The Fatal Thespian | Ch2 Starters Revisited

The Fatal Thespian

In this mini-series I'm focusing on powerful decks built from the Chapter 2 starters. Here André can deal up to 9 damage in a turn by bashing enemies' legs in, pushing them off roofs (twice) and shooting them. Who knew show business was so cutthroat?!

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Series Decks

At a Glance

Stats
Clue-finding:	★★★★☆
Consistency:	★★★★☆
Enemy Management:	★★★★★
Encounter Defense:	★★★☆☆
Survivability:	★★☆☆☆
Simplicity:	★★★★★

Overview

• Taking slapstick literally: With his Polished Cane, André slaps people with a stick at an 8 with Olivier. This will often trigger an oversuccess, giving you both an extra action and automatically evading the enemy. Both Hammerless and A Sudden Fall then deal extra damage to exhausted foes. The Grapevine allows you to get straight to bad guys (even Aloof ones) and engage them while providing card draw. Of course you can also evade enemies with your great stat too.

• Cash for clues: When you're not blugeoning enemies with walking implements, you're getting cash and finding clues. Out the Door and "Watch this!" throw resources at you, while Thieves' Kit provides money from investigating. Prestidigitation allows you to flip between clue-finding and enemy management with ease. When you're not investigating with a Kit (e.g. you have your weapons out), resources convert to clues with Right Under Their Noses, Pay Your Dues and Silver Tongue. André's extra action coupled to Olivier's free move gives great versatility, often enabling up to 4 clues in a turn.

• There's no people like show people: As André has a slightly padded deck with 3 signature skills, card draw is important. Lucky Cigarette Case gives cards for oversuccess, while upgraded Grapevine pairs card draw with efficient enemy management. Manual Dexterity and a Perception round this off, replacing themselves while boosting tests. In terms of the encounter deck, André sports a respectable number of and icons here in addition to Know the Line. While the Film Star only has Olivier Bishop as soak, his basic health and sanity are good.

_{Thank you: 5argon and their thumbnail tool; Valentin1331 for his support over the years; the community creators of Arkham.Build (Felix), Arkham Cards (zzorba) and ArkhamDB (kamalisk) - linking their Patreons!}

Starting deck and planned progression

0 XP starting deck is below (and link here):

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:

• Out the Door → Out the Door •

• 1 x Silver Tongue → 1 x Silver Tongue •••

• 1 x Silver Tongue → 1 x The Grapevine ••

• 1 x Perception → 1 x The Grapevine ••

• Quick Exit → A Sudden Fall ••

• 2 x Another Day, Another Dollar

Post-19 XP suggestions are:

• Right Under Their Noses → Right Under Their Noses •••

• 1 x Unexpected Courage → 1 x Contingency

Playtesting notes

I made a couple of small tweaks on play testing. Firstly I swapped the order of Another Day, Another Dollar and upgraded Right Under Their Noses (so the former is bought inside your first 19 XP). This plays a little better with upgraded Silver Tongue, which itself works very well with Thieves' Kit. Surprisingly, André felt like my main clue-finder while playing - in addition to his great enemy management. The other small change was removing one copy of Perception rather than Unexpected Courage from the final deck. Given you do tests with Polished Cane, the icons are handy over the slightly more situational icons.

Playing on Hard two-player through Children of Blood, I thought the deck worked great. I used the 5 bonus XP from Hard difficulty for upgraded Silver Tongue and a copy of upgraded The Grapevine. While the latter didn't shine too much in the campaign, drawing a card for something you were going to do anyway is a nice effect. I found Polished Cane in particular to be excellent - very easily triggering your extra action by testing at an 8 with Olivier. As mentioned in my review of Polished Cane, it also allows you to pin Elusive enemies to a location if you get the over-success on your first action. Prestidigitation was extremely useful in shuffling hand assets around on the fly. Overall this build felt like the quintessential Rogue, which is exactly what I was going for!

Final thoughts

This deck allows you to have your cake and eat it. Enemy management (both fighting and evading) leverage André's high and his easy money feeds into clue-finding. People often enjoy Trish because her Seeker splash gives clues, however André's additional action does this and more. The Grapevine is an added bonus, giving you card draw with absurd mobility, and convenient means to engage Aloof enemies like Whippoorwills, Zealots and most Civilians. Hope you enjoy!