Duke and Pete On Their Own

So the main reason to make this deck was to make use of On Your Own card and build the deck around it. So let's go through currently available survivors (excluding Silas Marsh).

We can rule out William Yorick more or less, since he likes to play with Assets instead and while On Your Own would leave you enough resources for that he has access to level 0-2 guardian allies, which are rather good and it would be painful for him not to bring Beat Cop along.

Next one we can rule out is Wendy Adams. But she likes to play events!!! That's completely true, but she has access to amazing rogue cards level 0-2, and note that On Your Own works only with survivor cards. So no free Elusive for us this time. Not only that but her Wendy's Amulet actually put events you play back in the deck, which we don't actually want in this case. But wait, there's more! Abandoned and Alone destroys our discard pile which breaks our combo and our early recycle with Resourceful. So I've opted out of trying her.

So that leaves us with Calvin Wright and "Ashcan" Pete. I think both of them can make some value out of On Your Own. I've decided to try it out with "Ashcan" Pete.

Main idea is to upgrade to On Your Own asap. Remember that your friend Duke is ally traited but he isn't taking your ally slot so you can bring him along! Since we aren't packing much cards which exhaust on use, you'll want to keep the Duke alive and use your ability to ready him almost every turn since he needs to pull some weight especially in earlier scenarios (classic Pete).

I want to note few things about On Your Own. Effect isn't bad at all, for 2 resources and 1 you get 2 resource event discount once per turn. So after 2 uses you'll be pulling some value out of it. But it's not only that, it lets you play "Look what I found!" and Lucky! with Dark Horse for example, without lowering your stats. Let's talk about bad sides of the card now. Let's start with milder drawback. You can have only one in play per investigator. If that wasn't the case, you could play Will to Survive for free. Which is awesome I agree, but that's one of the rare events that costs more than 2 resources. Other drawback is that you could play two different events with 2 resource discount for each, this can happen more often, but you'll usually have some spare change to throw for the second event, or in our case we can activate ability of "Ashcan" Pete to ready On Your Own and use it again. Now the bad part is that you can't have any allies that take up ally slots. This really hurts, since I think that Allies often pull a lot weight. All allies come with amazing abilities, but a lot of them provide stat boosts, which are quite priceless and not only that but they also provide you with damage and horror soak. Also there is no playing around this with Charisma, because On Your Own essentially takes up all ally slots. As far as the stat boosting goes, I feel that Calvin Wright has an edge over "Ashcan" Pete, but we must remember that Calvin Wright likes a lot damage/horror soaks and like I mentioned Allies are often used for that, so loosing that hurts him a lot, I feel a lot more than it hurts "Ashcan" Pete.

So here we are with "Ashcan" Pete. I focused on clue gathering here and the deck is clearly meant for multiplayer. One of the reason is also that depending on the campaign you will sometimes have to bring along allies which take Ally slots, but I guess you would survive those few turns without On Your Own. Now we all know that Duke can pack a bite here and there. So we aren't completely useless in fights.

When you get On Your Own you can keep Dark Horse and play with both of them. Now playing Lucky! and "Look what I found!" isn't so weird because they cost 0 if you activate On Your Own. You can remove some of the skills and/or flashlights for it. Keep in mind that later on Innate skills like Guts, Manual Dexterity, Quick Thinking, Take Heart and Resourceful can be recycled with True Survivor.

But the main idea is to switch Dark Horse with Will to Survive and True Survivor. You can either go with one from each, or go 2x Will to Survive. Afterwards you'll probably take the 2 cards left (either 2x True Survivor if you took 2x Will to Survive or 1 of each).

