Ch1 True Solo | Tommy Works Alone (TDE-B)

Continuing the Ch1 Solo series with the Web of Dreams campaign, and Tommy Muldoon. I went with a bit of an unorthodox build here (no allies) but I found it both an enjoyable build challenge, and I don't think it actually impacts Tommy's effectiveness much, if at all.

The Web of Dreams is one of those campaigns where fighting is directly rewarded, so it's one of the better campaigns for Guardian Solos. It also means there's a lot more opportunities to take damage, so a soak-oriented character can be a lot of fun to play too. Tommy is both of those and from the associated Investigator box, so that's my pick for a Chapter 1 Celebration of TDE-B the Web of Dreams. There are some scenario spoilers in the advice section at the end, skip that if you haven't played Web yet yourself.

In the Thick of It should probably be 2 physical trauma.

Mulligan

• Dig for: .45 Auto (or Prepared for the Worst), investigation tool (could be Plucky (1), could be Old Keyring or just "Look what I found!")
• Keep: Bless effects, soak assets.
• Pitch: Skills, redundant copies of the above, Becky (sorry!)

In Scenario 1 you might want to start with your Fine Clothes in the opening mulligan if you can to, it'll help with a key scenario test at the halfway point. We'll upgrade out of them after Scenario 1.

General Playstyle

Investigating Like any good clue-getting strategy Tommy is going for a mix of effects. If you've got a lot of in the bag, then sometimes you can just go 3 vs. 3 shroud and rely on the Ancient Covenant (2) or pulling a 0 token, and other times you'll want to do that with a Lucky! backup, or you'll want to use your Old Keyring or spend resources boosting with Plucky (1), etc. And of course you can always just shoot a spider with your gun and get a clue with Evidence!.

Fighting You'll usually fight with assets, but don't be afraid to just punch a spider swarm to save ammo on the last copy.

Becky is just commit fodder in this deck, but you could take Bandolier if you want to use Becky. More advice on that in Variations below.

Scenario Progress in the web of dreams can often be done with either fighting or clues. You don't have a ton of time to go digging in your deck though, so I found myself doing whatever seemed most expedient at the time, which ended up being quite a bit of regular investigate tests. If you want to try to win the campaign with like, all the combat, this is the one campaign where you can try to do that (but you'll still want to pack in some additional auto-clueing like Scene of the Crime).

Notes on Specific card selections

My weapon of choice is .45 Automatic - because we want to hold Old Keyring we're using a 1-handed weapon. Because Swarming. enemies count as multiple engaged enemies, we can't use Machete, so .45 auto seemed like the pick to me. If you want to use Meat Cleaver Tommy is a pretty good wielder of that, just be aware of the negative interaction with Plucky (1) and make sure you keep sanity soaks available. (Meat Cleave can only heal horror off your player card, but while you have plucky in play you can't put horror on your player card...)

Old Keyring could be Flashlight if you prefer, flashlight is better with Plucky but I found in scenario 1 I usually didn't have enough cash to spend boosting every investigate, so I went with the key-ring on the assumption that I'd probably fail at least one flashlight test anyway.

Ancestral Token could equally be Cherished Keepsake which is net positive on resources while still providing 2 sanity soak. But Token does help you bless the bag and you can trigger it a lot in this campaign.

The Tempt Fates are just filler (they cost 0 and draw a card when you play them, so it's like having a deck that is two cards smaller). So if you have favorite guardian or survivor events (like Scene of the Crime as mentioned above) that I didn't include, you could swap them for these.

Similarly Beloved is approximately the worst of the skills (I threw it at mythos tests for a +2 and a chance to steal an auto-success) It could be whatever other skill or event you prefer. Vicious Blow might be a good choice since the most common small swarm in this campaign will spawn with 3 health total.

Plucky (1) and Wolf Mask exactly compliment each other for skill boosting, that's pretty neat! Once you have Hunting Jacket (2) you should have plenty of resources available to boost with. (Hunting jacket nets Tommy up to 8 resources, pretty good.)

Sound Support could really be your favorite / Ally. instead, but I liked that it let you heal off either damage or horror as needed and it fit with the theme of not bringing allies along. If you wanted suggestions for replacements, someone like Alice Luxley (2) or Guiding Spirit (1) would be good picks too.

Upgrades

There's potentially 31XP available in the Web of Dreams campaign prior to the final scenario. Realistically you won't be able to get all of them: 6 are in the encounter deck, so I'd budget for more like 25. This is on the low end for most campaigns but still generous per scenario.

Priority upgrades are the second copy of Plucky (1), Hunting Jacket (2) and both copies of Hunter's Armor with Enchanted Checked. (and Hallowed and Durable are priorities too since it will make it generate net cash when you blow it up.) This will solidify both your economy and your skill boost protection (and give you cash to do skill boosting with.) I really like taking Enchanted on the Hunter's Armor for Tommy since you can put a 4/4 soak asset into the Arcane slot, that's super good for this guy.

