It's Easy Being Green (20 XP) - a HC deck

It's Easy Being Green

Overview

Kermit lied to you all along... This deck is decidedly simple: you investigate with through Thieves' Kit or Hyperphysical Shotcaster, and when evading alone won't do the trick then you shoot with with either the Shotcaster or a Dirty Fighting boosted .25 Automatic. With Haste and Leo De Luca you can have 5 actions in a turn, and Moxie plus The Moon • XVIII give you an effective of 7 (with a ton of cards to commit on top of that). A key combo is Moxie and the Elder Sign Amulet, with the Amulet protecting Moxie and then Moxie acting as strong physical soak that allows you to boost past treacheries.

Card draw is Lucky Cigarette Case, Easy Mark, Manual Dexterity and - of course - Wini's superb ability. This decent drawing capability justifies carrying single copies of important assets and negates the need for Underworld Market or tutor cards. Resource economy is Easy Mark, Thieves' Kit (which refunds itself), Emergency Cache and "Watch this!". When paired with high card draw to quickly source these cards this gives you a good amount of cash up front.

Standout skills are Hatchet Man, Opportunist and Quick Thinking - all of which have very useful effects. With In the Thick of It, this comes in at a nice round 20 XP. And... that's it! There's nothing to hide behind here, it's a simple and effective deck using a well-honed flexy toolkit.

Advanced Strategies

• Anything You Can Do Done Pretty Good Most of the Time. What Wini lacks for in compression, she makes up for with flex and extra actions. With this deck it's very easy to test at a 7+ consistently, both for fighting (courtesy of Shotcaster or .25 Automatic with Dirty Fighting) and for clue-finding (Thieves' Kit and Shotcaster) - thereby making you a great jack-of-all-trades.

• (Protecting) What It Means to be Green. By playing Elder Sign Amulet before Moxie, it's easy to have Moxie in play for the majority of a scenario (even easier with two copies). Moxie gives big physical soak, nice boosts and pay-to-win while costing zero resources and playing fast - which is huge! It also negates the need to run +1 allies, who can be costly and also require Charisma if you're looking to retain Leo De Luca.

What didn't make the cut

• Nimble. Nimble was in the initial version of this deck (and it's still in the starter deck), but it wasn't getting used a lot so I pulled it. Realistically it has anti-synergy with Dirty Fighting when you do want to shoot things, and Quick Thinking can give you a full action to move in anyway. It was replaced with a second copy of Opportunist and Lucky Cigarette Case respectively.

• .25 Automatic ••. With the upgraded .25 Automatic, you're essentially spending 4 XP across two copies for a situational free action. While this is good if you're basically wanting your Rogue to be a Guardian, that's not the case here - fighting is your contingency, evading is your go-to.

• Sleight of Hand. Sleight of Hand conserves ammo and supplies, but is it needed with the high card draw of Wini? Probably not, as you can cycle your deck and get your assets back after they've been discarded. It's nice but I like everything else in the deck better.

• Pickpocketing. I like it, but the card draw is more situational than Lucky Cigarette Case, and so there's not a huge need for it especially with Wini's ability. The resources on the upgraded version are nice, but again they don't feel key.

Campaign starter and planned progression

This is a 20 XP deck with In the Thick of It, with physical trauma compensated easily by Moxie. Overall the deck works very well at level 0, so you can slot this into any campaign. The upgrade on Hyperphysical Shotcaster in the starter deck is Telescanner, as while you can evade enemies rather than shoot them you will always need to find clues. Starter deck is directly below (and link here):

A recommended order of XP purchases/upgrades is as follows:

• Nimble → The Moon • XVIII

• Sneak By → Dirty Fighting

• Leather Jacket → Moxie

• Leather Jacket → Elder Sign Amulet

• Relic Hunter

• Hyperphysical Shotcaster - Railshooter

• Leo De Luca → Haste

• Sneak By → Moxie

• Leo De Luca → Leo De Luca •

A point to note is when to upgrade to Hyperphysical Shotcaster - Railshooter really depends on the other investigators you're playing with, and it can be moved up the list if you need additional damage options sooner.

Further upgrades and side deck

In terms of side deck, you can tweak this deck to complement other investigators in multiplayer. Want more combat? Squeeze in a Garrote Wire and consider Sleight of Hand plus the upgraded .25 Automatic. Need more clues? Pilfer and Intel Report gotchu. Overall this deck is very easy to pivot further into other styles. Generally, Nimble is also a solid choice for a side deck and it really depends on whether you have a big map campaign where you need to get around more. It can replace Quick Thinking or Hatchet Man easily if you do want to swap it in.

EDIT: A great suggestion from Reddit from u/NotTom is Precious Memento. Personally when I use this deck again in the future I will still stick with Elder Sign Amulet as it's 1 resource cheaper and the 1 XP saving over the Memento means you can opt for Leo De Luca • for a further resource saving (plus as it stands the soak between Moxie and Elder Sign Amulet is fat enough that the self-healing of Memento could be surplus to requirement). Still it's definitely a close call and it's a very worthy alternate pick!

In terms of upgrades after the 20 XP mark, Opportunist •• makes it easier to keep in hand and trigger Wini's ability consistently so it would be my first pick. From there, upgrading to Manual Dexterity •• is a no-brainer to give more card draw and massive boosts when you need them. Getting Aetheric Link on the Hyperphysical Shotcaster keeps it from running out of ammo so soon, as you don't especially need Empowered Configuration with so many cards to boost with. However, as you can cycle your deck, I consider this lower priority.

Final thoughts

As the archetypal Rogue, I've wanted to make a Wini flex deck for a while, and I wanted Moxie with The Moon • XVIII for boosts. My issue was, apart from Lonnie Ritter who I didn't want to take, none of the Rogue allies have especially good horror soak to protect Moxie (and also I wanted Leo in the deck, so the XP needed with Charisma stacks up). The mind-numbingly simple and resource-cheap solution is Elder Sign Amulet - I feel like as it's not in vogue right now it's very easy to overlook (I definitely did)! What's perhaps a little surprising is according to the Arkham DB search there have been zero Elder Sign Amulet Wini decks to date. Broadly, I'd say it's a good fix so she can soak bad treacheries and more easily take horror after cycling her deck.

Once that piece of the puzzle fell into place, this really nice, low XP, beginner flex deck emerged. Hope you like it (and the Kermit image isn't too eldritch for you, it's the human hands...).