You'll have now full combo. I'll note here that combo is already mentioned before, mostly preached by @Django, so I wanted to give credit to him here and to all the other players who pushed this idea. I think it's really great. So the combo consists of you playing Will to Survive then commiting Resourceful (optimally in same turn) to get back Will to Survive and playing True Survivor (optimally not in the same turn) to pull back 3 Innate cards back (1/2 Resourceful and 1/2 other cards). Also later on you'll want to commit Resourceful to get back True Survivor back and so on. You see where this is going, you can play Will to Survive for only 2 resources with On Your Own and True Survivor for only 1 resource. Also note that with 2 copies of True Survivor and Will to Survive you don't have to wait to have all the pieces in hand (you don't have to with 1 copy of each either, but it gives you more consistency and wiggle room).

Afterwards you can move on upgrading rest of your deck. Lucky! is a clear upgrade which gives you more card draw. And you can take a look at different level 1+ events you want and you can find place to fit.

Level 0 card explanations:

Flashlight and Magnifying Glass - Main boosters for your intellect, you'll want to save flashlight for low shroud locations and magnifying glass works with Duke and with you.

Cherished Keepsake and Leather Coat - Your damage/horror soaks, since we don't have any allies we need some more soak. They are cheap and if you feel you are OK with your health/sanity, you can throw them to trigger your ability or for icons.

Dark Horse - It's a great card and most survivors can find extreme value from it, I find it good transitional card before you hit your sweet spot with Will to Survive, since I'm not sure if you could run it both.

"Look what I found!" - Little bit iffy with Dark Horse, but works good when you get On Your Own. Plus this cards works with Live and Learn and with Take Heart. What's more if you fail and you commited Take Heart you can use 2 resources which you get from that card to fund "Look what I found!"!

Live and Learn - Maybe not as good as Lucky! but it lets you play cockier just like Lucky! plus it protects you from fail chaos token and bigger minuses.

Lucky! - Don't have much to add, it's rather good card, one of the best and here it can work even better with Dark Horse if you have On Your Own out.

Winging It - Not sure about this one. It's good for 1 shroud locations of course and you can't use it together with Duke. Playing it from discard in Will to Survive is great, but I guess that's it? Included it to see if I can make some use from it.

Neutral Skills - Just some mix of it, focused on Innate ones and Perception since we want to grab some clues, can go with Unexpected Courage instead of Guts for example.

Deduction - Great card and it helps us further with gathering clues, I've felt it's must include if you want to focus on clues.

Resourceful - Must have card for our combo and great card overall, it lets us recycle Lucky! and "Look what I found!" or some damage/horror soaks in earlier scenarios too.

Take Heart - I think this is one of the best cards in TfA cycle. Huge economy card. You'll always find some tests that you will fail and in multiplayer you can boost other investigators with it, amazing.

Quick Thinking - In early scenarios I think it will be a bit useless, you could probably find some tests that you can pass by 2, but it will be rare. Later on with Will to Survive you can commit it to get one free action, and since it's Innate you can take it back with True Survivor

Alternative Level 0 cards:

Lantern - Good option instead of Flashlight, or even better instead of Winging It. Flashlight is still better by quite a margin for investigate actions, there are a lot more 2 shroud locations than there are 1 shroud, but Lantern gives you an easy way out against 1/3/5hp enemies without a need for a skill test.

Inspiring Presence - It takes rather contested slot (5 out of faction cards limit), so the question is what to leave out. Quick Thinking is obvious choice here, since like I mentioned above, it doesn't do much without Will to Survive. Other would be probably Deduction, but if you would ready Duke just so you can do the investigate again, then it's better to leave Deduction and roll with it. Other option is Magnifying Glass, but still we want to focus on clues, and passive +1 boost means a lot. So probably just take one instead of Quick Thinking.

Scavenging - We are built to pick up clues, so why not invest in Scavenging? Well, the case is that we will not be a lot above shroud value. We will often use "Look what I found!" or Lucky! to fetch them, so it will be quite hard to go 2 above. There are few items that will often hit discard pile like Flashlight and/or Lantern together with Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake, it's not quite a lot, but it's enough. Still it will be quite hard to make room for it and find value in it.