After that, you've got options: you can go for more soak with something like Sound Support (3), or more bless generation with Spirit of Humanity (2), or you can upgrade your .45 autos into Blessed Blade (4) to help preserve your tokens for when you actually need them (i.e. to investigate). And of course, you can keep checking upgrades on the Hunter's Armor - besides the above-mentioned upgrades, I liked getting Armor of Thorns for the last scenario. It's good in scenarios 2 and 3 if you want to prioritize it though.

Here's a possible upgrade order, taking into account the likely XP totals you'd see from the scenarios in the Web of Dreams.

(View at arkham-starter.com)

For the Blessed Blade (4) specifically you'll need to choose something else not to upgrade instead (perhaps skipping the Sound Supports) But you could also just upgrade the Hunter's Armor less.

Variations & Other Campaigns

Becky

Want to make Becky usable? I'd cut two cards from: Evidence! or Lucky! or Tempt Fate for two copies of Bandolier. This would also let you replace the .45 Automatic with a 2-handed weapon. .35 Winchester if you want to be a bit cheeky, .45 Thompson or Runic Axe if you want boring consistency.

.45 Thompson (3) is a worthwhile upgrade instead of the Blessed Blade (4) if you go this route.

Even more

You'd probably want to find room for Favor of the Sun (1) which will help you trigger your covenant on demand. Blessing of Isis (3) is a bit of a luxury upgrade, but it's rare to have a solo who can consistently keep the bag as full of as Tommy can, and Blessing of Isis will both help preserve tokens in the bag, and let you release the tokens from the favor of the sun back into the bag if you use them as the second draw. (see FAQ point 2.10). Unfortunately I think you pretty much have to cut soak assets from the deck to make this work, probably starting with Plucky (1) and one of the body armors (probably the Hunter's Armor) since it'll free up some xp for these other cards since you won't be tempted to customize it.

Other Campaigns

Tommy is a great investigator for any campaign that likes to just hit you with a high enemy density or a lot of damage/horror treacheries: something like Innsmouth for example, or perhaps Edge of the Earth. (although I'd think about Protective Gear (2) instead of the Hunting Jacket (2) in that case). -testing treacheries or enemies that are better evaded than destroyed are the deck’s weaknesses, so I’d steer clear of Campaigns like TFA which punish bad agility.

In most campaigns you'll probably want to drop the Fine Clothes in the level 0 deck for unupgraded Hunter's Armor, as well as swap back to Machete. Although if you want to keep .45 auto for style points it’s definitely a serviceable weapon in solo games.

Similarly, with the increased XP you get from longer campaigns, you might prefer to use Allies for soak instead of slotless cards like Sound Support because you will be able to afford buying both upgraded allies and Charisma.

Advice for Web of Dreams

Scenario 1 : This was consistently the most difficult scenario in the playtests for me. you have to actually investigate (because you can't pass the scenario tests in the final act so you have to use clues).

Being forced to investigate isn’t awful because we want the victory points but it does make the doom-clock pretty tight for Tommy. The exact difficulty of the scenario will come down to how frequently you pull tokens so sometimes this one just isn't winnable and you should aim for a partial victory and a resignation instead.

I ended up adding Fine Clothes in an attempt to speed up the advancement to the final act, it works (all the tests go to 0 difficulty), but that in turn means you're dependent on drawing it. Ultimately it's better to resign out of this one than get defeated, but try to limit the number of still infested locations to 1-2. If you fail at 5+ it's unlikely you'll be able to win in scenario 4.

Scenario 2 : This one surprised me, I expected to go in and mostly progress the scenario with but - thanks to having good econ after the first round of upgrades - every time I played it I wound up mostly investigating, again because you're incentivized to do so by victory point locations. At least the shroud numbers in this one are generally lower than in scenario 1. Just remember that you can make progress via fighting if you don't have your clue gathering tools at hand.

Scenario 3 : Plucky (1) and Ancient Covenant (2) should hopefully get you past the bottleneck location (there's a location that prevents you from playing or committing cards while it has clues, yikes.) There's a hidden side objective in this scenario, I always went for it. Personally I think that's more important than advancing the final act, but it's always ok to go after the scenario resolution instead.

Scenario 4 : This is still my favorite 'boss fight' in any campaign. If you did poorly in Scenario 1 it might be basically impossible though. Remember that even as a Solo you have a bonus to the printed doom limits on the Agendas. Also as a solo remember it only takes 1 Clue to do 3 damage; so paradoxically I found myself doing a lot of clueing in this one too.

Remarks

I considered doing a Luke Robinson deck. But, I don't have a lot of experience with the investigator. So I don't think I would have anything to contribute over Ginalx's "Odyssey - True Solo" Luke (so go check that out too.)