Tournament winning 3-0 Law abiding Dogs

published Dec 11, 2014 | | |
Card draw simulator
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Derived from
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yoshi 103

This deck went 3-0 at our local first ever Swedish DTR tournament.

The deck performed well and won comfortably against three widely different opponents. A lot of the strength comes from choosing a starting posse suitable to counter the opponents strengths and capitalize on their weaknesses, I think Law Dogs have the best width in these regards.

The setup in this listis the standard setup, against other Law Dogs or Fourth Ring.

Against Sloan i Swap Tommy for Wendy to protect against Shotgun touting madmen and the likes, mitigating their strongest shooter and having a variety of ways to handle the rest of the shootout (Sun in Yer Eyes, or if they cheat Coachwhip if only one dude, or Bottom Dealin).

Against Morgan Landslide instead swap Olivia for the Judege, this give me an additional influence, but more importantly allows me to hunt down their dudes that only want to run away and avoid shootouts, they can not "Make The Smart Choice" out of the shootout if it is a job (or they can but that would be dumb).

As for the rest of the deck: structure is DMH with 15 A's and a bunch of 8's for full house/4ofAKind, the deck does not draw extremely well, and this is good since it allows Bottom Dealin to wreck a cheatin opponent.

Sun in Yer Eyes is fantastic, as in any deck. Too much attention is good with the Law Dogs ability and Good against Aliie to stop the CP pumping handily. Coachwhip I use more to punish cheating lowballs as the ability to boot a key dude before the day starts is a huge benefit. Hired Guns to play Steven Wiles every round.

In the tournament the first game was against Sloan. I started Wendy and went aggressive early with Wiles, Bounty Hunter Bottom Dealin and Sun In Yer Eyes. Got a good start and got a little greedy which cost me a lot of position by getting Wiles aced against a weak posse, since I drew badly and the Sloan Gang drew fantastic with basically nothing (very good draw structure). Managed to get back and finsh their last dudes with a 5 of a Kind that was boosted to DMH against their Four of a Kind that got Bottom Dealin down to High Card.

Second game was Landslide Morgan, started the Judge and quickly applied bounties and hunted down in order Clementine, Irving and finished off their Steven Wiles and Travis with another DMH against something like two pair, the deck was all running no gunning and with the Judge on ym side they had no chance.

The final game was against a 2-0 Fourth Ring, I used the standard setup and camped a bit at home, building up and applying bounties to Mongwau and someone else before I felt confident in throwing a bounty hunter and Wiles against them, backed by Sun In Yer Eyes to take out most of their dudes and again quickly win the game.

Changes to the deck, I don't know really, I havenät played it much and in the tournament Coachwhip and Too Much Attention didn't do much. I still think they are good in the deck and did not get to show what they can do, but will have to try more to see if they should stay. The Six-Shooters are in here mainly for structure and I am reluctant to play them, in part for ruining my structure and in part due to the highly deterring effect on cheatin, I rather my opponents cheats and gets bottom dealt, than not cheat, espiecially since the main threat in a shootout is deck with very good structures, as I can draw full houses reliably with a couple of stud bullets.

Every dude in the deck is great for what they do, except the A's that are there only for the structure. Deeds are mainly for structure and the off values are for GR and abilities - Pony Express and Circle M Ranch.

Feedback and suggestions on improvements are welcome!

7 comments
Dec 11, 2014 mplain

Hey Yoshi, congratulations on the win! Law Dogs DHM did it again! :)

I do have a couple of questions on specific card choices.

You're saying that 4x Bottom Dealin' was all the cheatin' punishment you ever needed, to the extent that you didn't even want to play Six-Shooters, keeping them mostly for the draw structure.

However, you're also saying that the draw structure of the deck is not very good.

Did you have any problems with having your main shooter (Wendy / Steven) kicked out of the shootout by Pistol Whip? Do you think it might be a problem?

What do you think about the following changes?

+2-3 Quickdraw Handgun

-2 Too Much Attention

+2 Make The Smart Choice

-2 Bottom Dealin'

+2 The Stakes Just Rose

-2 Sun In Yer Eyes

This way you'd have a stronger draw structure and ways to save Wendy if she gets Sunned, or bring her back if she gets Pistolwhipped. Or is versatility not really worth the loss of consistency?

Couple more questions:

The Ghostly Gun - I take it he's here for the wildcard effect in order to facilitate DMH. Did you have much luck with him? He costs a lot, especially with an upkeep of 3...

Allie Hensman - did you ever use her to dominate the town square? Seems like a viable win condition if you play at least 2x of her.

