I've been looking for a really solid summoned hound charlie, and this is the first one i've been convinced by. What does the lvl 0 deck look like?

Here is a lvl 0 deck arkhamdb.com

@argonwolf I put my In the Thick of It exp into 1 Chance and 1 Hound. Finding them can be a little bit of a nuisance but I flushed my deck as aggressively as I can with replaying Lab Assistants / Calling in Favors and finding teammate's tests to use Resourceful on for more Take Hearts.

It starts out primarily as a Dark Horse deck that uses Take Heart and Gregory Gry for economy. And then eventually gets to what this deck looks like. Lemme know how it goes for you

Love it! Glad to see you back

Comparing the two Charlie decks on arkhamdb's top page, this build is way more robust, especially the allies chosen.

Summoned Hound ONLY has 3 Health and NO Sanity making it something you don't necessarily have to exhaust when you draw Burden of Leadership, because sanity would never kill it.

The cats that are summoned by Miss Doyle also don't have any Health / Sanity meaning you can opt to damage those allies instead of exhausting them given the lack of a must.

I really value not losing out on ally value and having to choose to use them for Charlie's ability vs. the ally's special ability. This decklist is carefully curated to not lose out on value from either of those things. Kudos

I love how strong and flexible Charlie is for deckbuilding. I ran a very similar deck recently - which also worked great - but made some different choices. Specifically:

• Ran Short Supply plus Resourceful and Scrounge for Supplies for faster setup; quite likely to be able to get the Hound and Bonnie out early, and the recursion is generally helpful.
• Ran Meat Cleaver over Fire Axe (frees up more resources)
• Ran Medical Student over Lab Assistant (very questionable choice)
• Ran Gregory Gry over Leo for the Rogue asset (Charlie benefits from extra actions less than probably any other investigator, and more resources are great)
• Ran a copy of both Plucky and Scrapper as a resource dump
• Ran a single summoned hound (you get a lot less benefit from the 2nd copy than the first, and ally slots are precious)
• Instead ran The Black Cat (it's great!)
• Cut Inspirational Presence and Vicious Blow (both good, but didn't quite seem to pull their weight, and I needed room for the recursion cards)
• Ran Unrelenting (always good)

On balance I'm not sure my version was better (but it certainly worked great!). But what I find interesting is that even though the overall gameplan was similar (synergy + static stat boosts + a cheated in Summoned Hound + Doyle), it's interesting how many different decisions you can make with Charlie and still have something fun and viable, even if you're using the same subclasses.

A note on Burden of Leadership: If you check the card page here on ArkhamDB you'll see that while your reading is correct, the card has been / will be errataed to add the word "must" to the choice.

@Thatwasademo I swear the last few months have been nothing but messy mess mess from FFG. For anyone else reading this, feel free to play with or without the "future errata".

I'd consider playing 2 copies of Trusted on critical targets to keep them a little more resilient to Burden. That being said what @sweetpumpkinboy mentioned stays true about how most of the engine allies in this build don't have a 1 in Health or Sanity.

Looks Great! With that much high cost allies, I'd consider Flare instead of Strength in Numbers. Or you can pluck out the 1xp from Leo De Luca. That way you have another way to get Summoned Hound in Play, but also lots of juicy ally targets. The survivor class selection is so good.

This is extremely similar to a template I found several months back utilizing the survivor/guardian combination with a heavier focus on enemy management and played at a "higher" difficulty.

Beat Cop, Girish Kadakia, Grete Wagner, and Guard Dog were my choice picks. Gregory Gry is another solid choice to get some economy going (swapped out the Fire Axes for Meat Cleavers) and Mr. "Rook" allows for additional digging.

I'm also running Short Supply + Scourge for Supplies to generate some more consistency. This also helps A Chance Encounter find key allies early on and makes it more likely that a Summoned Hound is in the bin to get picked up. Trusted is another great support card for your allies, especially if you choose to run any of the allies that take damage for effects.

