Calvin Wright's Desperate Horsie

Calvin is a great all-rounder. Once he soaks up some damage, he can do just about anything, so lets build on that...

This deck is based on Dark Horse, cheap cards and skill checks, and aims to be able to do everything with fairly little setup.

Building damage...

We start out with 2 trauma right off, curtesy of In the Thick of It. Depending on your role in the larger group, set these to where you want to beef first. In a fight / evade build, go for 2x physical. For an investigate role, 2x mental. For flex or solo play, do one of each.

Until he has Dark Horse out and 3-4 horror / damage each, he is pretty useless, so early game will be all about playing his stuff, typically while engaged with a monster, to build up the right kind of damage. Welcome that on Rotting Remains!. Cancel the first non-trivial thing you find with Ward of Protection to get that extra horror. It is all about getting there quickly.

With Peter Sylvestre, he's going to have more sanity to go on throughout the game, so when in doubt, take mental.

Aim for 4 damage and sanity. With Dark Horse and Peter Sylvestre, this gives him a stat line of 5/5/5/6, which means he'll pass most checks and can do whatever he wants.

Soak

As we want to hover around 4 damage / sanity taken, we'll also need several pieces to mitigate further damage once we've reached that point. That's where our soak comes in.

• Cherished Keepsake - never leave home without it...
• Leather Coat - what else should one wear?
• Peter Sylvestre - Ability to heal sanity damage and the extra + makes him an auto-include in many -decks.
• Madame Labranche - While nice for the extra resource + Dark Horse + Fire Axe combo, she also stands up to a good beating being able to take one of each before being discarded.
• Until the End of Time - This one is nice as it can protect against direct damage. Play it as soon as it is drawn.

We're also starting out with 1x Charisma so we can have both our allies in play from the start, should we need it.

Finding clues

Once we're at an effective 5 , picking up most clues will be straightforward. This is further aided by Desperate Search and Newspaper and later Mariner's Compass (2).

Later in the campaign, once you have Yaotl (1), you can commit Desperate Search to an investigate action for +4 , then exhaust Yaotl to use it again from the discard pile, making even high shroud locations a breeze.

Killing things

The only weapon he packs is the Fire Axe, which means that there will be plenty of times he goes unarmed, so he'll be slow at killing things until it manifests. He'll still be able to kill stuff as his physical damage stacks up though, so this isn't a huge problem. But for the sake of mulligans, the axe is probably the nicest thing to find early as it impacts effectiveness in fights.

Upgrades

8xp

In order to raise consistency, we'll want to avoid having to go deck searching for Dark Horse, so we swap that with the permanent version. The addition of Dark Horse (5) releases two card slots as the two existing Dark Horse (0) goes away. Buy something further down the upgrade list, like Yaotl (1) or Mariner's Compass (2) if you have the XP for it, or fill it up with a skill card of your choice until you can afford one of those. Secondly, we'll want a reliable outlet for resources, so we can more reliably be flat out broke to trigger the horse.

• 5xp :: Dark Horse (5)
• 0xp :: Dark Horse (0) → something
• 3xp :: Scrapper (3)

9xp (total: 17)

The compass lets use feed resources into investigation also, helping us get clues and supporting the Dark Horse (5). Also note the combo of Live and Learn when you fail with the compass. You get to try again at +2 but the compass unexhausted due to originally failing, so you can use it again on the next action, netting you 4 clues on 2 actions. And our new ally, lets us pass most things with a vengeance thanks to his ability. Addition of a new ally also means we want another ally slot, so we include another Charisma.

• 4xp :: 2x Newspaper → 2x Mariner's Compass (2)
• 2xp :: 2x Dark Horse → 2x Yaotl (1)
• 3xp :: Charisma

10xp (total: 27)

Being able to take up to 3 damage and deal 4 in one go, what is not to like? This is especially nice early game when we're still building up damage. Goes nicely with upgraded Peter as he also grants +1 . If you don't find Blood Eclipse to your liking, go for Fire Extinguisher (3) instead, though it costs a full 2 resources to get out once you draw it.

• 4xp :: 2x Peter Sylvestre (0) → 2x Peter Sylvestre (2)
• 6xp :: 2x Fight or Flight → 2x Blood Eclipse (3)

Further upgrades:

Things are a bit open after this, and depending on the campaign, you might not even get here, but some suggestions for further xp to spend can be:

• 4xp :: 2x Fire Axe (0) → 2x Fire Axe (2)
• 2xp :: 2x Cherished Keepsake (0) → 2x Cherished Keepsake (1)
• 2xp :: 2x Leather Coat (0) → 2x Leather Coat (1)