He's got several competitors, but I feel like Pete Spence has a strong claim to be the best Dude in HCYM.

Yes, he's just a cheapie Dude with an ability that's narrower/weaker than Doomsday Supply, but while you have to draw each copy of Doomsday Supply seperately (which may or may not be on-value), Pete lets an Outlaw deck tutor from day 1 for a whole bunch of geared-towards-specific-opposition cards (Peacemaker, Shotgun, Tusk, Scattergun, Knight's Chasuble, Fancy New Hat, and more).

And yes, he's limited to what's in your discard pile at any given time (Travis Moone and Henry Moran may help out here), but within those limits, he can run the job in your own home just by stepping outside first, acfivate Elliot Smithson's ability immediately, and give you a head start on bounty generation.

And with no Influence, Pete can be tossed into plenty of non-Outlaw-decks as a later-game cheap body who can also fetch you a couple of

• Melee Weapons for Abram's Crusaders
• Various other gadget weapons, including Net Gun which is geared towards constantly discarding and even fits his value, as well as Decimator Array
• Similarly for Morgan decks, including being a backup for Maggie Harris as a Yagn-fetcher (and if you get them both out, Irving Patterson gets to do his join-a-job-at-home-while-booted-for-1-GR trick twice per turn).
• Attires for First People Bethany Shiile decks, or just to go with influence-leveraging (hello Ranger's Bible for Enapay)
• Nunchucks for Kung Fu decks, and Attires to pump influence for Behold White Bull
• A selection of Mystical Weapons (Devil's Six Gun, Jael's Guile, Stone's Colt Dragoons...), and Chasubles for Bayou Vermillion

Another member of the WildCards crew, even if the art looks nothing like him.

This started as one of my first ideas. I had this one before Emre made the open call for what would become Hell's Coming With Me - under the playtest name "White Hat".

I thought it would be a good element thematically to have a dude that was so intrinsically good that his stats would suffer if he transgressed.

Originally no upkeep and five cost, the shift was the result of concerns of just how robust the Law Dogs zero upkeep starting posse could be.

I was also convinced to get the noon action added as a way to clear his name in the event of the Law Dog Mirror match.

another 2 stud 2 influence without upkeep like Johnny Ringo

originally the bounty was removed straight away, but playtesters advocated in favor of those key Oulaw cards whose functionality is tied to their Bounty (the Aims Brothers, Desolation Row, Marion Seville, Maria Kingsford, etc)

On the board Cheating Punishment this strong keeps things legal, or makes them limit the amount of bounty they commit to the struggle.

Being able to remove the bounty when the cheating resolution resolves either limits the future impact of Virgil, or, if the hand rank reduction forces deaths, limits the financial windfall that their bounty would have provided.

Another of our 'Solo Artists', Joan is also not a quitter.

she has an impressive 4 stud bullets. And Blessed. And Deputy.

But she will not leave a fight. she ignores pistol whips, or the similar tactics thrown your way.

but she cannot back down either. Sun in yer eyes and you barely scrape through the round? Too bad, she is going to stick it out and hope for the best. Willa Mae will leave Joan behind.

this judge was developed as a Noon Control tool to accompany the Law Dog Bounty Punishment theme.

It took several iterations to get the Judge right.

when a deck dedicates itself to stacking bounty, crossing the threshold is pretty easy. effectively neutralizing a dude for a turn.

to keep the Judge from being to repeatably oppressive, he does allow the defendant to renounce their wayward ways. But by then the damage is done and the dude is home booted.

there were a number of submissions from PT of cards to do shootouts using influence, which the gang called "rap battles" internally.

Speaks with Buffalo can only call down the influence fight in an effort to find the right cards, but if it all works out, he unboots to mitigate the boot cost of his job.

Sure, your opponent can pull a 'matador' and ignore the job - and let you cycle two cards - adding another tool to the First Peoples already established arsenal.

one of a few newer dudes intended to fight solo, despite the inherent risks associated with such tactics.

and, for the dedicated kung fu deck, there is very little that a 9 value kung fu dude cannot perform with confidence.

melee weapons in the low values are a little sparse, but a Bowie Knife is super versatile.

Here we have a shaman that supports Totems and Holy Grounds - and will at least help out should a fight break out.

