Red Raiders "Ashcan"

(Light) SPOILER ALERT: I am going to write a little bit about some of the challenges in The Dunwich Legacy, which may have some campaign spoilers (mostly campaign mechanics), but I'm going to try to avoid them as much as possible.

INTRO

Welcome! I just completed my first play through of The Dunwich Legacy; and I did that using Wendy and Ashcan/Duke...both of whom are Survivor characters. Hence my campaign name "The Red Raiders". I would build this deck somewhat differently if I had it all to do again, but this is what I ended up with (including a final post-campaign edit)...

CONCEPT

For both Ashcan and Wendy, a big part of my original idea was to use resources with Scrapper to be able to defeat any enemies. But with Ashcan particularly, I liked the narrative idea of Ashcan and his dogs. Hence the Guard Dogs, which I'll discuss in a moment.

ROLE

Ashcan (or rather Duke) was going to be my primary Clue getter. And the idea was that the Guard Dogs would allow me to largely ignore some bad guys, as I turned Attacks of Opportunity into Guard Dog retaliations on the bad guy. This worked well in the in the first couple of scenarios, but as bad guys started to deal more than 1 of either damage or horror, I started to rely on Duke for more combat.

That being said, I also used Wendy to engage and evade lots of bad guys, so combat was a lesser priority for me. And with that in mind, I will note that Ashcan was defeated once (twice if you count my 'for the hell of it' attempt on Yog-Sothoth after I successfully closed the rift.

CARD CHOICES

Dr. Milan Christopher: So, this was NOT in my original idea; and being one of my 5 off-color choice, this cost me 2 XP to add. Totally worth it, though! As Dr. Christopher's Lore and added resources was absolutely necessary for my deck idea.

Guard Dog: This was the original idea, but as I mentioned above, by the end of the campaign, this was much harder to make effective. Nevertheless, in pretty much every single scenario, there was a situation where I used Guard Dogs to deal out free damage to a bad guy. And given that they have 3 health, the Guard Dogs were also huge damage sinks.

Scavenging: So, initial deck-building mistake...I didn't have hardly any items in the deck. I had the idea that I would discard items to ready Duke...and then Scavenge them back. Then I realized I only had the 2 Smoking Pipes for items. So, not very good deck building on my part.

Smoking Pipe: As noted above, this card choice was intended to be scavenge bait for readying Duke. I generally didn't use it for anything else.

Rabbit's Foot: I added Rabbit's Foot to have another item. My idea was that, worst case, I play it and never fail a test, and I've given away 1 action. More likely, I have another item to ready Duke and then scavenge. But best case, it turns failed tests into a draw action where that draw comes with the ability to maximize my draw's effectiveness while providing some mild weakness protection. I know lots of people don't like Rabbit's Foot, but I think it's a very good card. It does mildly conflict with...

Elder Sign Amulet: So, this was the last addition I made for Through Time and Space...and this card was an absolutely clutch addition. Given my lack of items, I knew I wanted some additional items for recursion. And given the Guard Dogs acting as damage sinks, I had a bit of an issue with horror because I didn't have anywhere to put the Horror. So, I add Elder Sign Amulet, immediately draw it in Through Time and Space, and voila! The horror dished out by the final scenario affected me not at all. And with the locations with 1 shroud, I had no problem recurring the Amulet to ensure that I never had to be worried about Horror at all.

Look what I found! and Lucky: In many ways, these 2 cards are what made the Ashcan deck really work. Because as I was going around exploring with Duke, these two cards managed to ensure that I either succeeded in a test, or I'd get 2 free clues. So, with these 2 cards, I had the tempo I needed to succeed in the campaigns.

Cunning Distraction / Emergency Aid / Oops!: As I mentioned, if I had the deck to build over again, I would definitely change some things. And my initial decklist had some bad 0XP choices. I scrubbed quite a few of them through the game...but these 3 were left at the end. I never used Emergency Aid, but the idea was that it would maximize use of the Guard Dogs. The problem was that it only tended to be useful late in a game, and late in a game, I had other priorities. Cunning Distraction was a decent commit to tests, but that was it. I did manage to use Oops! one time to good effect, but these cards would have been much better used with other 0XP cards. I'd probably use Magnifying Glass, Overpower, and Perception.

CAMPAIGN SPECIFICS

As amazing as Duke is, and the ability to move and investigate in a single action is amazing, I will note that he does have a bit of a disadvantage in that if there is a non-Duke lore or strength test, Ashcan's base skills of 2 put him in a bad way. Scrapper helps with the strength, but Lore in particular can be a problem...that's a big part of the reason that climbing Sentinel Hill was so rough.

The discard heavy encounter cards tend to be rough for Ashcan. I had a couple of scenarios where I had to try and stop drawing. The card that deals 10 damage if you run out of cards nearly killed me in 2 games, and it did kill me in my 'for the hell of it' run against Yog-Sothoth.

I definitely enjoyed the narrative element of having Ashcan with his pack of dogs. That being said, I think there are much better Ashcan decks out there, but if you choose to give something like this a try, Enjoy! I sure did...