Sled Dog Patrice

For the Meme Dogs!

Clue: 7 | Fight: 5 | Support: 5 | Resilience: 8 | Consistency: 9

As one of those people who enjoys trying to make a ridiculous card work, I've slapped Sled Dogs onto numerous characters. My more recent campaign involved running Patrice while testing out the new Dilemmas. Without going into detail, but what I've learned from the campaign is...

Patrice can make reasonable use of Sled Dogs.

Sled Dogs are useful for a variety of options:

• Reasonable Soak
• Reasonable Bonus Movement
• Occasional Powerful Attack

Patrice can take advantage of all of these factors, either using the bonus move to get into place two make two important checks, or throwing dogs at a larger single fight than she could manage with Fire Axe alone.

Of course, Sled Dogs also have some fairly notable downsides:

• Takes up 4 card slots
• Fills up to 4 of your draws with 'combo-reliant' cards
• Requires up to 4 plays of 3-Cost Assets
• Occupies Ally Slots

Just playing Patrice already helps to mitigate some of these:

• Patrice has more than enough deck slots to fit in the dogs
• Patrice can afford to give up on the Sled Dogs early on without worrying about an overall loss of them for the scenario.

The resource cost and ally slots, on the other hand, require a bit more build management. To do so, this deck has some things to manage the economic costs:

• Madame Labranche. With Madame helping, you can spend your resources, have 1 recovered, and have 2 on the next turn - 3 if you've also found Patrice's Violin or are willing to take an action. This helps, since this deck...
• Maxes out at 3 cost. This deck runs very sleek, and the only 'required' 3-cost card is Mind's Eye, should you not get it early. With all of these combined, this deck can focus on running tight early on, while occasionally throwing down dogs with the extra resources.
• Runs leans on allies. Survivor has some good allies, but this deck does not rely on any beyond Madame Labranche, so a single Charisma is enough to support it.

All of these allow Dogs to be put to good use, and keeps them compatible with what I would consider a 'normal' Patrice deck. Take advantage of the heavy card draw to cycle through, and use Cornered and Mind's Eye to take care of whatever checks you need to every turn, and use your abundance of soak to otherwise tank treacheries or handle enemies that can't be fought or evaded outright.

Strategy

Mulligan Strategy

• Always Keep: Cornered, Mind's Eye, Patrice's Violin, Madame Labranche - These cards are all helpful in letting you hit the ground running. Either Cornered or Mind's Eye will be enough to help with any 'must pass' checks early on, and Madame Labranche will help you either dig for another cards (if you have 3 resources and can therefore play a card), or dig for another resource (if you empty yourself out by playing something).
• Sometimes Keep: Fire Axe (If Early Fight is needed/Other Keeps are Accounted For)
• Never Keep: Sled Dog, Skills - Turn 1 is best used setting up essential cards, so you are less likely to have time to perform a check or put out Dogs, compared to other assets.

Gameplay

Early on, get Mind's Eye or Cornered out and do whatever needs to be done using them. Moonstone will help boost those checks if you need them. Short Supply means you can use Improvised Weapon and Winging It to compress whatever actions need to be compressed. Throw whatever skills you have at each check - after all, you have plenty to spare.

Patrice's Violin and Madame Labranche will both help fuel your early game, and potentially start transitioning into playing dogs. Don't be afraid to pitch dogs if you're still working on 'essential build' - they can come online a little later, after you're consistently getting one or two useful actions every turn.

Once they come online, if there's an enemy, throw a big Sled Dog attack as necessary. Otherwise, they also make for great tools to sneak in additional movement if any location particularly needs help or needs one hard check fulfilled - after all, that's where Patrice can shine.

Build Decisions

Low-XP Deck

This deck is reasonably playable without any XP. The early game will depend heavily on taking advantage of the Improvised cards and skill commits to get actions done when you need them done. For that reason, the initial set of skills is geared towards flexibility, rather than raw power. However, I would still consider In the Thick of It early on, since it allows for enough XP to access any of the XP cards in this deck.