While we do not have any spirits that do their thing without booting, Tsintah can make sure to get something out of some of those more "conditional" spirits.

keeping on the ongoing Town Square domination theme of the First Peoples, Tawodi finds the dudes and deeds you need - as a job with all the risks that come with it.

sure, starting Tawodi takes up the precious upkeep slot. But at least the cost is cheap. And she provides a backup stud should your opponent deign to challenge your job.

combine with Eagle Wardens and you can grab key shootout actions, then run Tawodi's job to bring your card finding dude home; stealing a page from the Allie Hensman / Desolation Row playbook.

Full Disclosure - the "Evan" part of this card, the smaller one in the background, is my godson. And Marshal David Hammond did a phenomenal job with the art.

fighting stud huckster on the always useful J value - this gruesome twosome is not afraid to rummage through the pockets of the dudes that they put into the ground and look for loose change.

what is with Bogie Man?

If you want to start him, you get a 2 influence stud abomination.

If you can generate a solid targeted kill of an opposing 2 influence dude, Bogie turns into a respectable 2 stud.

sure, he loses the bonus influence when one of your dudes dies - but keeping your dudes alive is generally the plan anyway.

now, if you do not start him, there is a fair chance that one of your poor unfortunate souls is going to be dead by the time Bogie makes it into play (and if that corpse was Steven Wiles, Bogie is a 3 stud with 1 upkeep, score!). But Bogie IS on Dead Man's Hand Values, with just enough upkeep to give you the option of putting his key value back into rotation.

Of course having studs is best. But plans don't always work out.

Maurice here can serve as a solid protector in a starting posse that is running without studs. With the right mix of hucksters in his posse, the prospect of losing their big stud should be daunting for most shootout decks.

add in the prospect of subsequently using one of a variety of shootout actions to bring your own stud into the shootout after neutralizing the other side, and Maurice here might just earn himself a spot in a few Fear Monger decks.

(Or even a few Law Dog decks focusing on punishing cheating)

Support for the Mystical Goods side of the Fear Mongers.

Built in Send Home is golden, so it had to come with a few caveats. Once Vivene here gets a Stone's Colt Dragoons, you have to make sure to out maneuver her so keep your shooter of choice in the fight (or make sure your shooter rocks a 13+ grit).

I want to get out in front of this and take all the blame for any madness that Cooper brings to your world.

Totally unpredictable effect (since we lack solid deck stacking, which is good).

a little pricey, sure, but a stud Mad Scientist who could possibly be a 5 stud (9 if that experimental gadget is Aetheric Shockwave Inducer

Boom!

Shutting down a dude's ability can certainly turn a fight on its edge.

Or, if you are super cagey, and can afford the possible sacrifice play. You can get into a fight in order to shut off a noon action on a dude. Or, f you are really sneaky, shut a dude off, and then skip back home with a Personal Ornithopter.

Harlan here is my attempt at supporting there Ranch theme. Cost effective, no upkeep, and dangerous in all the right situations.

Plus, with the efforts of PBE to drop more random ranches in other values, your opponent's deeds have an increased likelihood of triggering this little ranch hand.

support for the Entrepreneur economic theme continues to tricky. Deeds are one of the keys to victory, and giving it too easily to just one faction would skew the game. So a balance had to be struck.

First version did not force the deed to be in town. My playtesters found the flaw in my plan, getting all the out of town, no risk deeds into play and leveraging that economic strength into easy victory. So now there is at least the board position risk of putting a control point deed into play.

This helps tactics that hinge upon particular deeds (The Whateley Estate) of course. Another tactic to consider is using Mr. Baird to keep your on value deeds in your deck and fish out your off value deeds to tighten up your value structure. (Maybe in an A, 8, J DMH deck??)

with the way this set was conceived, Gabriel is curious. Another playtester and I submitted this card, in slight variation. Combine that with the desired for a blessed for this particular member of the Wildcards team, and it was a shoe in.

We had to write the trait as a boost to the check without actually increasing his blessed skill because, for whatever reasons, existing Miracle designs reward the actual rating. No one ants to see 4+ bounty coming from a Prior Confession, or Get Behind Me, Satan! saving a whole posse.

But the boost can certainly enable passing difficult Miracle checks with lower value runs, and creating options is always worth the effort.

When I was working on this set, I wanted to do another Abomination for the Anarchists.

How to differentiate Anarchist Abominations from Fear Mongers? Fear Mongers are the Scary ones. And the Anarchists are the Creepy ones.

