Mr. Flame Harrigan, out walking the dog

Main deck idea

Mark is an excellent guardian, with high base skill values. 5 means he can hit most things, and Sophie's ability means he can pass most difficult tests.

• Guard Dog + Trusted - The dog alone is ok, and one can use its ability to take damage and give back some. With trusted it can soak one horror before dying which Mark needs, and it it can trigger the one more time before it gets discarded. Its just a nice piece to have out.

• At 10xp, Flamethrower can kill pretty much anything, and it gets refueled with Cleaning Kit. At another +2 xp Brand of Cthugha is a good choice for a secondary weapon.

He's a fighter, plain and simple. This build was for a 2 player group where' he's doing all the fighting, but he also carries a few clue-finding events with Evidence! and Scene of the Crime. For a larger group with more and tougher enemies, these can likely be replaced for more damage dealing, intercept or protection.

Take damage on True Grit, Guard Dog and Mark himself to draw additional cards. Heal that back up if needed with Emergency Aid. He'll rarely run low on cards, which is uncommon for a guardian.

If possible, avoid going over 5 damage on Mark as that makes Sophie flip over and things are a lot less fun then.

For resources, the most important pieces is a weapon and the dog, which one can usually prioritize and afford to get out pretty early. From there, it is more on demand.

So it is really quite straight forward. Mark can hit things, flame thrower means he kills them easily. And then the dog is a cute kinda addon.

Other noteworthy pieces:

• True Grit lets Mark soak more damage, allowing ability to draw you cards. The ability to soak from friendlies is also good.
• Smoking Pipe lets you trigger the ability to draw a card, while mitigating Mark's low sanity value.
• Emergency Aid lets you heal the dog, or yourself should you choose.
• Second Wind lets you heal yourself

Upgrades

10xp 10 xp total

2x .32 Colt → 2x Flamethrower (5)

The flame thrower is such a powerful weapon, and can one-shot the majority of enemies, or multiple small ones if need be. So this is our first upgrade.

2xp 12 xp total

2x Machete → 2x Brand of Cthugha

To ensure we find some weapon every game, we also want more than 2 cards in our deck. As flame thrower takes both hands and the body slot, we'll pack Brand of Cthugha which can sit in an unused arcane slot. The brand also a spell, so it can hit things that are otherwise protected from normal physical damage.

I suppose the old veteran learned some tricks while fighting in the war.

6xp 18 xp total

2x Cleaning Kit → 2x Cleaning Kit (3)

The 0-level version is ok for powering the flamethrower, but the lvl 3 version gives an additional +2 bonus (that we'll likely not need), and packs an additional supply.

6xp 24 xp total

2x Emergency Cache → Emergency Cache (3)

The level 3 version of this lets you place supplies, which means you can either play this for 4 resources to get stuff out in the early game, and to re-supply your Cleaning Kit (3) in the late game.

Further upgrades:

• 2x Vicious Blow → 2x Vicious Blow(2)
• 2x Brand of Cthugha (1) → 2x Brand of Cthugha (4)
• 2x Guard Dog → 2x Guard Dog (2)