High Frequency Trading Bob|Deck Guide

What did you get with your 3rd XP from In the Thick of It?

@Green_Cedar thanks for the interest in the deck :)

I chose not to use the 3rd XP before the end of the scenario to buy my first set of Joeys.

I could have gotten Adaptable but it’s a bit too early or Liquid Courage (1) to face the consequences of my Greed, but to be honest at that point I thought better just save it.

This deck so greedy and I love it. I was really looking for ideas to build Bob and I really like this engine heavy style that just completely spirals out of control.

I was also thinking about a Bless/Curse kinda of idea. Mainly becasuse of the new Lucky Dice that go back to your hand. Eye of the Djinn helps with fighting. What you think?

Sorry, why exactly can't you Scavenge Gold Pocket Watch? It's definitely an Item, and so if it winds up in your discard pile (through, say, Short Supply), it seems like the perfect Item to get back through Scavenge.

@clydelucy I was referring to the fact that once used it is removed from the game rather than just discarded, so you can’t use it every turn with Scavenging.

But you could indeed get it back if you commit it to a skill test or discard it via any other mean (Short Supply, Liquid Courage, etc…). I will edit the text to make it clearer :)

Thanks for this guide! I've been thoroughly enjoying Bob in multiplayer - it's so much fun throwing items around for all players at reduced cost. The upgraded Rat has been fantastic in his deck.

You are not getting the interaction between Skeleton Key and Lantern correctly. Lantern won't put shroud at 0 as it is permanently fixed at 1 by the key.

(Great deck and all, but my internal lawyer made me post this comment)

@Eruantalon Yes, when I was working on the side deck, I was reminded of that fact too, I am going to work on that little paragraph. I don't think that deck is actually going to be worth it at all. I can rise the Fight to a good level, but the Investigation is heavily impacted. Maybe I'll just replace Lantern by a Flashlight to gain actions for every location with Shroud 2 or less, and play the The Skeleton Key on every other location.

@Lord Triloth I'm glad you like it! It was super fun to work on this Investigator! Often after 30-40 XP, I don't really know what to change, or I reach a point when any upgrade would decrease the efficiency of the deck. Here I could spend 100 XP and still add value to the deck ahahah

I think by the time I would reach that XP I would have way too many traumas/weaknesses though...

@acotgreave Thanks for the feedback! What was your take on Bob + Joey? What cards have you been playing differently? That could help anyone trying to build their own deck with a different collection or simple that would like to look at it from a different angle :)

this is spoiler.. please add the tag => The first run-through of the Edge of the Earth campaign gave us two insights: there is a lot of XP, and moving is heavily needed. On the other hand, healing Partners is not as necessary as initially thought. Here is a Bob Jenkins deck that accumulates actions to go fast and far.

@Valentin1331 here's the Bob Deck I used: arkhamdb.com

Joey was amazing: with Shrewd Dealings, the ability to get assets in other players' hands in times of need saved the scenario.

Hi ! I love this deck guide and the idea behind it on how to play our businessman. I wonder how you would build this deck in a 4-player run as the main cluer. I looked you're link when you say "Make your own deck! • If you are playing Hard/Expert, Solo or in a group of 3 people or more, it is worth thinking about the The Skeleton Key. [...] " but it looks more like a true solo deck rather than a multiplayer-cluer deck. Thank you again for this guide!

Hey @Tirindor, I'm happy you love the deck!

High shroud locations are the biggest struggle for the Main cluever of a 4ppl group as you will often have a 5-Shroud location that holds 8 clues, so you need a consistent way of harvesting those places. I would basically take this deck and purchase really early, The Skeleton Key to attach it to any location that is 4-Shroud or more.

If you have good fighters in your group, then you probably don't need the .18 Derringer. You can replace it with an extra Emergency Cache and probably add "Look what I found!"

You may also replace some cards with other items that some of your teammates may want like an extra pair of Shoes, some Teddy Bears and so on.

This is exactly the type of changes I was thinking about ! Thank you. I'd even include Intel Report as money shouldn't be a problem but the lvl 0 rogue-slots are already taken. Would it be difficult to start without Lone Wolf according to your experience on this deck and how he behaves regarding ressources management?

