Roland's Task Force|20k Series|Deck Guide

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
None yet

Valentin1331 · 55089

Roland Recruits a Task Force for a deadly Hunt.

Screenshot-2023-03-23-at-14-03-56.png

Credit: Shane Pierce


Introduction:

What's best than looking at one of the oldest investigators in the light of new cards? Especially the Field Agent opens exciting possibilities for an ally-focused deck that heals his team to benefit from them. This deck is not shiny, but it proved surprisingly reliable and enjoyable.

This series is a celebration of the 20k points on ArkhamDB to thank you all for all the support received.
Click here to see all the previous decks. I will keep releasing a new standalone-ready deck concept every week on Friday, so stay tuned and keep pressing the button if you want to see more!

Let me know which investigators you want to see next in the comment!


Table of Content:
  • Overview

  • Main Strategy

  • Get your squadron ready

  • Embody your leading detective role

  • Other Cards

  • Upgrade Path


Overview:
 
Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆
Enemy Management: ★★★★☆
Clue-getting: ★★★★☆
Encounter protection: ★★☆☆☆
Survivability: ★★★☆☆
Economy: ★★★☆☆
Card Drawing: ★★★☆☆

Main Strategy:

Get your squadron ready:

To investigate this case, you need a real team you can count on:

  • Beat Cop (2) deals the 3rd damage to save you a use on Enchanted Blade/Roland's .38 Special and an action. The is welcome to compensate for Roland base value.

  • As Field Agent is not unique, you can play 2 at the same time and bring your to 5, allowing you to find clues decently in locations with shrouds of 3 or less, and their ability can be used to empty the shroud-4+ locations.

The perfect board state for this deck is Beat Cop (2) x1 and Field Agent x2, bringing your stats to 3-5-5-2 and bringing you tons of soak.

  • Calling in Favors helps a lot recruiting your team. Feel free first to play 2 Beat Cop (2) if you find them early, and use one to replace it with a Field Agent once you've extracted the juice out of it.

  • Speaking of juice, a Trusted Teammate will find you more clues and be a better recipient for a Soothing Melody.

  • Your very Inspiring Presence will motivate your team to give you more of themselves.

  • Nothing's worth a good Motivational Speech to get the buy in from your crew. Feel free to do it even when you are engaged with enemies to call for some soak.

  • Later in the campaign, you will get an artefact that will make all your teammates fight harder, investigate better, accept more horrors and endure more mistreatments: the The Star • XVII.


Embody your leading detective role:

Your ability makes you the obvious leader of the team. You can fight better than Beat Cops (2) and get clues better than Field Agents, thanks to your ability to investigate dead monsters and gain insights.

  • Shortcut helps when you are engaged with an enemy and there is no clue at your location. Move yourself and the enemy to another location with a clue before killing it and getting the reward.

  • If you are on a high-shroud location, use On the Hunt (3) to fish for an enemy and get a clue and resources out of its guts while avoiding possible Rotting Remains.

  • Get all the Glory from your team's achievements and get rewarded for killing foes.

    • Later, you can learn how to do Enemy Sketches to prepare your fellowship for what they will encounter out there.
  • As you gain experience, your Keen Eye will help you dealing with harder situations.


Other Cards:
  • Machete is your obvious choice when you are engaged with one single enemy.

    • Daring and Overpower help compensate for your low value, against 4+ combat enemies.

    • We end up upgrading it into Mind over Matter (2), which is a fantastic companion for these power turns where you need to land every blow and evade the boss.

  • Enchanted Blade and Roland's .38 Special, on the other hand, are prioritised when you are engaged with more than one enemy.

    • Later, we upgrade into Enchanted Blade (3), which helps with our 5 base sanity as well as one of 's main weakness: draw. Especially as we upgrade the Hallowed Mirror (3), the more draw, the more heal on our team, the more ability spam we get.
  • Take the Initiative is our answer to the Encounter Deck mostly, but also some scenario tests. Our other main answer is simply to take the blow and use the soak of our Allies.

  • Shout-out to Breach the Door, which didn't make it to this list but that should be considered by anyone playing with 3 or more and/or going to TSK.

  • I also added Mysteries Remain and The Dirge of Reason to the side deck, as these are possible to use instead of the OG set, especially if you are running campaigns like TFA that are already trauma heavy.

    • I wouldn't recommend going with both sets at the same time as Mysteries Remain is basically one gained action and The Dirge of Reason 2 actions lost, for a net loss of 1 action.

A little word on consistency here: being a guardian means protecting your team against enemies as much as possible from turn one.

  • 5 weapons mean an 88% chance of finding one in your opening hand if you hard mulligan for one.

  • Drawing 2 cards on your first turn if you didn't find a weapon in the first place brings your total chances of playing a weapon on your first turn to 92%.

  • If You're like U2, a second turn of power draw brings you to 96.8% chances of finding and playing a weapon.

As a flex deck, I consider this more than enough in terms of consistency to skip Prepared for the Worst.