This little guy supports the economic theme of the Anarchists at a reasonable price without being cheap influence.

Important safety tip, using the Tombstone Haint out of faction means needing to pay for his phantom influence during the upkeep phase.

I will admit to being a little worried in the design phases about Yet Another low cost, no upkeep Influence source for the Anarchists. But this is their only 0 upkeep dude on a 4, and an ability to help the Property is Theft home. And if anyone actually knows my style, I am all about the chess game.

Why I feel Plasma Drill is not worth playing.

1. Self failing with less than a Mad Science 3. Playing a number of cards to increase your mad science allow you to succeed playing Plasma Drill, but that heavily adds to the investment in playing the card.
2. 5 value puts heavy restrictions on what gadgets you can build in your deck.
3. Playing it boots the MS who must then either trade it to another dude who will also boot, or you wait to use on a subsequent turn. There are some means of managing this cost such as Marty It adds heavily to the comburance of playing Plasma Drill.
4. 4 Gr to buy and another 1 to use. 5GR to make your opponent either discard a deed, or pay up maybe 2 or 3. While you might keep zapping their deed every turn, that’s a hefty cost.
5. This incredible investment to hurt your opponents wealth a few ghost rock is not enough to make Plasma Drill worth playing on it's own, so you have to then further invest in cards like The Place or more Plasma Drills to make it worth it.

To end it all, I would simply suggest playing more stud dudes with influence and cards with movement abilities. Parking a dude on their deed costs them more than using Plasma Drill most times. Since Plasma Drill leaves your dudes booted on their deed or in TS, you’ll have to fight it out the same as you would over simply putting your dude on their deed.

As of 9/26, it has been determined that A Slight Modification can be used to cancel an ability such as "Thunder Boy" Nabbe and that ability can NOT be used a second time that shootout because the line in Thunderboy's text that says the ability can only be used once per shootout. When canceled by ASM, it has been "used" but has had no effect. Therefore, it can not be used a second time if canceled by ASM.

Curiously, one possible counter to this card is to use the Bayou Vermilion Railroad ability on your own deeds as the first action, temporarily sacrificing a little CPs/income to make sure your Carter's Bounties/Shane & Graves Security/Steph & Gertie's Tonsorium remains available when a key fight rolls around.

Knowledge is power. Only this and Telepathy Helmet give you unrestricted access to the contents of your opponent's hand.

Are they sitting on two shootout actions and two Cheating Resolutions? Avoid shootouts if you can and choke out their card throughput.

No Cheating Resolutions? Or Shootout Actions? bully away and cheat like mad.

Steven Wiles? Do not overextend your position.

With only discarding (usually) one card per turn, and open discard information, the intel gathered from one Cookin' Up Trouble can remain pertinent for a couple of turns.

Of course, in the ideal universe, your opponent cheats on Lowball, loses, and you play this first action to look at the hand and discard an action, goods, or spell. But even if the planets have not properly aligned for you, I would say that it is usually worth the ghost rock to cycle this card and find out what you can instead of hanging on to it while you wait for them to cheat.

of course this competes with Coachwhip! for deck space, so it can be a hard sell considering the 1 cost on an action card. War Paint or Siege Of The Orphanage work on the proactive side of the Fours, and without that pesky cost.

But in this new age of Ricochet, knowing what is up the opponent's sleeve can make or break a game, and as the G.I.Joes say, "Knowing is half the battle".

The only problem with this card in in the top left corner, it has to fight against Unprepared for space in any deck.

I have gotten good use out of this in Law Dogs focusing on Noon Phase control in order to keep troublesome dudes from even showing up at the fight (or being able to call my dudes out).

I have also used this to boot deeds to surprising effect. Boot a Circle M Ranch to stop the card draw. Boot a Carter's Bounties before the big fight.

Even if you are not running Law Dogs, there are a number of effects that put control points on dudes - and the application of a little "Attention" can either serve to make them not cause you trouble (Jasper Stone / Darius Hellstromme) or get them booted in an unsafe location (Allie Hensman / Doris Powell)

So consider maybe mixing up your default 4x Unprepared and see if you can catch your opponent unprepared for your new tactics.

Since jobs can be some of the most powerful effects in Doomtown, being able to make sure that a particular dude cannot oppose your job can go a long way towards it being a job well done.

of course, the inherent limitation is that it only works on jobs that target locations. This means it cannot help with a Kidnapping, Ol' Fashioned Hanging, Curse of Failure, Mugging, or Forced Quarantine.