Intel Report is not so good in higher player counts as it only takes a fraction of the clues on a location.

Think about NotZ with 4 players, for example, the Attic is 2 Shroud and has 8 clues, and the Cellar is 4 Shroud with also 8 clues. You need 12 clues to advance. You will most likely want to grab 8 in the Attic and 4 in the Cellar. Now if you play Intel Report, getting 1, or even 2 clues may be quite insufficient. I would prioritise on this combo: Investigate, if you succeed, good, if not, "Look what I found!", Live and Learn, Perception + Resourceful to get "Look what I found!". 1 Action, 3 clues, 2 resources, 2 cards.

And be careful, this lvl 0 deck does not generate that much resource, especially with Leo De Luca who is an expensive lad.

Thank your for your answer. I have the feeling that playing Bob as the main cluer isn't the best idea if you can't find The Skeleton Key soon enough in the game... It appears that your combo, even if it is really good at the moment, looks like something quite hard to repeat during the whole game. I guess it has something to do with the lack of seeker-cards access... Overall, except thanks to the "Look what I found!", Live and Learn, Perception and Resourceful combo you discribed, this deck can't really grab a lof of clues in the same action... But at the end of the day, I suppose it is still find because you have a ton of actions thanks to Leo De Luca, Borrowed Time, The Black Fan and The Red Clock. I wonder what is the more efficient between grabbing a lot of clues in the same action or grabbing a lot of clues because of extra-actions. What do you think ?

With so many items, if you want to find The Skeleton Key fast, you can also invest in 2 beautiful Backpacks that will even make you earn money when you throw them away.

Combo: play Backpack with your Passive, then one of the cards on it, and then Haste gives you an extra action to play another one.

Backpack is a great way to compensate for the situation where you would be stuck at a location with a high shroud early in a scenario and you can't activate your Lucky Cigarette Case. In most situations though, Lucky Cigarette Case will be enough to find all your major cards very quickly.

Usually, I would consider action compression > more actions because:

• Action compression cards often come with boosts: Deduction makes it more likely to succeed and rewards you for doing so.

• more tests = more symbol tokens and they often have bad consequences (even more in Hard/Expert). Pulling more tokens is also annoying if one of your teammate is trying to have a strategy based on /.

Now in this deck and this campaign, you will move a lot, more actions can compensate attaching and taking back The Skeleton Key, playing a lot of assets, drawing if you do not have what you want. So actions are also much more versatile than having the possibility to get an extra clue, because sometimes that's not what you need.

This is awesome.

Bob is an investigator who offers a lot of interesting possibilities for synergy within a group - can you name a few investigators that you'd consider strong pairings with him?

@gg88811 I am not the one expert of Bob so I'm sure other people will also have an opinion, but I'd say: look at the items available to you and think: who would love any of these? It's almost like you add Bob's card pool to any of your other investigators!

Track Shoes are amazing in any high agility investigator that does not have access to , like Winifred Habbamock or Ursula Downs.

Who wouldn't want a Lucky Cigarette Case, most likely the best drawing-engine lvl 0 card? That is why by the way this deck uses 2 Lucky Cigarette Case (3), so that you find your 1st copy ASAP, and you can potentially play 2 at the beginning, but once you have Eon Chart and The Red Clock out, give the 2nd Lucky Cigarette Case (3) to a teammate!

Why not some good soak like Leather Coat / Cherished Keepsake for our guardian friends like Mark Harrigan.

It also highly depends on how you build Bob if you're planning on being Flex, or the main cluever. But eventually I'm sure that besides a few exceptions like Preston Fairmont that shares roughly the same card pool, any investigator could see benefit from the support role of Bob in a campaign.

After reading Joey "The Rat" Vigil, I was thinking about his second ability. Are you allowed to discard an item from a fellow teammate play area ? It doesn't say if it has to be in your play area or not.

That is true, and that is an even much better synergy with Bob Jenkins as you can pay for other people's items like their guns, sell them when they are out of ammo and buy them another one.

That makes this deck also incredible at support for setup time and potentially resource support. That also means that with 4 players, you'll be even more likely to activate the The Black Fan early.

