Grimmey Thieves

Den of Thieves + Ezekiah Grimme + Putting The Pieces Together + Hexes (mostly Ace in the Hole) makes for some very fun, and very swingy times!

This deck is sometimes hit or miss, but it was mostly 'hit' as it performed muuuch better than expected in our local Servitor event with 9 folks who came out to Madisons town square.

Concept is built around Putting the Pieces Together (PTPT), so it's mostly about getting legal flushes/straight flushes and bumping your hand rank with all the various methods beyond PTPT like Cheatin' Varmint, Hex Slingin', It's Not What You Know..., and of course your home ability. Ace in the Hole really helps either keep you legal, or the bump you need to make a flush into a straight flush.

The Den home is almost entirely for the money - we only need a little bit of money for hexes, and maybe a dude later on. This structure will win lowball most of the time, but when it doesn't you get a guaranteed 1GR with the home, which is enough for most everything in this club-heavy deck. Once in awhile the Den can be used for shootouts, but its mostly there for the cash.

Barton Everest may seem an odd choice, given you'll want to stay legal as much as possible because of PTPT (and besides, a legal flush with + hand ranks and cheatin' res in hand is a very lethal combination), but this structure has 8 values at x4 of, so cheatin sometimes can't be avoided. Barton helps to ease the sting of a PTPT or two turning against you, and if you have the Den available then it becomes back to normal with 2 PTPTs on the board. It really helped in a few situations during the tournament, and while Barton was there originally solely as a 2-stud with influence, his trait surprisingly came in handy more than once.

The best part about this deck is there are a lot of strange and wonderful interactions possible. Things that happened during the Servitor event:

• I revealed a cheatin' flush in a shootout to my opponents legal rank 10 (5 of a kind) - this is by default a terrible situation to be in. I played a hex slingin to bump to to an 8. He used This'll Hurt in the Mornin' , which doesn't work great against a mostly-clubs deck, and I pulled 2 more clubs to keep my rank 6(+2). I then used Ace in the Hole to make myself a straight flush, putting me up to 11! I went from a cheatin rank 6 vs a legal rank 10, to beating him by 1 hand rank even after he played a cheatin res against me! Wow!

• I once revealed a cheatin' flush, got +1 hand rank with Barton, then used Ace in the Hole to make myself legal (same can be done with Theo Whateley-Boyer)

• I once had 2 PTPTs on the board, with Barton in my posse (along with others) in a shootout against a posse with Tommy Harden. I revealed a legal hand (rank 2, I think, one short of a flush). After revealing I bumped myself up another hand rank with the Den, confident they didn't have a cheatin' res, then later turned the hand into a rank 6 flush with either Theo or Ace in the Hole (can't remember which). So in total I had a cheating rank 9 that didn't affect my Barton, nor his Tommy, nor the PTPTs because it wasn't cheating "on reveal". If I was worried about a cheatin res I could have stuck with the eventual rank 8 and not used the Den. Love the flexibility here!

• More than once I had a cheatin flush with one or two PTPTs on the board, to which Barton and the Den helped to ease what normally would have been much more painful.

On the flip side, even with Barton and the Den, booted PTPTs (especially in multiple shootouts in a turn) can be very painful, so this deck is SUPER swingy - turning cheatin rank 6's into legal rank 11's, or totally failing and putting a cheatin flush with booted PTPTs on the board for cheatin rank 4 or 5's, PLUS incoming cheatin' punishment.

It's an 'all in', do or die type of deck, so if you like to live dangerously and don't mind occasionally failing big then this deck is for you!