3x Pony Express - why did you need so many? Wasn't Phillip enough?

Judge Harry Somerset - so is he an auto-win against Landslide? Or is it still not that easy?

P.S. How many times did you actually pull a Dead Man's Hand, in three games?

Dec 11, 2014 yoshi

Hey,

regarding the "bad draw structure" I mean that if i only get 5-6 cards i generally wonät make a good hand, a few more and it draws pretty consistent.

I did have a couple of issues with a Pistol Whipped Steven/Wendy, so yes, that can be troublesome, that is why I like to have some backup to them against the better shooting decks especially.

Regarding your suggestions, I had a version of the deck that had a much better structure and included three (I think) Quickdraw Handguns, among other things, but they never did anything unfortunately, and with that many guns I had a lot of dead cards, and I donät want to play them just for the sake of playing cards either, I was never happy to see any of the guns :( Therefore I am not happy about swapping in guns and out Bottom Dealin.

Smart Choice for Bottom Dealin could work, I like the idea of saving a Sunned Wendy or the like, but I am reluctant to remove 2 Bottom Dealin, might have to try it and see what works best.

Stakes Just Rose to get Wendy back, not that good since if Whipped she is booted and less useful, but the bigger issue is swapping out Sun In Yer Eyes, that has been the MVP of this deck, winning shootouts and games. I am always happy to see any amount of them in my hand and have easily found use for two of them per day the times it happened so.

Ghostly Gun is on the chopping block, I feel that when I've gotten him into play he's been almost "win more", main benefit is if the unthinkable would happen, Steven gets aced, I still have something to fall back on, a solid shooter with a great ability. He is not really meant to stay long and the times he did get played I won the game or had so much money that the upkeep didn't matter.

Aliie has not found use yet, allthough she is in there for the reason you stated, as a backup feature, though mostly for structure.

3 Pony to get one early and the rest of the hearts for structure, I am somewhat reluctant to play Aces, never play the ace dudes for example.

I only played Run away Landslide once since I included Harry, before Harry it was problematic, mostly to get rid of their tons of influence, this time it pretty much felt like an auto-win tbh, not much they could do, like I mentioned, no structure for shooting whatsoever.

Mostly what I am looking for in coming packs for this deck is more useful Hearts in A, 8 and J.

Dec 11, 2014 mplain

The changes I suggested are overarching, that is they might work as a complex:

-2x Bottom Dealin' is compensated for by +2x Quickload Handgun

-2x Sun In Yer Eyes is compensated for by +2x Make The Smart Choice

You could also just swap the Six-Shooters for Quichdraw Handguns without affecting your draw structure at all, did you thinks about that? The Handgun's effect is stronger, and it also provides a bonus bullet, so you might be more inclined to actually play them, rather than keep for structure.

Bottom Dealin' is sure much more spectacular in punishing cheatin', but an experienced opponent will know that they shouldn't cheat vs. Law Dogs anyway, so it's not that different from prevention. Or does my theorizing not live up to practice?


Another take on the situation is: is it actually worth to build the deck around DMH? You say it yourself that you don't want to play any of the A♠ dudes, and the Six-Shooters are surplus since you prefer to punish rather than prevent. Wouldn't building around some other value, perhaps 2s or 3s, be better? You have Ramiro Mendoza there, as well as Shotgun, Peacekeeper, and Bluetick (mean shield + Mustang).

So, I ask again: how many times did you draw DMH over the course of the tournament?

Dec 11, 2014 yoshi

Oh, missed to answer that question, I drew DMH 3 times in those three games, and once I drew 5ofAKind and boosted to DMH by Tommy.

Maybe a different structure could work, it would require a lot of reworking though, that would be a different deck :)

Dec 11, 2014 brystrom

I'm running a very similar build with more emphasis on jacks and DMH. My thought was all the on the board cheatin resolutions would save room in my deck for more off value shooting actions in lieu of bottom dealing and coach whips and focus on a stronger draw structure. Im fervently trying to playt test it more on Octgn so maybe I'll see ya around. Just published my new version.

Dec 12, 2014 yoshi

So you include more Six-Shooters and Quickdraw Handgun and Buffalo Rifle? Would it not make your structure very bad after a while if those cards go on the table and all the off value actions are left in the deck, or am I understanding you wrong?

Dec 12, 2014 brystrom

The idea is to thin the jacks out over the course of the gsme and hopefully collect several of the off value actions in my hand so I'm focusing more on As & 8s in the late game. Things have to go very badly in a big shootout for me to draw less than 8 and I can usually pull a decent hand then. But I'm still tweaking so you may be right. I think I need more deeds.