William Yorick on second TFA run

I played Wendy once during Core and loved her recursion. I liked the idea of tossing cards in the trash and not worrying about them, but still making use of them. It's less management of current state and more playing on-the-fly, so to speak. I found that to be the case with Yorick also. I built him super tanky with a ton of 2ofs so I just tossed whatever and knew that if I needed it, then that means I was killing things and getting stuff back anyway. Playing from the trash instead of from hand saves an action as well, so unless you start trashing EVERYTHING you need, it's generally better to play it after killing a monster anyway.

It also felt great soaking tons of health and sanity on the teddy, my jacket, and my buddy Brother Xavier. Survival knife was super fun as well.

I went with a total tank/fighter build on this one. Not many skills or events. Mostly assets that I can recur over and over. This build is definitely a baby-sitter, but I thought that was pretty fun. I twiddled my thumbs a bit when there were no enemies (i.e. collected resources and walked blind into scary locations), but whenever there were 1-3 I could take them down really easy.

I was paired with Father Mateo upgrading hard on Rite of Seeking and with a Mists of R'lyeh, but otherwise zero fight ability (until Shrivelling way later on).

Mulligan hard for your soaks. You only need to keep a Gravedigger's Shovel or even a Knife to start off with. DON'T start with a .45 in your opening hand. It may sound nice to have it, but it's a big resource drain and will set you back a lot. You likely won't be facing multiple high str high damage enemies within the first 4 turns anyway, and they won't start to accrue that quickly, so even a +1 or +2 str and a single damage output is fine. What you really need to start with are your Cherished Keepsake Leather Coat and Brother Xavier. Everything else can wait - but if I'm feeling greedy (always) I'll keep the Bury Them Deep.

I can't stress the mulligan enough. This build is rough if you don't find any of your soaks early on, but that's part of why Backpack is here. Backpack is great because not only does it pull up your weapons and soaks, you can recur it to do it over again. It's also helpful for when your hand size is restricted or for extra Cornered fodder.

I balance the weapons out to make sure I have at least one weapon with a +2 str at a time. The Gravedigger's Shovel is the mainstay, but I always save a slot for Survival Knife. You can toss the shovel at any time to grab that important clue for drawing in the City of Archives, or on other high shroud locations when you have a .45 Automatic waiting to be played. Plus you can always get it back if you really want it!

The .45 Automatic is helpful to bring down the big dudes fairly fast, especially when paired with a Vicious Blow. 8 str is good to hit and over-succeed on most baddies in TFA. I've read that Machete is the go-to, but my plan was to take care of ALL the enemies, so that often meant I had 2-3 on me at a time. A machete is just an expensive Knife with more than one baddy on you. Yes, the .45 is expensive and is limited with ammo, but Vicious Blow helps it out a lot and also I generally have a second weapon that's good enough for most things anyway. I'll trash the .45 early and recur it when I have enough resources and things start to get hairy.

I originally thought Beat Cop would get upgraded to level two, but Brother Xavier turned out to be much better. I was scared to trade a str for a wisdom, but the ability to soak damage from another player is really helpful later on, and it works with Survival Knife really well. Let the Brother soak 2-3 attacks during the enemy phase, then he kills one and you take out the other with a Survival Knife. This is really helpful when you need to spend actions engaging enemies from your squishy partner. Also, the Beat Cop is great for dealing damage, but the more damage you deal with it the less it can soak. If you deal three damage with it, then he's dead and he never soaked damage. I much prefer using Brother X to soak an enemy fight and then use the Survival Knife to get +2 str and +1 damage instead.

The spice are my Marksmanship, which does a nice 3 damage from outside of a room. That's awesome for my build, because for one, it would only do 2 damage on a fail to my partner but 3 to the baddie. It also saves a few actions from moving into their room and engaging, and then returning. 3 damage is enough for a lot of sneks in TFA, and it's also enough to leave maybe just one damage for the poor cloover to try to tick off themselves. Also, with a Vicious Blow, you've got 4-5 damage coming out of you which is great. Maybe don't do that when the enemy is engaged with your partner though, haha.

Trusted is nice for extra soak, cheap, and fast. Originally I had it to allow the Beat Cop to deal another damage, but I found it helpful as a hedge against finding the other soaks soon after finding BX.

Take the Initiative is my main skill card. It's always +3 ? during encounters, so I generally used it for wisdom and agility tests. But if you have a task you need to get done on the board, it's usually more than easy enough to go first and use it on your first action. It's the only real skill commit card in the deck, but Cornered more than makes up for that. It basically doubles the commit abilities of all your weapons that only have one otherwise, as well as your teddy. It turns all of your assets that this deck has too many of into and Unexpected Courage, allowing you to toss what you don't need now to grab later when you do.

I actually found Lucky! to be used rarely. My base str was generally good enough that I didn't fail by negatives, and if I did it was a -5 when I only planned to lose with a -3 or -5 (since there's only two). If I pulled a -5 then it was out of Lucky range anyway. I kept it in my deck because it's supposed to be so good, but honestly it might not make it into my next build.

I had a Close Call that I liked for TFA because it allowed me to shuffle those darn Pit Viper's back without accruing Vengeance. The problem was that by the time I had EXP to afford one (or maybe two) they were a bit less of a necessity.

I tossed On the Hunt early because I didn't think it was quite necessary. Yes, it helps avoid encounter cards that Yorick isn't that great at by giving him something he can easily kill, but they'll be coming around the mountain soon enough anyway. I did like it as early filler to use to make sure I could Bury Them Deep and get XP early on though. But it was happily replaced with other cards soon enough. On other campaigns it might make sense, but in TFA when enemies can swarm and cripple you, and this Yorick needs to be able to engage and deal with EVERY enemy, it's not the easiest include.