I Cast Fist

Core Concept

This deck idea has been rolling around in my mind ever since I saw Enchant Weapon (and who knows, may be a sneak preview of an upcoming blogpost about Enchant Weapon). A deck that dares to ask the hard questions, like "How cool would it be to have Enchanted Knuckledusters?".

The answer: Really cool. But for any themed deck, there's the question of remaining viable as the campaign goes on. Enchant Weapon makes the Knuckledusters far more accurate and gives a solid reason to take a pair of them rather than only ever swinging with one hand (so that we can use Enchant Weapon twice per round), but why would we keep them in the deck over the course of a campaign when Switchblade is cheaper, fast, does a glancing blow if we would only hit because of the inherent +2 bonus, and doesn't give the enemy Retaliate? There's only one thing I could think of: Retaliate.

Taking advantage of the Retaliate keyword enables us to set up no-lose situations. Either we hit the enemy with our attack, in which case all is well (and with Enchant Weapon, we've probably punched their internal organs - or extradimensional equivalents - into the sun), or we miss, the enemy attacks us back, we soak the attack pretty handily since we're playing Leo, and we get to trigger all kinds of responses.

Thanks to Nathaniel Cho, we can borrow lots of pugilistic tricks that work very well with our core mechanics and theme. Plus Ríastrad also fits in really nicely. It's never been a better time to break a few jaws (or mandibles).

This is a deck primarily built around the role of enemy management, but with solid secondary clue gathering thanks to the Crystallizer of Dreams and later Grete Wagner.

Upgrade priority

The deck shown here is with its very core upgrades in place. The Side Deck shows the upgrades (as well as Enchanted Blade, which was the level 0 card replaced with Enchant Weapon), with priority as follows to quickly ramp up the options we have when an enemy hits us:

• "I've had worse…", replacing Clean Them Out
• Lesson Learned, replacing Scene of the Crime
• Stick to the Plan
• Counterpunch, upgrading Counterpunch
• Grete Wagner, replacing Tetsuo Mori
• One-Two Punch, replacing "Let God sort them out..."
• then fill in the rest in whatever order you like.

There's 52 exp of cards between the main deck and side deck so this should be more than enough for most campaigns even if making good use of "Let God sort them out...", but if we find ourselves flush with experience, we could go on to add Agency Backup in place of Guard Dog, upgrade Evidence! and take Stand Together in place of Glory. A second Charisma is a huge luxury and a False Covenant or Sacred Covenant doesn't do much for us but it's a way to spend 2 exp (obviously, if playing alongside other investigators emphasising bless and/or curse, the Covenant becomes far more attractive and should probably be included sooner rather than later).

Playstyle

Our standard approach should be to stick close to the weaker members of our group and beat any monsters we find into a pulp. When we're not called on to do as Mama says, we can spend time setting up or do some investigation with our generous amount of intellect icons.

Attacking with Knuckleduster and missing could gather us clues, gain us resources, trigger extra attacks or result in the enemy suffering several bite wounds. These effects can also be triggered by triggering an attack of opportunity. This essentially gives us a lot of action-efficiency - we can pack lots of effects into a single action and ensure that actions are rarely ever wasted even if the Chaos Bag has it in for us.

Tetsuo Mori is mainly there as team soak and another means of getting the Knuckleduster (or Crystallizer of Dreams) out if we've had an unlucky draw. Since the deck has so few Item assets, there's a good chance we'll want to hand off his search effect to another player.

Relying on a single weapon is always a bit risky, hence why we want to grab One-Two Punch and Ríastrad eventually for some extra combat potential - either because Enchant Weapon is exhausted and the enemy still has the audacity to stay standing, or because we're yet to draw Knuckleduster (and Prepared for the Worst was unkind to us). They also have great icons, so we can get double use out of them with Crystallizer of Dreams.

Mulligan priority

We want to keep Knuckleduster or Enchant Weapon for sure. I honestly wouldn't mulligan away any of the assets aside from maybe Tetsuo Mori, but I would mulligan away almost anything else. I'd keep Ríastrad if I didn't get a weapon, but that's about it.

Stick to the Plan should be used to find Prepared for the Worst, Emergency Cache and "Let God sort them out...". As an aside, we should be tough enough to be able to take an attack or two (and get various benefits for doing so) if that's what it takes to set up the 6-health smackdown turn for "Let God sort them out...", but depending on various factors it might end up not getting an opportunity to fire. That's fine - just replace it sooner.

Variations on a theme

The deck shown here is designed to have low setup requirements to let us get moving quickly. However, there's several ways we could tweak things. Survival Knife is an obvious possibility - one Enchanted Knuckleduster and Knife means consistent high damage and reliable counter-retaliation. It also makes the opening hand a bit less dicey - if we draw Survival Knife and Enchant Weapon, we still have a decent amount of combat potential before we get our Knuckleduster. However, I don't think it's likely to trigger often enough to be worth the inclusion compared to Counterpunch, and I like the overall flexibility of having 2x Knuckleduster. Plus the theme is just so much less cool.

Crystallizer of Dreams is there to capitalise on the amazing icons and event focus of the build, and the Guardian of the Crystallizer is as likely as not to be a boon who gives us more opportunities to use our arsenal, but I wouldn't look askance at anyone who decided on the more straightforward Lucky Cigarette Case, with optional Relic Hunter. With our 4 Will and 4 Combat, our Enchant Weapon attacks are likely to oversucceed very often. We could also lean harder into the oversuccesss theme, taking "Watch this!" and upgrading into High Roller rather than Well Prepared. Not my preference, but should be fun and viable all the same.

With Ríastrad, we're adding a couple of curses into the bag. Not a big deal as far as I'm concerned - we could eventually take False Covenant, as mentioned above - but we could lean into it a bit. Taking Tristan Botley in place of, or as well as, Grete Wagner is a decent option, Faustian Bargain is excellent value, and there's various other ways to use the tokens that are outside of the scope of this decklist.

Tetsuo Mori is a bit of a placeholder and insurance option, so if we want more combat potential before Grete Wagner hits the scene, we could instead take one copy each of Lonnie Ritter and Leather Jacket, or the level 0 Grete Wagner.

If we need more flexibility or are brave enough to go solo (well, aside from our Ally cards), Flashlight is an obvious option. Alice Luxley would be another fine choice in place of Tetsuo Mori, who loses some value if playing solo, and we could choose something other than Scene of the Crime to replace when upgrading.

Conclusion

Hope you've enjoyed this decklist! I've had some writer's block recently so it's nice to get something out there. If you do try this decklist out, I'd love to hear how it goes. I always love it when newer cards help make less powerful older cards more viable. Stay safe out there - danger lurks in the dark corners of the earth, but I have it on good authority that punching helps.