Upgrade Path:

Link to the 0xp deck


 Cost  Total
Core Upgrades 0 XP
   In the Thick of It  →  Charisma ••• 3 XP 3 XP
   Beat Cop    Beat Cop •• 2 XP 5 XP
   Beat Cop    Beat Cop •• 2 XP 7 XP
   Dr. Milan Christopher  →  Field Agent •• 2 XP 9 XP
   Dr. Milan Christopher  →  Field Agent •• 2 XP 11 XP
    →  Charisma ••• 3 XP 14 XP
   Crack the Case  →  On the Hunt ••• 3 XP 17 XP
   Crack the Case  →  On the Hunt ••• 3 XP 20 XP
 
Quality of Life Upgrades 20 XP
   Enchanted Blade    Enchanted Blade ••• 3 XP 23 XP
   Enchanted Blade    Enchanted Blade ••• 3 XP 26 XP
   Hallowed Mirror    Hallowed Mirror ••• 3 XP 29 XP
    →  Keen Eye ••• 3 XP 32 XP
   Glory  →  Preposterous Sketches •• 2 XP 34 XP
   Glory  →  Preposterous Sketches •• 2 XP 36 XP
   Trusted  →  The Star • XVII ••• 3 XP 39 XP
   Trusted  →  The Star • XVII ••• 3 XP 42 XP
   Daring  →  Mind over Matter •• 2 XP 44 XP
   Daring  →  Mind over Matter •• 2 XP 46 XP
   Vicious Blow    Vicious Blow •• 2 XP 48 XP
   Vicious Blow    Vicious Blow •• 2 XP 50 XP
   Overpower    Overpower •• 2 XP 52 XP

(View at arkham-starter.com)


Link to the full xp deck



To create your own guides, find the template I have created here

9 comments

Mar 25, 2023 koaexe · 25

Nice deck! Roland is one of my favourite investigators and it's nice to see him getting some love.
Because you only used Guardian cards up to Level 3 and every Seeker card you mentioned except Dr. Milan (who is soon upgraded into Field Agent) is Insight-traited, wouldn't it be better to use the Parallel back for 5 extra XP? Or is it just attempting to keep things simple by not involving Parallels?

Mar 26, 2023 SilverTwilightLodgeJanitor · 7

Thanks, another interesting deck! Maybe do a Harvey Walters or a (blessed?) Diana Stanley deck next? Also, major props for the "comic strip" you included in your recent Monterey Jack deck; would love to see more of that!

Mar 28, 2023 testfail · 1

I really love this deck. However, why don't we add Michael Leigh in later of the campaign to make the Roland Banks stat up to 3-6-6-2 not to mention additonal damages.

Mar 29, 2023 Valentin1331 · 55089

@koaexe thanks for the recommendation, you are 100% right. I simply never looked at the parallel investigators yet so I didn’t even think about that option. That being said, it’s an amazing option!

@SilverTwilightLodgeJanitor thanks, that comic strip was a lot of fun to make, but I probably won’t have the inspiration that often. I also need a decent number of higher quality artworks at hand.
When it comes to Harvey, I already gave him a deck not so long ago, have you seen it? It definitely needs Empirical Hypothesis though! For Diana, I had an idea for a full Spirit deck with Boxing Gloves before realising that PlayingBoardGames already had the idea!

@testfail that’s an amazing idea! To be fully transparent I didn’t think about him, also because the upgrade path was already quite packed, but he makes 200% sense in this deck! I will add it to the guide as a suggestion :)

Mar 30, 2023 Zarathustra11 · 1

I'm so stoked to see a decklist this interesting for Roland, an investigator I haven't played since Night of the Zealot! I will be taking it through Dark Matter in true solo. :)

May 05, 2023 Nessmk2 · 1

Handed this deck to a new player and went through Carcosa with it; they loved it and wanted to come back for more! Thanks!

May 05, 2023 Valentin1331 · 55089

@Zarathustra11 happy this got you excited for the old man Roland again! Let me know how it went!

@Nessmk2 thank you so much for taking the time to come back and let me know, this type of feedback is the fuel that keeps me going! Hope you’ll find other exciting decks in the series :)

Jun 04, 2023 jultou · 1

Thanks for this deck idea, good to see old investigator deck using today's card collection. Just finished Night of the Zealot + 2 sides scenarios following most of your build. This was fun and very effective. Lita ally was a great addition to the ally team (at a cost).

One issue is that sometime timing was not perfect like not having 'calling favour' and 'motivational speech' when you need them and get these cards when you don't. Also 'on the hunt' I regretted taking because there was already enough monsters to manage, especially with machete limit. But in general it worked pretty well.

The main issue for me with Roland is 'cover up'. Its the most scary weakness of all investigators I played. When a scenario is close to the end, pretty much cleared from all easy to get clues, drawing a cards from your deck is more scary than drawing from the encounter deck.

Aug 18, 2023 camipco · 29

@jultou the deck is already packed with allies, but I wonder if it's possible to find room for Mr. "Rook" to pull out Cover Up early, and for draw, of course. Other options are Glimpse the Unthinkable, Captivating Discovery or of course just playing with the alternate signature / weakness.

The other choice is to play with one of the many solid return-clues-to-location cards that Roland has access to.

fwiw, the ability on Cover Up can be triggered by any investigator at Roland's location, so your buddies can help you out.