Encore! v.2

Very nasty control archetype. Unless your opponent can aggro your hucksters early enough or start with sufficiently high values to force your Paralysis Marks to fail more, it's going to be tough catching your dudes while they're clowning around town through the shadows.

I see a munch of shootout oriented stuff but only 10s as your shootout structure. Do you stand and fight decently, or just use it opportunistically against the odd dude left out of position?

Thanks for the question db0! It gave me the spark for actually doing a decent commentary to the deck - which I think it deserves ;)

First off, normally I see two types of players and thus two types of decks (there are of course more, but in my mind I try to keep it simple) the deck that tries to excel in winning one way, best exemplified in the MCC deedslide decks and especially Brian Fox' GenCon winning one - a razorsharp machine of a deck - and decks that tries to play the opponent or am able to react to plays (often dubbed toolbox decks).

Now Doomtown Reloaded demands that, because of the high player interaction and winning conditions, each succesfull deck is a mix of both. No matter how specialized you need to react to how your opponent plays and you need to consider which deeds to put in play and if you need to save money for more influence later this turn. On the other hand you cannot play a succesfull toolbox if you dont have a plan for winning. If you only react - you might stop the opponent from winning but you need yourself to win as well.

I have a tendancy to prefer to play the opponent more than I play a single strategy, thus I want a deck that has a high interaction with the opponent and is both able to take shootouts and avoid them as well. A quick answer to your question db0 is that at the start of a game I often play agressively to intimidate my opponent but try to avoid shootouts untill I have read his deck (I look in discard piles and trash bins a lot ;)). Mid game is where this deck is the strongest shootoutwise as it devolves faster than most other decks. Oh, and I track cards - everything below 8 is on my radar!

There is a lot of those thoughts going into this deck - especially considering the current meta - which in our part of the world is Sloane aggro, MCC deedslide and Law Dogs snipe.

First of all the structure of this deck.

I hate failing my hexes ;)

Unless you pull a quick victory as 4th Ring, at one point I find that the opponent sometimes will be able to discard or ace one of your hucksters and more often than not they'll try to go for Mongwau as he is definetely the Hombre Capital! That means that you will probably have either Micah or Avie doing Hex pulls - which again means that 8s are not enough. So for the structure I chose to try to focus above the eights.

I also want to have a strongish shootout structure. Start game this deck is pulling two pairs, full house and sometimes 4 of a kind. However - the quick devolution through having a lot of spells which is easy to put on the board, as well as relatively cheap deeds (which I am still trying to achieve more) and the outfit ability, makes it quite viable to pull a legal full house or 4 of a kind in day 3. Just remember to have a good look at which cards is on the table and which is in the discard pile.

So far the structure looks like this: 8 - 9 9 - 2 10 - 16 J - 10 Q - 7 K - 2

Meat and Potatoes.

So what makes this deck tick? Well, there were and is a lot of people fearing the paralysis mark and deeming 4th Ring very powerful after NTNR. I definately agree that paralysis mark and forget are powerful hexes, but for me what makes the 4th Ring control deck work is Blood Curse and Shadow Walk.

We have to think about how to win this game. Unlike MCC and Sloane we do not have the economy to deedslide or the ability to put down 4 control points in day 1. Our only bonus is that we can cycle through our deck and get extra resources when we use hexes. That tells us two things - we are good at getting cards we need into our hand and that we rely on hexes. In my mind the hexes should be determining for how we play 4th Ring.

So how do we win with hexes? Well the winning conditions is to have more control points than the other guy has influence. As there is no hexes giving control points (yet!) that means we have to get rid of his influence. Using hexes, the most direct way of doing that is Blood Curse.

Secondly we need to be able to contest control of deeds, we need to be able to outmaneuver our opponent. The biggest help for this is movement cards (followed closely by controlling if our opponent can move) and thus Shadow Walk plays an immense role in the deck.

Now, if we look closely at these two hexes they actually both have a 'secondary' effect as well - they both have a shootout use. For me this means that I want to be able too take shootouts as well.

This actually builds the skeleton of the deck. A deck centered on removing inlfuence, movement around town to contest control and being able to do shootouts.

The 10s.

So I have been asked several times why I bring 4 Avie Cline into the deck and why I focus on the 10s. Well first of all, as stated above I want a reliable pull structure above 8. Secondly, since I am focusing on shadow walk and blood curse those are the 2 main values for me to look at.

Qs have some decend deeds, but imo the actions are quite lacking (for this type of Deck), as well as the dudes there. I thought about the Js but I was hard pressed for justifying putting 4 forget into the deck and this deck is not that shootout heavy that it deserves a buffalo rifle (shadow walk tends to do the trick).

