"Ashcan" Pete, the Katana John Wick with Dog

Question: How do you guarantee 6 damage with Katana twice in a row?

Answer: Be Ashcan, an investigator who can ready an asset fast by discarding a card, and use upgraded Will to Survive to not draw token for two attacks. Use the permanent Scrapper to adjust for the perfect success by two.

Question: How can you use Katana semi reliably otherwise?

Answer: Artistic Inspiration allows you to get the 3 damages at success by 1 or 3. With Lucky!, you can actually get the 3 damages at -1 failure. With Granny Orne's help on top, also at -2.

Also, you can always instead use it for a free action agility attack. Neat for when you just want to get rid of those pesky 1-health enemies.

Question: Is this truly a Katana deck?

Answer: Not really, It's more useful to view this as a deck that relies on Duke and card-recursion and powerful skills to get through the early and mid stages of the game. Even the cards that is here to support Katana are useful on their own. Granny Orne and Artistic Inspiration together is literally spammable Lucky!. You might not even need the Katana at all.

But once the Katana is unsheathed with Artistic Inspiration in play, it's John Wick time. And once you have the upgraded Will to Survive and money or the right skill cards, get ready to behead the boss.

Question: But why Underworld Support?

Answer: I need to make this card work, damn it!

Also, this feels like the only way to make Artistic Inspiration come up more reliably. It also favors heavily investing into powerful cards with Ascetic by condensing the deck slightly more.

General Notes:

This is really more of a solo deck. Also, this is an Ascetic Character. You really should not care about getting Victory off of clue locations.

Also, this deck requires lots of resources (expensive cards) and card draws (to feed the discard machine). The other major weakness is that you will trigger your weaknesses much earlier also. Impromptu Barrier is for the unfortunate event of getting enemies while being Wracked by Nightmares.

Opening Hand strategy:

• Keep Ample Supplies, Rabbit's Foot, Artistic Inspiration, Fieldwork, Backpack
• Keep the Katana, for no other weapons are worthy! ** In all honesty, the Katana free action would be pretty useful, and may expand your ability to deal with enemies to not just 2-health and 4-health, but also 1-health and 3-health. It also makes your other weapons perfectly viable for discard.