Ashcan, Insane Werewolf (and his weredog)

The pack welcome you, dear reader... If you always dreamt about furry transformation, fighting with claws and fangs, striving against your own madness ; then, you are at the right place.

/!\ WARNING : THIS MAY CONTAIN SPOILER OF THE STANDALONE "Curse of the Rougarou" AND "Echoes of the Past".

Let's start with the deckbuilder perspective.

I wanted to make something of Monstrous Transformation, to make a character that can "evolve" to werewolf right after "Curse of the Rougarou". When in werewolf form, you're gonna have close to no intel and willpower. So, we need an investigator that can deal with such troubles. Here comes Pete. Or, should I say, Duke. Even when transformed, you can grab clues with a base 4. Pete was then an obvious choice : 4 intel ; 6 force ; 6 agitily when transformed.

As a survivor, Pete has access to Dark Horse, which can boost every stat as long as he is broke. So, we'll play a low-ressources build (card cost mean is about 1.7). Most of high cost cards are seekers cards that will dig our deck for our key cards. First improvement MUST be Scrapper, to make Dark Horse more reliable.

Another interesting feature about Pete is his low sanity (5). I was wondering... What about getting him mad ? We could use Say Your Prayers to protect him from further sanity damages while he is in werewolf form. Or search like crazy with Desperate Search. But that's not the key point in here... If you manage to get The Tattered Cloak, you can net him another tri-stat boost.

Now... Let's speak about the dark side of this build. It allows fast desperate cards and cloak, but put Pete in huge danger. He can sacrifice Duke to survive, but that's not very friendly... I prefer having Peter Sylvestre as a way to negate the curse drawback.

So what ? We can end up with a 4/5/8/8 Pete, hitting for 2 damages. With 'just' a 3-cards combo.

Experience ?

Not much experience is required to make this build work... Scrapper is needed to make Dark Horse fully fonctionnal, but that's all. You can upgrade Peter Sylvestre along the way, to make him more able to make up for Pete's low sanity, and for this willpower extra point. What you really need is to get the werewolf transformation, and so, play Curse of the Rougarou as fast as possible. If you can, investigate The Path to Carcosa until scenario n°3, Echoes of the past. One ending will give you the regalia dementia (hint : you may have to skin it...).

You can then choose different paths : either go for Lucky! and skills upgrades like Survival Instinct. Close Call might also worth it, but it doesn't synergize well with the Curse. Stroke of Luck is also really strong but must be used carefully.

Or, you can go for an ally-support deck : Madame Labranche synergize well with Pete, who can discard cards for its innate ability : Labranche can help dig in the deck and recycle cards you don't need. We won't have much ressources as well, and Labranche can help with that. We'll need Charisma to be able to play her and Pete, and Flare to get them at the right moment. Switching a Preposterous Sketches for a Leo De Luca (and a second Charisma) might worth it, but be carefull : Flare is exiled after played, and playing Leo from hand is really burdening.

Pete's adventures...

Ashcan always had 'bad' dreams. They weren't nightmares... nor dreams, in truth. He always had visions of people in need. So he traveled. Always on the road. He thought he had to help all these people to find rest.

His path lead him to fight a werewolf, a week ago. People were so happy he managed to tame the beast, that they granted him a little reward : a ticket for "The King in Yellow". And so, he was there, in the theater, trying to enjoy a dull play. He didn't like it, it lacked action. And he missed Duke, who cannot go in. He might even have fallen asleep.

When his eyes opened, the theater was in flame and there was a strange, heavy atmosphere... Around him, corpses, everywhere. When a strange creature attacked him, he striked, faster than ever. His claws reached the monster and sliced it. His... claws ? Something was off with him... But no time to find what.