The only sad part is that you cannot scavenge other people's discard piles ahah

Oh and one last thing, from play doesn't even give any location restriction! And can be during any investigator's turn.

I will edit that in the Deck Guide as it was not clearly mentioned, so thanks!

(I'd like to share the "inspired-by-yours" deck I tried to make and discuss it with you. Do you have any idea if there are private mails we can send on this database? Or shall I copy/paste the link in the comment section?)

You can come to Mythos Buster's Discord to find a great community to talk about Arkham (including me). You can go to the Channel Deck-Tech to ask for some reviews of your decks ;)

Here's the link :)

@Tirindor nevermind Joey cannot discard another player's card :( The rule for Costs says: “ Only the controller of a card or ability may pay its costs. Game elements another player controls may not be used to pay a cost.” you cannot discard assets someone else controls to get the money benefit here, unfortunately. That would have been great fun!

It is absolute madness and I love it ! An upgrade path up to 80 XP is really sick. :) I remain doubtful about his stat line for the skill test (investigate or fight) but I'll figure it out trying him.

Hi @Valentin1331, thanks for sharing this insightful deck! I have a question regarding the Scavenging - Joey "The Rat" Vigil - Flashlight combo.

Say I have only one use left on my flashlight, both Scavenging and Joey "The Rat" Vigil out, and nothing in my discard pile. If I sell my Flashlight to Joey using the player window during the test, and I succeeded by 2, can I use Scavenging to get back the Flashlight I just discarded?

I know from the FAQ of Scavenging that you can't get back a committed item because they don't get discarded until Step 8. But here Joey's second ability is a cost, so I guess the Flashlight should be already in the discard pile by then?

If yes, this would be very powerful because I only need one Flashlight to keep me going forever. I would be tempted to lose the two Old Keyrings and run The Skeleton Key and Backpack instead, to increase the probability of successfully Scavenging and drawing them.

Hey @dazong, that is correct, you could run this situation with 1 Flashlight as long as both Scavenging and Joey "The Rat" Vigil are in play!

The reason why I've added 2 Flashlights and 2 Old Keyrings are to improve reliability. If you're the main cluever, your teammates cannot wait for you to draw your cards to start. Now indeed Backpack would help, and I agree that the The Skeleton Key is absolutely insane! I will update the upgrade path indeed to suggest this. I mean it's only 6 more XP to the already 80 XP ahah

@Valentin1331 Thanks for your reply! As a follow up, I wonder what's your take on Underworld Support -- looking at your full XP deck I realized most of the great upgrades are either exceptional or "limited 1 per investigator".

@dazong thanks for your answer :)

The main reason why I chose not to go with Underworld Support is because I wanted to use 2 copies of Scavenging to get more items back for Joey "The Rat" Vigil to munch and bring me money.

I think you could use it with great success, maybe adding a Backpack (2) to make sure that you pull your Lucky Cigarette Case (3) faster (2 copies in 30 cards is 1 card out of 15 being LCC3, when with Underworld Support it is 1/25 card being LCC3).

With Short Supply and Scavenging the odds are much better than that!

@clydelucy That is true though now this is completely different, if you take both Underworld Support and Short Supply, you take the (rather big) risk of having Scrounge for Supplies, Resourceful and Scavenging. Same, if you discard "The Rat", then you need A Chance Encounter (2) to balance it out, but if it is also in the trash...

Long story short, I think that it makes the deck clunky as you need to invest so much to accommodate for this for little return, especially as it works well like this already in my opinion.

You can also very well use these extra actions on frenetically drawing: with Haste and Eon Chart (4) down, you'd draw 3 cards a turn, while still having the 3 actions to move/investigate.

And if I want to increase consistency at one point, I'd replace Old Keyring by Lockpicks (1) and add All In somewhere.

How do you make a sideboard? I can't for the life of me figure out how to do that :p

@Millenhero I can't really show you but when I edit my deck, I click on the card that I want to add to the list, and when choosing the quantity, I can decide between adding to my deck or the Side Deck. Maybe try using a different device or browser (I checked on my phone and I could do it too).

