Leo & His Friends Are Cursed

This deck was for a (semi) blind Dunwich playthrough, my first attempt at 2h solo play and my first time interacting with the curse mechanic.

I've typically fought with melee weapons previously, but this is the deck I built to play with guns. Contraband is hands down the best thing for a gun and makes everything so much more comfortable. The biggest problem I had, especially with the multiple small guns disposable guns style, is how much xp it eats up to upgrade all of your weapons. I didn't expect this deck to be so xp hungry (I knew Dunwich's reputation) but "pull any gun, shoot it, get a new one" doesn't work as well when you're still bringing level 0 guns to the final scenario. Passing fight tests with 4 combat was a struggle sometimes...I wish I'd brought more skills, but I had a hard time figuring out what to cut for them. Narrow Escape was sometimes clutch, but sometimes getting the AOO for the +2 to attack meant I didn't have enough actions left to perform the attack.

Custom Modifications was great in theory, but I never managed to play it. In the final scenario, I watched the encounter deck throw them away for me. I knew it didn't synergize well with the multiple guns style, but there were enough times especially with contrabanded guns that it would have been worthwhile...if I had the card, resources, and play actions at the same time.

Resources were a bit feast or famine with this deck. Faustian Bargain is so cheap, especially when my seeker wants curses, but it was hit or miss if I had the action to play it. Oversuccess didn't really work as planned for things like Mauser C96, "Watch this!", or Gregory Gry, and simply succeeding was sometimes a struggle--though sometimes those things (especially the assets) got huge value. There were scenarios I ended with over 10 resources, but there were also times I lost everything and had to struggle to play a new ally or gun when I lost the old one. Several scenario cards and both of the RBW's here didn't help.

Despite the high density of allies in this deck, there was one scenario where all but one were in the bottom 12 cards of the deck--that's luck, I guess. Joey "The Rat" Vigil was a mistake...I was thinking of the level 3 version, who Leo can't even run. A cheaper, more disposable ally would have been more valuable. Tetsuo Mori was great, especially paired with Mandy for bonuses to the search if we were in the same location. I never quite pulled off using Tetsuo to reload a gun I'd lost, but it worked great in theory, provided I could play enough guns to push the empty ones out of my hands. Beat Cops were great; the only problem is that I really wanted to keep them around for the combat bonus.

Moment of Respite saved my life a couple times. Managing sanity was one of the hardest parts of this deck, especially when I couldn't draw my allies.

I do still love the idea of using Decorated Skull in an investigator who is both killing enemies and swapping out allies left and right. How useful it was depended a lot on when I drew it, and it wasn't the focus of my mulligan, but it was very fun to rack up the charges.