My .38 is Pretty Special (parallel)

This parallel Roland is built off of two assumptions:

1. The Advanced version of Roland's .38 Special is a damn good gun
2. The Red Tape Directive allows Roland to play Insight and Tactic events as fast.

The core gameplay loop here is to use a roided-out Roland's .38 Special, upgraded with any combination of Custom Ammunition, Enchant Weapon, Reliable and Well-Maintained as your primary weapon. Given the alternate deckbuilding rules, Roland has access to Swift Reload, which combined with Custom Ammunition and Extra Ammunition give him loads of firepower. The gun also has and symbols, so in combination with Well Prepared it gives Roland tools for every scenario.

Roland's .38 Special is a perfectly fine gun on its own, so an investigator can spend very little time on setup - you can incrementally build on whatever Upgrade cards you happen to draw, but with just the gun itself and a static boost from Grete Wagner, Roland is a capable primary fighter.

Given that the gun setup is fairly simple, this allows Roland to commit a large chunk of his deck space to Insight and Tactic events that he can play as fast given the directive. This allows for easy cluefinding events like Drawn to the Flame, Scene of the Crime and Interrogate to work well, as well as fight events like Clean Them Out and Improvised Weapon to be nice and quick.

Reliability

The one thing that really sticks out in this deck is reliability - like anybody who has played Tommy Muldoon knows, building around a single core card can be pretty tough. You need to be sure you can get your .38 special out quickly, and keep it reloaded. To this end, we're taking two steps: not taking the replacement cards to keep deck size slim, and spending our initial XP wisely.

Spending XP

To start this deck, using In the Thick of It and Roland's 5XP bonus, we'll take Stick to the Plan and 2x Extra Ammunition. Stick to the Plan makes our initial deck size -3 (so 30), and lets us stick Prepared for the Worst on it so that if we don't get the Roland's .38 Special in 10 cards (with mulligan) we can fish for it and hopefully get it out.

Also, don't let the sticker shock of this deck get to you - it may say 48 XP on the title, but it's really less. Keep in mind that between Roland's 5 bonus XP and In the Thick of It, that's actually 40, and 15 XP is cards that don't actually need upgrading (overpower, vicious blow, grete wagner, hallowed mirror), making this a "complete" deck at 25 XP but one that can scale up to great effect.

For the 0XP version and upgrade guide see here: https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/34741/my-38-is-pretty-special-0-xp-with-upgrade-guide-1.0

Stick To The Plan

This deck has a number of options to include on SttP. I think the optimal loadout is Emergency Cache, Extra Ammunition and Prepared for the Worst. If you want to live dangerously, you can exclude Prepared for the Worst and add something like Reliable or Swift Reload.

Staying Alive

Roland isn't known for his mental fortitude, so the Leave No Doubt Directive gives him +3 sanity to shore this up. Additionally, Hallowed Mirror's Soothing Melody and Emergency Aid (made fast via the Red Tape Directive) allow Roland to heal with relative ease, which can mitigate the starting trauma from In the Thick of It and the inevitable failures of Cover Up. If you're some kind of miracle man who hasn't gotten wracked with trauma, both of these cards are still crucially useful for keeping Grete Wagner alive to get you more clues.