So then, which jobs to use this for? Probably the best one to use this on would be Recruitment Drive, but of course they share a value, so that makes it hard to combine.

If you want to have a reliable job on tap, this can push Desolation Row or Office of Ancestral Affairs. Or dudes like Francisco Rosales, Takahashi Jinrai, or the Epidemic Laboratory.

if you fancy jobs like Signing Over the Stores, Technological Exhibition, A Coach Comes to Town, or All Or Nothing, this can help keep that one angry stud from thwarting your plans.

As for the "not being being affected by the job effects" part, you can use this to keep a disposable dude from being the victim of an Election Day Slaughter.

all in all, a difficult card to make use of, because it requires another card to initiate the job - which eats up a lot of cards. and ultimately your opponent might not have wanted to oppose in the first place.

and that doesn't begin to touch on the stiff competition in the 10 of Clubs department - Unprepared chokes out better cards than this.

Thunder Boy is a fantastic card for Law Dogs. At only 3 GR, 1 upkeep, for 2 inf and potentially 3 stud, he can slot in as a starter in almost any Law Dogs deck. The Deputy keyword is a plus for triggering things like The Law Goes Underground. Most Law Dogs decks should have no problems getting people wanted, so his ability is easy to trigger, making him a potential 3 stud. He combos well with Idol of Tlazolteotl if Jacks are on value. Just look out for Unprepared .

This is a really good option for dude spot removal that fits in basically any deck which can run the value. (Or doesn't mind splashing for it) A great alternative to Kidnappin' in decks that don't want to gain the bounty or have trouble putting up the initial bullet requirements. The 0 cost can also make it a little easier to fit into a low-to-the ground deck where Ambush, Bounty Hunter, or Ol' Fashioned Hangin' aren't reliable enough.

It's worth noting that Curse of Failure doesn't actually remove the dude from the board, it sends them home booted, almost completely useless, and more expensive. Effectively, this usually results in the opponent choosing not to renew their upkeep the next turn, but there are situations where they may keep the dude in play. Studs remain studs after all, so choose your targets for this card carefully

I've come across a couple interesting interactions. First, if the opponent is playing Karl Odett, CoF removes the Abomination keyword to shut down Karl's influence boost. This can lead to a HUGE swing if it's used successfully, though most savvy abom players will probably let their dude get aced or discarded first!

Second, this still successfully attaches to dudes wearing a Knight's Chasuble because the dude's attachments are discarded before Curse attaches. This may be obvious but it tripped me up a bit!

Overall a very strong card that fills its role well.

An Anarchist starting posse staple and for good reason. Asakichi might not bring much to the table bullet-wise, but her ability is loaded with utility, especially in decks that want to out-maneuver their opponent.

When crafting your hand early game, Asakichi's ability is worth using even just to clear bad cards out of your hand to allow for more draw the next day. I know I've had days where I just sent a dude to town square and immediately booted them home just to get the discard.

That being said, the movement ability is really versatile in a lot of situations. Sending a dude from your home or town square to a contested deed In or Out of town without booting can be exactly the play you need to get somewhere before a key noon ability on a deed goes off or tip the numbers of an imminent shootout in your favor. She can also help to pull a booted dude in a vulnerable position out of the fire, sending them home or somewhere they can be backed up.

A strong choice all around, while also being a body you don't mind too much losing as a casualty if the going gets tough.

There's not a lot to say about Xiaodan Li except that he's as close as it comes to being a free dude in your starting posse. With his value of 2 + Kung Fu 1, he's not going to be the best at pulling off techniques, but the fact that he can allow an Anarchist player to have 6 starting dudes makes him worth it even if you completely ignore his ability.

Xiaodan is basically the quintessential bullet catcher, serving as a body you can sacrifice or risk without too much on the line. His 1 draw bullet rating can make him quite relevant in a shootout, especially with cards like Ricochet in the opponent's hand, where you often want to pick a shooter who you can afford to lose if things go badly. He can also be turned into a pretty solid threat in his own right with cards like Bowie Knife or Consecration that turn dudes into studs and raise their bullets.

He can be a bit of a liability if run in a skill deck since he has such low value, and 1 extra starting GR is certainly not nothing, but he's definitely good value for his price in basically any situation