Zen and the Art of Protection Rackets (Pilfer Deck Guide)

For a thematic breakdown of the deck and a vignette depicting the character in action, check out the companion article here: https://strengthinnumbersarkham.wordpress.com/2025/02/27/character-concept-zen-and-the-art-of-protection-rackets/

Intro

Hey folks! I'm back. Today's deckbuild is a bit of a silly one, but one I'm genuinely looking forward to trying out once TDC releases here (and once I can pry Michael out of Jam, Corrupt, and Lyrie's cold dead hands. He's very popular in my playgroup).

I imagine you all know at this point that I think of myself as something of a deckbuilding hipster. When I build, I always try to find something I've never seen done before, that recontextualizes a character in an unexpected new way, etc. etc.

Well, when Michael was revealed, it was pretty obvious that every part of his kit screamed "primary fighter". And I hate nothing more than being obvious. So I immediately started asking myself–could I make him into a cluever? Rogue has plenty of tricks for clues, but Michael's intellect and agility were pretty poor, which knocks most of them out of the running...or does it?

The other thing Michael's kit screams is "big money", an archetype I and many in my playgroup loved back when we started the game, but which I haven't actually played for a good long while. And the biggest payoff for Big Money is Well Connected, which allows you to massively oversucceed just about any test you like. Including, for example, the test on Pilfer, rogue's highest-compression clueing tool.

Voilà (or should I say viola?), a deck was born.

The Deck

In order to make big money Michael work properly, we'll need to make sure that his gun loops generate more resources than they cost to play. And to maximize his ability, we want as many guns in play as we can fire in a single round.

The latter is easy. With a .45 Thompson, two Luger P08s, and a Mauser C96, we can fire four shots for two actions and still have one spare for a second Thompson round, a Mob Connections recovery, a Luger reload, or a move/play/etc. And all the slots we need come from our "Viola" Case and a single Hidden Pocket on our Stylish Coat. The second copies of the Mauser and the Thompson can then be used to knock emptied guns out of our hands and into our Mob Connections, from which they can be recovered with 2r and an action. We can then either use a second action to replay, or get them out fast with "I'll take that!" and Sleight of Hand. It's slow and a little clunky, but thanks to our reliable Lugers, the huge amount of ammo on our guns, and our position as a pure flex, the value we generate will more than balance out the occasional awkward reloads.

With our gun setup complete, bullet math is a little harder–but Zen Michael ain't afraid of no arithmetic! Thanks to Locked and Loaded, each Thompson produces a minimum of 6r before being emptied, which fully refunds its cost; and assuming we oversucceed on the Mauser and choose the resource option each time, then each Mauser produces a net positive of +2r each time it gets emptied. This isn't even counting Michael's ability, which can gain us up to an extra 4r per round (which works with the Luger's charged reload in order to make those two resource-neutral by default, or resource-positive if we ever have an off-turn and don't need two shots from them at once). And Stylish Coat brings in an extra buck off one of our triggers, to essentially give us Jenny's ability on top of our own.

So we've got up to four guns to shoot each turn, all of which are resource-neutral at the absolute worst and significantly resource-positive otherwise. Now we need our payoff, the thing that makes Zen Michael unique–his combat trance, Well Connected/Pilfer. Because our ability is generating 4r per turn, plus the net on Mauser and some Luger shots, plus Stylish Coat, our Well Connected boost is steadily increasing by 1 every turn. It should be more than enough to blast a Pilfer played fast by Chuck Fergus, succeed by 2, and return it to hand to repeat every single turn for 3 more clues.

To prevent Pilfer from eating into our Well Connected stock, we run two Crafties to pay for it each turn. And thanks to Bewitching, Zen Michael can ensure Pilfer, Sleight of Hand, and Cheat the System for an easy early cash boost once the first Crafty and Thompson are in play.

So that's it! Shoot your endlessly-refilling guns, make your money, and use Zen Michael's mid-combat clarity to sweep three clues up each turn at fast speed. Enjoy being the most violent sleuth of all time!

Variants

I don't have a lot of suggestions today, since this is a fairly straightforward deck despite its unorthodoxy. Still, here are a few ideas for personalization anyway!

• Joey "The Rat" Vigil allows you to loop guns more aggressively; while he forces you to play Pilfer as an ordinary action (and can't sub in for Crafty early on) he increases the refund amount on each gun by 1, and makes replaying them fast. So it's up to you if you want to focus more on the money printers (and their damage output) rather than the payoff!

• I play far too many Dirty Fighting decks. It's just so cool! And it works here if you swap Pilfer for Breaking and Entering, which reduces your clue compression to nothing but allows you to automatically evade enemies for value off Pickpocketing, extra attacks from Dirty Fighting and possibly some .25 Automatics, etc.

Conclusion

And there you have it, folks! I hope you enjoyed this extremely unconventional take on Michael McGlen. If you'd like a thematic explanation of why shooting guns makes Michael so gosh darn good at investigating, check out the companion article linked above!

Have a lovely day, and if you find yourself needing to really focus on something, you can always try dissociating in the middle of a shootout like our boy Mike does. I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong!