The Littlest Hobo (1-4 players Dunwich)

There's a voice that keeps on calling me.
Down the road, that's where I'll always be.
Every stop I make, I make a new friend.
Can't stay for long, just turn around and I'm gone again.

Maybe tomorrow I'll want to settle down,
Until tomorrow I'll just keep moving on.

This is a future-proof "Ashcan" Pete deck designed to work for any number of players, including solo play!

I see many netdecks that do not truly justify their place in a multiplayer game. Considering that each additional player equals an additional encounter card every turn, not to mention increasing clue requirements and boss health, every investigator needs to really pull their weight. Instead they often either waste too much time setting up while doom marches on, or they get themselves into a position where the only way they can keep safe and sane is by hogging the actions of one or more other players.

Enter the Littlest Hobo!

You're a cheeky little drifter here to help those who can't help themselves. Your innate click compression means that you can pick up the slack when one of your durdling buddies fails at action economy. Being set up from the word go with Duke means that you can step in when your killer can't find a weapon or when his Machete just doesn't cut it against 1000 dark young. And when your clue-hunter forgets to put any evade enablers whatsoever into her deck despite having 5 health, guess who saves the day?

Being a Homeless Hero Dog

The usual Ashcan tricks are in place here. To summarise those:

• We prioritise discarding one of our 7 items to ready Duke because we can recover them later with Scavenging
• Duke's attacks are supplemented by Fire Axe that we have no problem using because our cards don't cost many resources
  
• Peter Sylvestre soaks horror so low-sanity Pete doesn't go gibbering off into the night
  
• Rabbit's Foot combines with lots of cantrip skills to provide a guaranteed method to maintain card flow for our ability
  

None of this is news, but the selection of singletons and borrowed class cards certainly might be.

Controversial Card Choices

So to address the elephant in the room: singletons.

This deck uses a lot of single copies of things and as such looks like a pile instead of a well-structured deck. Bear in mind, however, that AHTCG decks are extremely slim and typically draw a lot of cards given that cantrip skill cards are generally considered to be staples. The singletons chosen here also fulfill multiple overlapping roles (the same principle I use when building EDH decks for Magic).

With that in mind, here are my thoughts about various deckbuilding choices.

Magnifying Glass
The spyglass has magnificent synergy in this deck. It is the best card for buffing Duke's investigate checks, since unlike Dr. Milan Christopher it is an item and so can be recovered using Scavenging, and it is a so doesn't interfere with our . Just remember that, being a penniless drifter, you can't use XP to upgrade this.

Ritual Candles
This was originally a second copy of Magnifying Glass because having two copies of that card is legitimately good, however there were situations where I had both and wished that the second one was candles. This has got to be my favourite card in the game because it helps every action you take. It also discards for for those times when you find yourself doing a Penn Jillette impersonation by juggling a spyglass, a candle, and a couple of axes.

Hard Knocks
Be a tough fighting dog! This is absolutely worth a single copy as a hands-free alternative to Fire Axe. One of Duke's downsides is that sometimes 4 is simply not enough but this helps make those bites count. It also combines with Bait and Switch to make clutch repositioning much easier to pull off. If you are running Stray Cat in Pete then you should probably pack this instead.

Guard Dog
Opening a kennel is a fine way to kill some cultists or to get the last point of damage onto some annoying enemies with odd health scores (Silver Twilight Acolyte springs to mind). For best use, engage the enemy, use Duke to move away and investigate, take the attack of opportunity and respond. We can increase his longevity by spreading multiple-damage attacks across both dogs. Only one copy because we don't want to take too many allies before we have access to Charisma. It doesn't tend to stick around for long in any case, and I mulligan away the quarterback if I have both my allies in my starting hand.

Blinding Light
This spell fills a similar yet subtly different role to Guard Dog. Dealing an extra point of damage for evading is nice, as is evading with your higher score. Aside from anything else it provides a proactive use for Guts. You can set up an odd-health enemy to die on your following turn without taking its hit, and for that reason I prefer it here to Dodge. It is especially clutch against high-fight low-evade beasts like Relentless Dark Young.
I have seen Ashcan decks running more spell-heavy but I don't like having to choose between Holy Rosary and Rabbit's Foot, so one copy is enough (and Dig Deep sucks without Shrivelling).

Survival Instinct
This card single handedly encourages your allies to actually evade things. It is a great tool to have because it allows compression with the free move as well as potentially multiple evades. I see Ashcan decks wasting precious non-survivor slots on Shortcut when they should probably just have this! It certainly takes the pressure off on those crucial turns when Daisy Walker suddenly gets flooded by too many enemies for the chef/cop/dilettante to engage (which happens all the freaking time).

Bait and Switch
Not quite as useful in a pinch as Survival Instinct, but since it is an evade action you can use it at the same time to push a hunter two locations away, or to help reposition the board for an ally's Dynamite Blast. The job of this card is also somewhat covered by Blinding Light, so we only run one copy of tentaclebeast eating a hat.

Emergency Cache
While we don't need that much cash to play our stuff, a single Beanstalk Royalties is still worthwhile for those times when we accidentally spend all our money and then need to make like Meatloaf and hit something with an axe (geddit?), or heaven forbid bribe a masked cultist. Plus the soon-to-be-released upgrade gives it a cantrip.

Experience

I mentioned that this deck is future-proof, mostly because there is so much that you can spend experience to improve! Including some of the cool stuff that has already been spoiled from the upcoming packs! Yay!

Priority of experience spending is as follows:

-2 Lucky! for +2 Lucky! (4 XP)
-2 Peter Sylvestre for +2 Peter Sylvestre (4 XP)
-2 "Look what I found!" for +2 Will to Survive (6 XP)
-1 Bait and Switch for +1 Close Call (2 XP)
-1 Leather Coat for +1 Bulletproof Vest (3 XP)

Aside from the obvious upgrades, Will to Survive painlessly replaces "Look what I found!" because it does everything that card does and more, including having better icons ( vs ). One copy of Close Call is a fine trade for our Bait and Switch to round out the evasion suite. Bulletproof Vest can be considered as an upgrade to Leather Coat, although be aware that the zero cost of that card can actually be relevant.

But the littlest hobo always looks to the horizon!

Already revealed from The Essex County Express is Charisma, a card which makes it worth considering another ally and possibly changing the Blinding Light to a second Guard Dog. Finally, Blood on the Altar heralds Emergency Cache level 2, which adds a card draw to its free resources, and certainly will be a high value upgrade here.

Spoiler-free Piloting Tips

Sometimes the correct course of action with this deck is not readily apparent. These tips will help you pilot The Littlest Hobo to victory!

The Night of the Zealot

• You probably don't want to be lead investigator if you can help it, although if it happens then you can fairly painlessly play without your usual allies.
• Remember that Duke's investigate can be used to move into an unexplored location twice per turn which makes the streets of Arkham your personal playground, but let someone else play in the graveyard for optimal lines of play.
• The best card at the main path is Survival Instinct, especially if your interrogations went badly wrong.

The Dunwich Legacy

• Again you would rather let someone else be lead investigator, but if you have access to Charisma then go ahead and lead.
• Very careful management of Scavenging while at university goes a long way towards mitigating risk.
• You should be able to run rings around aloof enemies.
• The deck is generally very good in casinos.

Curse of the Rougarou / Carnivale of Horror
My copies of these packs are in the mail, I will update when I've beaten them!

So if you want to join me for a while,
Just grab your hat, we'll travel light, that's hobo style.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down,
Until tomorrow, the whole world is my home.