Sister Mary is an exceptional fill character due to her bless passives, but with a base 3 fight, most of the other dedicated monster fighters laugh at her. Her Blessed Blade has no bite, she'll regularly whiff most fight tests, and that makes getting the experience for Holy Spear a ton of work for a weapon that can at best hit 7 on its own.

That's OK, though. Because Mary's got a tommy gun now. And she'll show them.

She'll show them all.

INTRODUCTION:

This is a Sister Mary gun wizardry deck. Its goal is to let her passive largely do its thing on its own while focusing the entire core of the deck at shooting monsters with increasingly ridiculous two-handed weapons. Spears and swords of dubious skill values? Nah. Bless shenanigans? Nah. Bullets, bullets and more bullets? Enthusiastic yah.

To play it, you shoot enemies with your guns, then you use the experience points to buy more guns. The first upgrade is Lightning Gun, and the second is possibly also Lightning Gun. Then you mostly just mod the hell out of your Lightning Gun, because you have 3 fight, so of course you're going to want to shoot things with a Lightning Gun.

GUNS THAT ARE NOT LIGHTNING GUN:

• The .45 Thompson is not a Lightning Gun, but it shoots 5 bullets and the upgraded version gets its resources back, allowing you to more easily pay for Lightning Guns when you don't draw them right away. Its +2 is great for Mary in Scenario 1 and it has a lot of bullets, which is useful, because she is not the most accurate shot with a Thompson. It is also a tommy gun, which is important if you'd like to say the title of this deck more times than is socially appropriate while shooting cultists.

• The .35 Winchester is not a Lightning Gun, but sure kicks like one and has as many bullets as a Thompson (thanks, taboo list!). Plus, if you shoot it at something engaged to an ally and you miss, you probably do a single point of damage, because you didn't shoot them with a Lightning Gun. With the token modification in this deck, and the amount of blesses you are putting into the bag, it has a pretty solid chance of rolling high.

Our three options for increasing the chances of hitting hard on these guns are Dark Prophecy, which can now hit blesses (thanks, taboo list!), Custom Modifications, which allows you to recycle a bad symbol by default, and "Eat lead!"! Have you ever played "Eat Lead!"? I've never played "Eat Lead!". This deck is actually good with "Eat Lead!". And you get to shout "Eat Lead!" whenever you play it, so that's a bonus too.

All of these guns are pretty expensive, which is why Mary's six econ cards are some of the best Level 0's in the game.

• Rite of Sanctification plays on turn 1 for two sealed blesses and is usually a better Emergency Cache.
• Voice of Ra hits blesses now (THANKS, TABOO LIST) and is therefore usually a better Emergency Cache.
• Emergency Cache is a better Stand Together, because you get more resources. What, your allies wanted resources? Too bad. Here's another bless token in the bag, you ungrateful swine.

UPGRADES:

For Custom Modifications, you want to chase Extended Magazine as your first 3, because it allows you to put more bullets in your Lightning Gun . After you've checked those three boxes, check Leather Grip to make it fast and cheap, then add the extra free damage much later on, because we are really overcompensating for that 3 base fight. Notched sights? Balanced stocks? For cowards.

Once you have the mag and the Lightning Guns, it's time to start manifesting bullets. One in the chamber? No, there's two, actually. And three for fighting monsters, and four because that seemed fair at 1 XP . You can even upgrade "Eat lead!" and then the enemies will have to eat even more lead.

Marksmanship doesn't work with Extended Magazine, but it is one of the finest experience points you'll ever spend in terms of action economy and I am hard pressed not to include it in every gun based deck I have ever built. There's just always some aloof jackhat with three HP that needs killing, or some enemy that spawned on your seeker two spaces away, or, like, a Whippoorwill that you just really want to see explode. ...I almost put Relentless in this deck. I'd like you all to know that. Maybe you will be brave enough to succeed where I have failed.

SUBSTITUTIONS AND JUSTIFICATIONS:

Mary takes 2 mental trauma here because having a Sacred Covenant means the deck just slowly fills up with blesses. She is not a good cluever, and spending those blesses herself involves a lot of deck space, so instead just keeping them high means everyone else's job goes better and you can feel less bad about not taking Stand Together, or, like, Drawn to the Flame or something.

There's a Delve Too Deep and a Refine here, because the earlier Lightning Gun the better and the same goes for Extended Mag on Custom Modifications. Refine is rarely good in most flex characters because there's usually things to do, but Sister Mary gets a little downtime because enemies die so fast and she's embarrassingly bad at everything else. Both cards should get cut eventually.

I used Deny Existence but Ward of Radiance is also acceptable depending on what other stuff is getting shuffled into your chaos bag (Ward of Protection I discount only for the 1 resource cost, because seriously, these guns are expensive). We're playing Dunwich, so I also swapped two "Let me handle this!" because eating an allies Beyond the Veil like a candy treat is exactly the kind of over-the-top baloney that we want out of our gun-toting nun.

Yes, that is a Riot Whistle. Tweet tweet, now you aren't shooting your allies with a Lightning Gun. You can use Spectral Razor instead, but non enormous-gun-based options of dealing with enemies are frowned upon.

I somehow forgot to put Bandolier in the upgrade pile but, look, sometimes you just want to akimbo Lightning Gun and that makes it harder to be afraid.

If you'd like to focus even more on just having three fight, go Olive McBride. She's great with the Winchester and terrible with the Thompson. Beat Cop felt a little more reliable for Hard mode and I tried to build the best deck I could - but again, I am a coward. Perhaps you, instead, will have the will to shoot your allies for 3 damage with a Winchester Bless into -4 and also another -3.

CONCLUSIONS:

This deck is a blast.

One final note is that, while I built this deck for Hard difficulty, I think this deck is pretty reasonable as a handoff precon for beginners on normal - it has a particular job, and that job is to shoot guns at people and roll more critical successes than normal. There's a lot of good variations on that theme, a few cool tricks to play, but mostly, this deck is good at fighting monsters in the funnest way possible and ALSO its Sister Mary, so everyone elses deck is better for having her. If you want to be popular at a table, bringing the character who puts blesses into the bag and then doesn't immediately eat all of them is a pretty good start.

Thanks for staying for the gun show and I hope it amused. Happy Arkhaming!