Deck Notes

This is my first Roland deck. It is intended to be paired with virtually any other inspector. It is intended to be very flexible, lean, and resilient.

The only cards to look for on your early draw are Machete and Old Book of Lore. Throw anything else back, including Emergency Cache or Roland's .38 Special.

The deck is purposefully low on weapons, which are generally expensive. When my wife plays Roland, she tends to be very low on resources. I'm going with fewer weapons, and it may mean taking some damage early on.

Be disciplined about using the Old Book of Lore every turn. The deck has several cards that may or may not be useful depending on the situation (Dynamite Blast, Barricade, Physical Training, Deduction, Perception, the latter two of which are there to help your partner if she is generally staying nearby). If you are using Old Book of Lore every turn, you will be able to filter out the cards you getting so they match your needs. This also lets me put just 1 of each of several cards in the deck.

Try to save Roland's .38 Special to address the possibility of several creatures being in the same location.

Playthrough (with Wendy on Hard)

Core, scenario 1, The Gathering

First draw I get Old Book of Lore plus 4 not very useful cards. Throw the 4 cards away and get 2 copies of Beat Cop plus Physical Training, so it is a very high-resource count draw.

Wendy got Wendy's Amulet in her early draw.

Drop Old Book of Lore and use it, first draw brings Knife, Roland's .38 Special and Cover Up. Grab Roland's .38 Special.

Unfortunately, before I can play the gun, I'm beset with Ghoul Minion, which I take down with a Vicious Blow. Once that gets sorted out I soon have both the Beat Cop and Roland's .38 Special out, and so I'm essentially set for now.

Wendy finds a couple clues and we advance. However, she didn't get her Flashlight, and I don't see Burglary or Pickpocketing out, so I assume she isn't doing that great.

I move into the Cellar, and Wendy gets hit with Frozen in Fear, which she is having trouble breaking. I'm not drawing any monsters, so I suggest she move into the cellar so we have double the chance of getting a monster for me to kill and I can help her get to a Flashlight using Old Book of Lore.

I get one monster, kill it, then draw Cover Up. For the next few rounds, nothing interesting happens, and I use Old Book of Lore to help Wendy draw. She finds lots of good cards, but no Flashlight. She does save up enough resources to bring out Leo De Luca eventually.

Around the time Act 3 comes around, we finally get some monsters. I kill them, use #evidence to help get rid of Cover Up and Wendy moves to Attic. I soon follow her, leaving one clue in the #cellar. She quickly finds the clues there, I cash in Deduction to accelerate things, but I run out of ammo. We have all the clues we need to advance, but I have no working weapon. Luckily Old Book of Lore helps me get a Machete (they were right next to each other :().

We advance to the final act. Wendy runs into the parlor to get Lita Chantler and runs back to Hallway. I have two Overpowers still, so I use these for 2 attacks (3 damage each). I use my last action to pull Ghoul Priest into the #cellar, using Dodge to avoid the attack of opportunity. I then use another Dodge to stop the priests regular attack. Wendy draws Icy Ghoul, which spans in the #cellar with me.

Wendy runs into the cellar and uses a turn to engage the Icy Ghoul, then shoots him with her .41 Derringer. Then I use Dynamite Blast plus discarding Beat Cop to kill the priest, netting the final clue in the process as well as vanquishing Icy Ghoul.

Total of 5 Victory Points (Cellar, Attic, Icy Ghoul, Ghoul Priest).

Intermission

Dunwich came in between scenarios, so we gave ourselves amnesty to pick 0-level cards from that expansion.

I grabbed 1 Teamwork and 1 Shortcut and bought Police Badge an improved Beat Cop and Elder Sign Amulet. I dropped Knife, Barricade, Perception, and the other Beat Cop. Since I had Lita Chantler from scenario 1 I figured I didn't need both beat cops.

Midnight Masks

I got Old Book of Lore on my first draw as well as Lita Chantler, kept 1 Emergency Cache and threw the others away. Got Beat Cop and some other card on the mulligan. No weapon.

Used Old Book of Lore on first term and ta-da, there's my Machete. Wendy dropped a flashlight, played emergency cache, and then dropped Peter Sylvestre.

Next went down to Southside to kill Acolyte while Wendy went to Miskatonic University. The interesting thing about this scenario was that I kept drawing things like Obscuring Fog and Locked Door rather than enemies or treacheries, so I ended up not using a bunch of willpower-based skill cards. I also did not take much damage, so I had First Aid and (later) Elder Sign Amulet without any pressing need to use them.

Anyways, I dispatched the Acolyte and we quickly got 6 clues. We used 4 to draw a cultist, and it was Peter Warren. Wendy just happened to be at Miskatonic University still when we summoned him, so she used two clues to parley. I killed a couple beasties at St. Mary's Hospital and made use of Evidence!, so soon we had enough clues to get "Wolf-Man" Drew.

Then the agenda advanced and The Masked Hunter shows up. We elect to have him hunt Wendy (neither of us have any clues, and she can evade him easily). She is at the place north of the university at this point. Her mythos card is On Wings of Darkness, which she fails, so she disengages from the masked hunter and returns to riverside.

I'm a little low on combat power and there is a Wizard of the Order at Miskatonic and the hunter north of that. Wendy runs into Miskatonic and Backstabs the wizard and then buff a bit and move there as well. The hunters comes down and hits me, Lita Chantler takes the damage.

I quickly do 5 points of damage to the hunter in two shots, with Wendy's help (including 1 Vicious Blow). But I fail my third hit. Hunter hits me but I dodge. Next turn Wendy runs down to the hospital to heal and then over to Southside to pick up cards before looping back to the university to help me vanquish the hunter. (she went after me on the last turn and before me on the this one, allowing her to make the loop). I finish the hunter off and she scurries off to East side in search of clues.

I move toward wolfman but take an action to play Police Badge. Wendy is at southside, and once again I could use her skill cards. So she runs into Downtown, evades the wolfman and then takes a card. I come in and kill him with her help. There is an acolyte in the graveyard at this point, so I use my third turn to go to East side so I can get to the acolyte and kill him on my next turn. There are 5 doom on the agenda and 1 on the acolyte. Next turn I run to the graveyard and kill the acolyte, Wendy tries to fail an investigation to use "Look what I found!", but fails to fail, getting 1 clue. She then moves to East town and picks up one clue from there. We have enough clues to get one more cultist in. There are 6 doom on the agenda.

Next turn Wendy uses an action to draw a cultist... turns out it is the guy who spawns in the graveyard, where I currently am! He has the option to parley for 4 cards, and I have plenty of cards, so there is plenty of time to grab him and resign... but we want to pick up the victory point from the graveyard. There is an enemy on riverside, so this is what we do:

Wendy runs to Riverside, hunter engages her. She moves to the graveyard, takes an attack of opportunity. She uses her flashlight to investiagate, I throw in Deduction, so she picks up 2 of the clues. I then parley and kill the guy she brought in. I screw up the first hit, hitting Wendy, but I get the last. Pick up the final clue. Next turn we resign with 7 doom on the agenda. 4 cultists, 7 VP.