Den of Jokers - OCTGN Top 8

Woops! This was for the OCTGN Servitor event, not the 6th league. My bad!

Congratulations, thanks for the thoughts behind the deck! Tough luck on dropping out in the quarterfinals after such a strong league performance, but still a fine showing in a tough field. I'm a big fan of slucksters too. I like the splashed in low value hexes - gives you some powerful cards and helps dilute lowball hands.

Barton Everest and Den of Thieves coming at your with an early job is still pretty scary, as it can brute force its way through a lot of cheatin' punishment.

How did you feel about The Winning Agenda? Keen to here views on the TCaR cards.

What's your view on Sight Beyond Sight? I've always found it very useful, but some players I respect are less enthusiastic about it.

I think (!) you can edit the tournament badge by clicking the big blue pen in the top right of the screen if you want to update this to show the right badge. This is slightly self-serving, as I sometimes use these badges to browse which decks have been doing well for playtest purposes.

The Winning Agenda fit the theme, but I felt I never made the best use of it, as only one of my dudes has 3 inf. I used its non-cheating-resolution function once to dump my hand, which was nice, but not great for 1 GR. Cards like Baijiu Jar do it more efficiently. An interesting card, but not my favorite.

I really like Sight Beyond Sight. Being able to see 2 cards an opponent has before going into a shootout is clutch. Being able to ace a cheatin' res or an Unprepared is even more so. And with The Whateley Estate, I could fish them back out (as well as Jokers, to ideally put back on Theo!).

Well done, sir - it's always a tough match against Zeetoois, but especially this deck! I like that it is pretty flexible, having strong game against both slide/fortress and other shooty decks.

As a note, you mentioned that it struggles vs anti-bounty cards, and while that is true to some degree, I think Makaio Kaleo, Esq. mitigates this weakness quite a bit. As an example, in our games I kept putting bounty on Barton, only to have it immediately moved over to Travis. I don't think my Hattie DeLorre ever was able to use her ability on Barton, and you did very well with making sure bountied dudes (usually bountied dude, singular) were never in the shootout so even my "Thunder Boy" Nabbe was unable to use his ability in almost every shootout.

Fun deck, lots of tools to fight nearly any strategy, and pretty consistent. In one of our games, we were in a very important shootout, and I used a This'll Hurt in the Mornin' on you to bump you all the way down to rank 3, which would have been instantly game over for you. With your various tricks (maybe it was only a single trick with ?) it was bumped back up to a 7 or 8, and you were back in the game.

The reveal + post-reveal draw card/hand rank manipulation is just crazy with this deck!

I would say the cheatin-punishment is where this deck probably lacks the most, but all that manipulation can certainly more than make up for it.

Thanks, Pro! Yeah, I've definitely struggled with wanting to run more cheatin punishment (I have 5 cards, but 3 are on board). Definitely a weakness.

Makaio Kaleo, Esq. did help with bounty, but the big thing is that Kidnappin is nearly useless against your deck. It made it hard to beat you when my spot removal could be so easily challenged!

What about Fred Aims? He can have 3 Influence pretty quick.

That's true, but I'd have to lose 1 GR and Maria to get him in my starting posse, and his low value will fail my spell pulls. He's just not a great option for this deck, unfortunately.

True.

How about Harry Highbinder?

Also maybe swap an Unprepared or two for a Recruitment Drive?

Cheers for popping up in the comments to answer questions and for the updated tournament classification @Zeetoois. :)

@jordan caldwell - I'm a 3x Unprepared plus 1x Recruitment Drive man myself. Sometimes the Recruitment Drive is frustrating against other shooters when you really need another shootout action, but overall it makes a huge difference against defensive decks and I'm happy with that mix.

Definitely something to consider! My general rule is to run 3x of my actionw with a "surprise factor" for my fourth card. Recruitment Drive may be exactly what the doctor ordered! Now to squeeze some more cheatin' punishment in...

Have you considered Ezekiah Grimme? Might help get those awesome, low value hexes into play, and all your other hexes cost 0 so maybe the extra GR for multiples wouldn't hurt much?

I have. Starting with 1 GR is super risky to me. Definitely something to consider, though! I confess, I haven't played a single game with a Servitor yet. Maybe it's time to test that out!

Yeah good point, 1 GR is just too low. You need at least 3 starting (after losing lowball) to get your economy going with a deed.

On the other hand, you can guarantee 3 starting GR if you use the Den ability first turn, so maybe its still something to consider.

That, my friend, is an excellent point. If I'm losing lowball anyway, I could just as well bump my rank and gain a GR. I think Grimm could work in this.

I thought the first rule of Den of Thieves was 'always use the ability in lowball if you lost/you would still be the winner, until you have more GR than you know what to do with'.

But I like having the option to use it in shootouts! And I'm hesitant to use it in lowball if I'm not already cheating. I don't like opening myself up to things like coachwhip, etc.

Zeetoois is right. For "more GR" use Protection Racket. Meaning if you run a Den of Thieves, you better figure out how to use the ability (or the threat of the ability) to leverage shootouts.

I really like how this deck cleverly buffers the vulnerability of doing exactly that. I am assuming that revealing a Cheatin' hand, taking the +1 rank from Barton Everest, then making it legal again at React-speed using Ace in the Hole is perfectly legit?

It is, though you can't use the Den in that case. :)

Sight Beyond Sight (as seen here), the old but still good Rico grift, Cookin' Up Trouble and Telepathy Helmet (!) are all ways to tell when it's safe to go all out with the cheatin'. I don't play Sloane much (I don't think Protection Racket had been released last time I repped Sloane in a tournament), but I think my preference for using this in lowball comes from playing in a meta where Cheatin' Punishment is fairly common. Using it in a shootout is just asking to be hit with a Bottom Dealin' or a Coachwhip!