Do you think it can be a primary clue-getter in 4p game？ it only can get 1 clue in 1 action

@lok1686 Yes, I played this deck through two campaigns and in both instances while I was technically the flex role, I ended up outpacing the "primary cluever". Plus 1 clue per 1 action has added benefits in a campaign like Scarlet Keys. I will say that we play on Standard, and so this deck's viability as a primary cluever certainly goes down with harder difficulty in that you could potentially stretch yourself a bit thin trying to pass like 7 investigates per turn. That being said, you can still reliably pass on higher difficulties if you concentrate your boosts a bit more.

@MisterTails @Codayus I'm glad that we are all running pretty similar lists that makes me think that we all agree on the general gameplan. I mentioned Gry for the lvl 0 starter and you can certainly keep it in the deck and never swap into Leo, I believe my teammate needed Gry so I upgraded out of it as fast as I could.

The Short Supply + Scrounge Charlie builds for this sort of deck that relies on A Chance Encounter + Resourceful I've seen are quite consistent too so definitely consider those options for anyone debating how to craft this deck.

Question the on the weapon choice, why did you go with Fire Axe over Machete or maybe Runic Axe?

For Fire Axe it seems like you have a lot of other cards you might want to use your resources on?

@HarrisonF For that exact reason I'm running Fire Axe. It's the cheapest damage compression. I mostly used Hound + Leigh and Gang Up for damage and Fire Axe was really just a backup. Strength in Numbers and Stat Booster allies work well to boost Fire Axe without you paying more than 0-1 resources.

But, the weapon isn't essential to the deck. Playing whatever your economy can support and what suites your playstyle works.

Great deck! I also wanted to run Miss Doyle and Summouned Hound in a Charlie deck. A few things. How do you fair on resources? It seems like a lot of high resource assets, not to mention Gang up. Do you ever feel strapped for cash? Also, I believe Bonnie is once a round, so you can't use her to ready the Summoned Hound more than once , no? Thanks again for posting the deck!

Great deck! By the way... how do you write the skill symbols or the ? symbols in the notes? thanks!

@Sireal Thank you! I wasn't super strapped for cash. Take Heart + Drawing Thin did a lot. Usually non-fail by degree damage and horror from treacheries I would gladly dump Drawing Thin into, since I wasn't going to put the effort into passing it anyways.

Bonnie is once per round so you're extending your Hound play 1 more time each round really. However, committing Inspiring Presence to and readying Bonnie will also give you a chance to ready your Hound via Bonnie.

@alberttrombone Thanks. Yeah markdown formatting uses # to let you link cards and $ to open up the available symbols you can add to deck descriptions.

@chirubime``@Sireal From my understanding of how Bonnie's ability works, it is limited to once per round regardless if you manage to ready Bonnie during your turn. However, if you were to have Bonnie leave play (via damage or Calling in Favors) and have Bonnie come back into play (via A Chance Encounter, for example), then this would technically be a new instance of Bonnie with her ability not used, so you can trigger it a second time.

@chirubime If someone were to play with taboos, then Drawing Thin would not be a legal card in the deck. Would you have any other alternatives for resource/card generation? Emergency Cache perhaps?

@MisterTails just directly ready hound if you can't reset bonnie with making her leave the board.

Drawing Thin is legal. its just 3 exp in taboo.

@chirubime I played my own variation of your deck and I can see the powerhouse Charlie can be. You are right, the Take Hearts (was playing level 0 without Drawing Thin and with Resourceful to get Take Hearts back) and motivational speech and I was swimming in resources.

Sorry, not really understanding still. If you use Summoned Hound for a fight/investigate and tap Bonnie using Charlies skill for a +3, you ready Summoned Hound. That is your one use for the round. Even if you use inspiring presence during this test to ready Bonnie again, you can still use her for the +3, but you can't use her ability anymore, right? So in your example turn when you reach step 6 to go back and do steps 1-3, you can't redo step 3. That is my understanding at least. Sorry if I am missing something.

@MisterTails Drawing Thin is legal because it what is called "Chained" and actually doesn't change the level of the card. So, even though it costs 3 exp, it is still a level 0 card.

What does the level 0 look like?

Do you have a 0 xp deck to start from with upgrade recommendations?