are a solid source of oversuccess

  • Sweeping Kick is another good candidate with 9 when Delilah is on the board.

  • .25 Automatic actions will be done with 8 once you have Dirty Fighting and Delilah O'Rourke out.

  • Evasion will be done with a respectable 7 with Disguise and Delilah O'Rourke.

  • You can top this all up with Daring for some acceleration at the beginning of a scenario or after a re-shuffle.

• Black Market helps, especially at the beginning to get the right tools out.

  • It synergises extremely well with Lucky Cigarette Case (3) since it slims your deck for a turn and allows the LCC to dig further.

  • When played, it virtually increases the size of your hand for Ever Vigilant or helps find more copies of Easy Mark to play at once.

  • It works extremely well when played with 5 cards or fewer in your deck, especially when a weakness is still in there, so you can re-shuffle your deck during that turn and then put your weakness back in a bigger pile.

For that reason, Lucky Cigarette Case (3) and Black Market are your absolute priorities for Mulligan. If you cannot find a weapon, it's alright since you can handle early enemies with evasion.

• .25 Automatic and Pickpocketing are Fast which helps tremendously.

• Ever Vigilant helps with getting non-fast assets down much faster, saving you resources that can be used on your ability to get the action back!

Draw:

• Besides the tutoring aspect, Lucky Cigarette Case (3) is still an additional card each turn, which is, in itself, enough to cycle your deck once per scenario.

• Black Market is the same, except that it doesn't work with skill cards. It can be seen as drawing 5 and putting back what you haven't used at the end of the turn.

• Pickpocketing (2) does the heavy lifting here, with 2 cards for every evasion.

• Daring rounds up the draw.

The final result is approximately 2 to 3 re-shuffles per scenario.
To compensate for the horror, it is a possibility to sacrifice Delilah O'Rourke when you are dealt horror so that when you re-shuffle, you an get her back.
If you get some Horror Trauma or a weakness that deals with horror, you can also invest in Moxie (1) for some soak or keep Lonnie Ritter and Trench Coat for the whole campaign.

Resources:

• Pickpocketing (2) does it again, fueling you with cash when evading.

• Easy Mark that can easily be bundled with LCC (3)

• "Watch this!" is a fast way to get 3 resources on a test that you are one away from success.

• Ever Vigilant becomes better with the more assets you play, which should be easily optimised with Lucky Cigarette Case and Black Market

While all these cards have good intrinsic value, they are also interesting to look at with "Skids" O'Toole's ability in mind:

• One copy of Easy Mark becomes a draw 1 card, or you could choose a 1 action draw 2.

• Pickpocketing makes your evasion and gives you 2 cards.

• "Watch this!" turns into a Quick Thinking that only needs to succeed by 1 and gives you 1 additional resource with the downside of needing 3 resources at the start of the turn.

• With 2 assets played, Ever Vigilant becomes the equivalent of playing these assets fast.

• Lockpicks allow you to use moments of peace to help push the game forward. One clue every once in a while may not seem like much, but it actually can make a big difference.

  • We keep it to one copy because our deck because setting up our enemy management is a priority, and by the time it is done, LCC (3) should find the Lockpicks easily. With a skill value of 8 with Delilah, they usually last for a whole game or at least a whole deck shuffle.

• On the Lam is Lam(e). I usually only commit it, and when I do, I feel like I've got the best out of it.

  • I mean, come on, you'd need to think in advance that you're going to and not be able to defeat an enemy, and moreover, it does not work with the real threats that are usually elite...

• Daring is really good here because it works both with attacks and evasions!

• Quick Thinking is always a lot of fun, especially when played on another investigator's test to give you an additional action at a special time.

• Take the Initiative is the best encounter protection available at 0xp.

Early deck:

Not many changes in the strategy.

• Lonnie Ritter and Trench Coat increase your survivability greatly while giving you early on the same boosts as a Delilah O'Rourke.

  • Based on your team and your campaign (for instance, running The Forgotten Age), you could decide not to upgrade to Delilah O'Rourke and keep Lonnie Ritter, trading survivability for damage burst.

• Cheap Shot does the damage and evasion instead of Sweeping Kick.

• We do not start with Pickpocketing (0) because it is too slow, and the Lucky Cigarette Case already brings a good flow of cards, in my opinion. It usually stays in my hand the whole scenario because I never have the time to play it. I chose Manual Dexterity instead.

Later Upgrades:

• Moxie (1) and Moxie (3) can be added to this deck as fast and free horror soak. As we have 2 copies per deck cycle, one is burned by the horror of re-shuffling, making it one net horror soak per deck cycle. This upgrade can be skipped if you are paired with someone that can provide a bit of healing.

• Mauser C96 (2) is, in my opinion, a better upgrade than the .25 Automatic (2) because the resources it gives back can pay for an action, compensating the loss of fast play. The on the .25 Automatic is, in my experience, a bit useless as Dirty Fighting already provides an additional action, with Delilah's ability being too.

• The Red Clock (2) and The Red Clock (5), that comes with a Relic Hunter, give cash, therefore actions and a massive oversuccess on your first test, which will improve Lucky Cigarette Case (3)'s reliability tremendously.

• Breaking and Entering (2) to evade an enemy engaged with another investigator, skipping the engagement part.

• Savant for a shower of , allowing you to test at 6, and 7 when Moxie (3) is in play.

• Vicious Blow (2) to increase the burst.

Link to the 0xp deck

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Link to the full xp deck

To create your own guides, find the template I have created here