There were other deck guides before this one, but I like the use of Borrowed Time

What do you think about changing Lucky Cigarette Case to Rabbit's Foot, and later upgrading to LCC 3 later?

I found it to be pretty troublesome to pass by 2, while failing happened a lot.

@Notter that is actually a good one, with all these Actions you are intending to not succeed some of them on a regular basis, so Rabbit's Foot could do the job as well, being cheaper and not using a slot.

Maybe we could use Faustian Bargain then? That would also fuel the Rabbit's Foot thanks to the tokens.

Great deck! Ran the first 2 Innsouth mission solo with it and had great succes and fun. I tweaked a few things for solo:

I swapped Leo De Luca and Leather Coat for the Lonnie Ritter / Heavy Furs Combo, because I wanted a bit more fighting power and survivability. Honestly, Heavy Furs felt like the MVP in so many situations. I just love it. ANd you are insanely tankie with both of them.

I also swapped Guts for Gravedigger's Shovel, because I wanted more weapons that only used one hand. Also, Gravedigger's Shovel can get high shroud clues for solo if needed. And since I ran solo, I couldn't play Guts for my allies' tests and I would probabily fail alot of them even with it.

All in all, great deck and tons of fun!

Loved the deck and all that you have done with it! I would love to see a write up for your solo Bob decks with the Skeleton Key and such!

Curious how you took your initial damage with In the Thick of It. Also curious how you soak horror without keepsake. Thanks!

Also curious how you make track shoes helpful as a starting card when you're only going to be up one on the test and so many of the recent scenarios penalize you for failing tests. Seems like you either want to be very confident you're going to pass or very confident you won't so you can play Take Heart? I've been avoiding tests where I'm up one.

@jgslc thanks for your feedback! This deck is definitely not intended for the Hard/Expert mode because a lot of actions mean a lot of token pull, which can be dramatic with the symbol tokens at those difficulties. So I intend here to simply absorb as much as I can and the Talisman of Protection takes the role of the Cherished Keepsake, being an item so compatible with Scavenging but not using the competitive slot.

And in lower difficulty, the consequences of failure are usually lower, so the shoes are intended here as a « it works 50% of the time when I get lucky » but if there are consequences to failure you want to avoid then feel free to replace them !

I was loving this deck, but I'd warn against taking Charon's Obol into Edge of the Earth the first time through. I don't want to spoil anything, but we just did a scenario that I suspect is very commonly going to end in defeat. We got defeated and I'm so sick that Bob is killed and now I have to start a new investigator right in the middle of a campaign. I thought I was so safe because I had so much soak, but there really wasn't anything we could do at the end to not both be defeated. Beware.

@jgslc thanks for the feedback, I will add a line on this to prevent anyone from having the same harsh situation without any warnings. Happy you enjoyed the deck during the first part of the playthrough though!

@Valentin1331 Great guide man. One of the most comprehensive and best formatted I've seen on this site yet!

One question though. You say in your "Upgrade" section of the guide to:

• Fight or Flight x1 > Well Connected x1

But Fight or Flight is never in the deck and barely mentioned in the guide aside from the "Damage Support"

Seeing that this is coming after most of the money makers enter the deck, is it not supposed to be:

• Emergency Cahce x1 > Well Connected x1 ?

Very interested to try this deck out, but I’m missing track shoes. Any good suggestions for a substitute? I have most of the card pool, but skipped Dream-Eaters and Circle Undone

Correct me if I'm wrong but Quickdraw Holster hardly seems worth it. You have to exhaust it to use the Firearm it is holding, so that means only one shot from your Colt in a round.

Oh ignore my previous comment, I didn't realize you could just freely use the attached Colt without using the Holster free-trigger

what is your trauma choice from In The Thick of It ?

Looks great! I'm going to give this a try. How would you change the deck now that Scavenging (0) has been tabooed to cost 2XP? Probably I will just ignore the taboo and pretend like I'm playing this deck 8 months ago, but curious if you think there's a good way to make the build work anyway. You could take one copy of Scavenging to start and wait until after the first scenario to get Charon's Obol, but would that slow down the upgrade plan too much?