The Concept

The recently printed Cleaning Kit (3) provides a support card for the Old Shotgun which solves most of the issues with the weapon: it gives tons of ammo, frees us up from having to use an event to play the weapon to begin with (although we will still use an event to play it, why not); and even gives an additional skill boost to help with making sure we get maximum damage out of our Shotgun attacks.

Old Shotgun being a +3-attack at up to 3-damage per attack (4 attacks with haste) gives us a top theoretical damage output of 9/12 per round, matching or exceeding the damage output of basically everything but the Shotgun (4).

Variations

This is a 19XP Standalone Ready Deck to reset to a campaign starter, see the information at the conclusion of the guide.

This is a take on the Old Shotgun + Cleaning Kit (3) synergy. I also published a Kymani Jones version of the same concept, which uses Sharpshooter to make the shotgun into an weapon.

You could equally run this using the full Shotgun (4). At 19XP you can do that by cutting Custom Ammunition and any one other event or skill for Ace of Swords; or you can upgrade to a 29XP deck, in which case I would definitely add Keen Eye (3) as well.

Similarly you can swap Prepared For the Worst (2) and any one other event or skill for Prepared for the Worst and Haste (2) which trades a slightly reduced maximum ammo count in exchange for better burst damage.

If you are worried about enemies immune to Mundane Equipment, Replace Custom Ammunition with Enchant Weapon (3) but note that this means one fewer supply card for SttP and Backpack. Enchant weapon will also give Leo another +4 skill for one shot per round, which is also generally useful.

Summary

Clueing: ☆ Fighting: ☆☆☆☆☆ Mobility: ☆ Mythos: ☆☆ Consistency: ☆☆☆☆

Sales Pitch: Play this deck if you want to Blast Monsters in the face with Shotgun Shells and have a friend to pick up all the clues.

In the Thick of it should be two (2) physical trauma.

Mulligan

Stick to the Plan: Prepared for the Worst (2), Emergency Cache (3), and either Custom Ammunition or Contraband

• Dig For: Backpack (2) - it will help find your other supply cards and the Cleaning Kit.
• Consider Keeping: Any Assets, Reliable (1), Contraband
• Pitch: Skills, Events other than those mentioned above.

If you have Shotgun (4) that's probably worth keeping in an opener. for Old Shotgun (2) consider shipping it back since you can play it with ammunition using Prepared for the Worst (2), but "I'll take that!" is in the deck to help if you draw it naturally, and a 0 ammo shotgun still uses rounds from Cleaning Kit (3) just fine, so it's usually ok to keep old shotgun too.

General Playstyle

This is a pretty typical "tutor for your one weapon" Underworld Support Fighter build. After SttP and the initial opening hand, you'll have 21 cards in the deck, Backpack will see over half of them. Backpack will have 3 targets (Both Item Assets and the Supply card that did not go on stick to the plan), and then the follow-up Prepared for the Worst will see 9 of probably 19-20 cards, which is also almost half.

including the approximately 40% chance of just seeing your weapon in your opening hand (assuming you saw 9-10 cards) and including your end of round draw, you'll be looking at only about a 10% chance of not having your boomstick at hand by the start of round 2. If you do miss, Tetsuo Mori can help dig you out. (or someone in the group can run Black Market to help too.)

You can get the initial set-up done with as little as 4 resources, but you really want another 4 for the Contraband, so having a Cluever Friend who can help you out with your set-up costs, like Bob Jenkins or swapping some of the events for additional resource generating ones like Faustian Bargain can help with that.

Once we have the weapon in play, we can start attaching upgrades to it like Custom Ammunition (3) and Reliable (1) to make it even more effective.

in order to actually do 3 damage we need to oversucceed which means pushing our fight as high as we can get it. We do that mostly with Passive boosts, and can test at up to 12 without commits, more on that in a minute.

Shotgun Math

How many Shots is Too Many Shots?

Because Cleaning Kit (3) has uses (supplies) we can use Emergency Cache (3) to add 4 additional supplies; and then if we've done that to a fresh kit, we can hit it with Contraband, pushing us to 16 supplies/shots on Cleaning kit. which ought to be enough ammunition (just watch out for Chilling Cold, but you've got allies and a backpack to help protect from that.)

You won't strictly need to sequence it that way though, most scenarios you will have enough ammunition just from spending Cleaning Kit, E-Cache, One in the Chamber, Custom Ammunition and Contraband in any order when you get them; which will give you about 11-15 shots total in the deck without considering sequencing.

Overplanning for Over-success

When actually taking shots our skill for the test can be as high as 10~13:

• 4 Combat from our base skill
• +3 from the Weapon itself.
• +2 from two allies (with Mitch Brown in Play)
• +1 skill from Reliable (1)
• +2 skill once per round from Cleaning Kit (3)
• +1 skill from Opportunist which we generally expect to get back.

for a total of up to 13 on the first shot, and up to 11 on follow-up shots, without considering spending commits we can't get back.

outside of we can be very confident that this will be enough to succeed by 3 in standard and hard. (enemies are rarely higher than 5 fight, bags are rarely worse than -5 worst case), so you should try to hold back commits other than Opportunist for any required follow-up shots.

if using Haste (2) you can attack 4 times a round for up to 12 damage, or even up to 20 damage theoretically if you're using both Shotgun (4) and Haste; and you'll have the ammo to do it thanks to Cleaning Kit (3)

Resetting to a Campaign Starter:

Keep In the Thick of It for Old Shotgun and Reliable and replace the rest of the non-permanent XP cards with the level 0 cards in the Side Deck. If you're planning to use one of the 4-5XP alternatives mentioned below, instead keep one of the 3 cost events and take .45 Automatic instead of the shotgun.

Your first 12XP should be Stick to the Plan, Emergency Cache (3), and Custom Ammunition but the exact order is probably campaign and post-scenario XP balance dependent. If you started with a .45 Auto instead, buy your better weapon after SttP but before the other event.

going past 19XP could include purchases like Haste (2), Keen Eye (3), Charisma, Ace of Swords, Enchant Weapon (3) and upgrades of cards already in the deck.

If you run out of other purchases you might want to upgrade into a 4-5XP firearm, like Lightning Gun, Shotgun (4), or Springfield M1903 (if 4player), which all work with the general cleaning kit + attachments shell and give you the option to trade off between more skill for testing, more location coverage, or more damage compared to the Old Shotgun - although Old Reliable can absolutely dish enough damage for any campaign finale itself.

Playing the concept without Underworld Support is certainly possible, I leave that version as an exercise for the reader.