Learning True Solo with Roland

True solo has always been interesting to me because of how dramatically it changes the power level of certain types of effects. most locations will only have one or two clues, every action spent on setup hurts, and monsters that aren’t hunters are often best left alive on locations you’ve already cleared.

But getting used to that takes time, and so does getting used to having to do everything with a single investigator.

So enter Roland, the only solo that kind of plays like a guardian+seeker pair without a pair. Unlike most investigators his signature ability actually rewards you for fighting with action compression! And in true solo, every “free” action effect is worth a whole third of a doom, so that’s super good.

Mulligan

• Dig for: Hand Assets (ideally one gun and one flashlight or magnifying glass)
• Pitch: Events that aren’t Emergency Cache
• Keep: Allies, Perception

Police Procedure

For the most part the objective is to focus on clueing until a monster presents itself, then kill it, then go back to clueing. Try really hard to only fight at locations with clue(s), especially if it’s a VP location with two clues and you’ve got an Evidence! in hand. On the Hunt and Shortcut will help you engineer these situations.

You should always try to deal with Cover Up when it comes up, Roland does not have the mental trauma to spare, depending on the scenario it may be worth taking a worse resolution to avoid the trauma.

We take Dr. William T. Maleson here for basically the same reason, we want protection from Heavy Sanity hits from the mythos, he also helps you avoid getting overwhelmed if you get a little stuck on an Elite monster for a round.

Most of the Events get you testless clues, sometimes fast. Action Compression and avoiding the bag is ideal, try to save testless clues for 4+ shroud locations unless under time pressure, you can usually clear lower shrouds with Flashlight, Magnifying Glass or a dead Swarm of Rats

side deck

I originally built the deck in the era where Machete was chained, but now that it’s back to 0XP it’s probably better then .45 Automatic so it’s worth considering if you want to swap or enjoy the role play aspect of using a sidearm.

Art Student and Dodge are both excellent effects for Roland, and worth considering instead of Beat Cop and On the Hunt respectively, campaign depending. Fine Clothes is likewise dependent on Campaign, Great in Carcosa and Forgotten Age for example.

Charisma and Keen Eye are mentioned as options for taking if you elect to start with In the Thick of It (take physical traumas), this can be helpful in Innsmouth and Dunwhich, both of which are a little lean on early scenario XP.

If you start with Charisma, Consider Guard Dog instead of Beat Cop, but the Sanity soak on the Beat Cops is pretty nice.

upgrades

True solo XP choices are almost always campaign specific for me so I don’t want to give bad general advice here, but in general Roland still benefits from similar effects as he does in 2 player: upgraded weapons will help with big bosses but try to wait til that’s the next scenario, Charisma so you can play Grete Wagner instead of beat cop, Keen Eye for those “must pass” moments, etc.

Another nice part of learning true solo with Roland is that he rarely requires a large amount of XP to function, so you can often focus solely on achieving the good resolution in a scenario and not have to worry about hunting victory points.

remarks

I originally created this deck to answer a deck thread request on Reddit, but I’ve reposted it a few times now and felt it was worth publishing publicly for that reason.