Chance Encounters With The Red-Gloved Man

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS WITH THE RED-GLOVED MAN

So, with the recent release of "Lost in Time & Space", here is a deck I'm looking forward to trying out. In most ways, it is a fairly typical Wendy Adams deck, but the real fun starts after she's earned enough XP to add The Red-Gloved Man and maybe a Flare or two to the deck. Now, she can use Wendy's Amulet and A Chance Encounter to get up to 7 uses (turns) out of a single copy of this enigmatic and powerful ally.

It requires only a little bit of set-up, but that's okay, as she'll probably need his help more later in a scenario than earlier. You'll need to have Wendy's Amulet in play and The Red-Gloved Man (or Flare) and at least one copy of A Chance Encounter (or, better yet, both copies) in your hand. Card drawing from 2 copies of Pickpocketing helps with this. When ready, play The Red-Gloved Man (or use Flare to get him, if needed) and let the fun begin:

1. Use The Red-Gloved Man to boost whichever two skills she needs this turn to 6 for all of her actions, including any extra actions from Quick Thinking (which should trigger more easily with a base skill value of 6). Then, during the enemy phase, use him to soak up to 4 damage/4 health.
2. After The Red-Gloved Man is discarded at the end of the next mythos phase (if he wasn't defeated the previous turn), use A Chance Encounter as your first action to put him back into play and benefit from his skill boosts for the rest of the turn. Again, let him soak up damage/horror during the enemy phase before he's discarded by A Chance Encounter at the end of the round.
3. Using the effect of Wendy's Amulet, play A Chance Encounter from the discard pile, putting The Red-Gloved Man back into play again. A Chance Encounter is placed on the bottom of the play deck after playing it in this manner, and The Red-Gloved Man is discarded at the end of the round.
4. Repeat #2 above with a second copy of A Chance Encounter.
5. Repeat #3 above with the second copy of A Chance Encounter. Both copies of A Chance Encounter are now on the bottom of the play deck.
6. When you re-draw the first copy of A Chance Encounter, put The Red-Gloved Man into play from the discard pile yet again.
7. Do the same when you draw the second copy of A Chance Encounter. Wendy doesn't currently have any way to re-shuffle the play deck to get those last 2 copies of A Chance Encounter off the bottom, but a Seeker companion could help her get them, as well as delve for her amulet and those A Chance Encounters.

Of course, the outline above is the best-case situation. She may not get all 7 uses and probably not all on consecutive turns, but even 3, 4 or 5 visits by The Red-Gloved Man in a scenario should be worth it.

If you try this deck, or a version of it, please let me know how it fares. I will try to update the write-up after I've played it.

ADDITIONAL XP UPGRADES

I've only shown the minimum XP upgrades to get The Red-Gloved Man engine working; and Flare is not absolutely necessary. Following are several other upgrades that will work well in the deck.

5-7XP: Add Charisma and replace 1-2x Stray Cat with 1-2x Leo De Luca(0 or II). Stray Cat was included to be easily expendable when you're ready to play The Red-Gloved Man (or even as an alternate target for A Chance Encounter) but, with Charisma, you could swap them out for Leo De Luca to get an additional action with The Red-Gloved Man's bonuses.

2-4XP: Upgrade 1-2x Survival Instinct to 1-2x Survival Instinct II. Worth the upgrade, in my opinion, for the extra icon and total evasion. Also works well with...

3-6XP: Replace 1-2x Liquid Courage/Guts with 1-2x Moment of Respite. Survival Instinct helps move her to a location with no enemies in order to play Moment of Respite.

3-7XP: Add Scrapper and replace 1-2x Guts with Lone Wolf (if playing solo) and/or Emergency Cache (0 or II) to provide resources for Scrapper and the more costly Peter Sylvestre & Moment of Respite.