Note that if you are running a 0-XP version of this deck, the XP cards should be replaced with Sixth Sense/Shrivelling/Azure Flame, which help allow you to use on more checks. Your first XP can go to any of the indicated cards, though I would add them in the following order:

Initial Upgrades

• Mind's Eye - This gets first pick due to both its flexibility, and its cost efficiency, due to being a myriad card. It's handy to be able to drop a single copy of this and have a number of +2s to dish out whenever you need it. While Cornered fits a similar role, this gets first priority, especially when trying to fit 3 copies in for its cost.
• Cornered - While Mind's Eye is preferred, Cornered is not far behind, allowing you to pitch cards whenever you need to for any given test, and pitch some cards that couldn't be committed a little bit faster.
• Charisma - This is third in the list, and is useful when you want to either support going full Sled Dog, or want to be able to use both Sled Dog and Madame Labranche early on. However, this is a solid choice if you either need more soak or movement, or if you absolutely need to be able to launch a 3/4 damage combat.

Secondary Upgrades

The previous upgrades were focused on getting things running. Once you have that 'core' piece.

• Nature of the Beast - Out of all of the Dilemmas, this one has most reliably been useful. There will usually be a clue around, and when looking at 3 mythos cards, there will usually be one that you can tank (either through soak or ), even if the rest of your team can't. It doesn't cost you a play, and it gives you a clue. There's a lot to like. (And Resourceful might even help you access that further, depending on if they're treated like Weaknesses or not in terms of activating even when added to your hand via a non-draw effect.)
• A Chance Encounter (2) - This deck runs Short Supply and allies, and you'll often need to discard dogs early. This greatly helps with consistency of getting the ally you want.
• The Fool • 0 - I would run this over Rod of Animalism. This helps cover a much larger set of cards, and you don't need more ally slots than what Charisma gives you. It costs an extra couple of XP, but since it would cost about as much to also add Relic Hunter, this comes out ahead.
• Sharp Vision/Brute Force - Useful options to help get a bit of efficiency if they're useful when the time comes up. Don't forget you can also help commit these to other checks, and you can set them up via Resourceful if necessary. I find Sharp Vision is more consistently useful than Brute Force, but both have their place.
• Plucky (3) - You have enough soak that you can have other things tank first, the stats are relevant, and a free, fast card is amazing on Patrice.
• Relic Hunter - You don't need this for Rod of Animalism, but you can sure use two Moonstones!
• Fickle Fortune - Okay, this isn't in ArkhamDB yet. Still, it's an impressive card that allows for swinging either player health or the doom, and though it's expensive, Patrice is likely to hit it at some point.
• Charisma - The first Charisma is essential in allowing for both Madame and Dogs. The second is less important, but if you're still using Madame in the later part of the game, this will help enable both.
• Miss Doyle - A luxury upgrade for Patrice, but one that isn't bad to have, as long as you have the ally slot. Unfortunately, this deck won't have the ally slot for quite a while.

Notable Exclusions

• Rod of Animalism - You'd expect this to go well in a Sled Dog deck. However, this doesn't fit for a few reasons. First, the main benefit of this is the extra Ally slots, and one copy of Charisma has that well covered - by the time you're dropping down your third dog, Madame Labranche should be done with her job, so you don't need the extra creature slots. Second, to make up for its own play cost, you need to play this before two dogs, which is a large ask for Patrice. Third, Patrice's accessory slots are already being used for Moonstone, and even if you get a copy of Relic Hunter, a second Moonstone would be a better overall use for the card. The rod might have a place in a Sled Dog deck that runs Backpack (2) or plays more creatures than just Sled Dog, but it doesn't fit well with how Patrice plays.

Thanks

Thanks for looking through this deck! This deck is effectively a second revision of a deck I have already run, so I'm interested in hearing what folks think of the overall design and refinements that have been made. Thoughts and feedback are always appreciated!