Pete's Posse

I really liked playing Pete decks, but I was getting frustrated that the leveled up cards in Survivor weren't all that great in my opinion. I was finding that by the 4th scenario or so, I would just be sitting on XP with nothing of note to spend it on, so I ventured to try to make a Red Gloved Man deck to sink my XP into.

The core of this decks starts with the Dark Horse/Fire Axe combo to effectively raise your stats to 5/5/5/4 when you take Duke into account. You'll get 1 or 2 attacks in with Duke and then you can finish them off with Fire Axe.

Because you're using both resources and cards quite a lot to fuel Dark Horse and Pete's readying ability, Madame Labranche fits in nicely to ensure you can use 2 resources every turn or to get you a card if you're desperate.

After that, I also wanted to run additional allies to boost my stats. Peter Sylvestre, Beat Cop, and Dr. Milan Christopher all provide stat boosts to further bolster your solid stat line. If I'm going to add The Red-Gloved Man later, it makes sense to make this an ally-centric deck using Calling in Favors and A Chance Encounter to interact with all my allies.

I then filled out the rest with some skill cards and your standard Survivor events to complete the deck.

In addition the the already mentioned combo of Dark Horse/Fire Axe/Madame Labranche, you can use and abuse the enters/leaves play effects of Art Student and Beat Cop with Calling in Favors and A Chance Encounter (and eventually The Red-Gloved Man).

As far as XP goes, your first 8 XP should be Charisma, Scrapper, and Plucky to allow you ultimate flexibility in your stats and as an outlet to spend your resources and turn on Dark Horse. After that, you can spend as you like, upgrading Peter Sylvestre and Lucky! or expanding your ally choices with The Red-Gloved Man and Aquinnah. Once you're basically happy with the deck, you can start splurging on the exile cards A Test of Will or Stroke of Luck.

Finally, once the next pack drops, Inspiring Presence seems custom made for Ashcan. It allows you to pump your checks and get additional uses out of Duke as well as providing a bit of healing. However, this means you'll have a log-jam around your 5 out-of-faction cards. Assuming you want 2 Inspiring Presence, you'll have to decide whether you want to go down the clue gathering route (Art Student/Magnifying Glass) or the fighting route (Beat Cop).