So it comes to the 10s. Unprepared is a great action if we have to chose a shootout action. It absolutely cripples other 4th Ring decks and anyone who wants to bring gadgets to the main street really should check if they prepared enough ghost rock to fuel their flamethrower. I dont think so ;) Furthermore it boots the dude, so no more moving after this encounter. Secondly we have Union Casino and Carter's. Well, Im thinking a lot about running 3 carters and 1 union - but this deck can run a little low on ghost rock late game so it might be nice to have that 3 income fairly consistently - which is what I have chosen so far. And then we have...

Avie Cline - and the reason for this decks name.

Especially mplain has been asking me why I have 4 Avies in my deck - why not Steven Wiles? Well, there are three answers to that. First of all the value - as I said I really dont like relying on 8s for pulls. Secondly she is a huckster. This deck focusing on its hexes first, shootout secondly - so I needed a character that I can put pretty cheap into play and that can be outfitted with a hex without much fuss. Thirdly she is harrowed which means that when I bring her to the fray, she can cover 2 casualties or will be discarded instead of aced by cards like coachwhip (sometimes then saved by Arnold - though unreliably).

Cycling.

I reallly like the mechanic introduced in DT:R about discarding spells for effects, but to optimize this I also need to think about chosing what hex to discard. I normally go for discarding the shadow walk from mongwau to make him a stud or the forget/raising hell. I rarely discard blood curse (vital to winning) and paralysis mark as they both cost GR to bring into play - and this is not a rich deck. I try to never discard soul blast as this lessens the decks pull potential a lot. Discarding shadow walk furthermore has the benefit of playing into my shootin' structure of the deck.

Dudes and starting posse.

I think that 4th Ring is one of the hardest factions to chose a starting posse for. It is not that their dudes are bad, but you need to consider a lot of stuff about countering your opponent and their ability to cripple your deck. My normal starting posse includes Micah, Mongwau and Arnold which works pretty decently against Law Dogs sniping and MCC deedslide. Against Sloane however, or a deck where I suspect he might try to turn 1 ambush/kidnap, I start Dulf, Jia and Micah to get a total of 5 influence and the ability to play a hex into the shootout to make jia a stud and hopefully give -2 bullets to the opponent/soul blast them. However, I do not think that there is an optimal starting posse for this type of deck yet. It always seems like compromises for me. I would love to get Tyx in there, but the cost of starting with him is that I cannot seem to also start with enough influence, 2 hucksters and a working economy.

Last words - I am still in doubt about the cheatin' varmint. They could be exchanged with Magical distraction or something completely different. Also remember that this is my take on the deck and my preferences. You might make other decisions that works better for you. The only thing that I think is absolutely necessary for this kind of deck is the Blood Curse and Shadow Walk.

Well, that was a few of my thoughts on the deck.

Enjoy!

Good write-up. You should put it as the deck description (you can edit it after it's posted) for other readers ;)

Done :D Can I delete the looong comment on the the deck?

I don't think you can, but don't worry about it ;)

I actually think your biggest problem might be if they kidnap Arnold McCadish, you'd be down to 2 measly influence, and an aggressive Sloane can easily exceed that turn 2.

I believe I see a couple logical lapses in your way of thinking:

First, you say that you want a structure above 8s because your backup hucksters have a skill of 0. And thus you choose 10s and 4x Avie Cline, a huckster with a skill of 0. It's a loop. One that you can break by putting a backup Steele Archers and/or Wilber Crowley into the deck. Then you'll be able to fully embrace the wonderful world of 8s, with their extra Steven Wiles-es and Rumors. :) Also, against Sloane, you could substiture Micah for Steele instead of Dulf, and thus have extra influence and keep a second huckster!

Second, you say that you avoid Js because you're "hard pressed for justifying putting 4x Forget into the deck". Well it's 4x Hex Slingin' a justification enough? They are Js too, and then your deck works like a machine gun - you play Forget, then Hex Slingin', and they both go back into your deck to reinforce the draw structure! If you think it's not enough you could add a couple Magical Distractions :)

But I suspect that anything I say will fall on deaf ears - just like Pancho Castillo, you're too enchanted by the charms of Avie Cline ;))

@db0 Yeah thats why I start Jia+Dulf+Micah against Sloane. Not necessarily perfect but nonetheless a little more intimidating for Sloane to run directly into an unknown deck where I can give Jia a hex as a shootout action.

I do agree though that Sloane is the biggest challenge to this deck and a really agressive Sloane could take it apart. I am just not sure what else to do.

@mplain Lol! You might be right - that could be the real reason for me wanting to keep Avie!

I actually tried to build a 8 structure for the same deck (control) but I think it runs into some problems. By putting a backup of Steele Archer/Wilber into the deck I have to either remove Mongwau/Micah or weaken my pull structure. It could be a possibility to include Steven instead of Dulf, but if I do so then I either have to start with an upkeep of 2 and only 4 starting GR or drop Mongwau and thus starting with only 0 stud. However - I wont give up on Steele yet, I think Ill try him out a bit.

J's - I tried it and it is definately something to look into. Its a bit like its working now with 10's. You would have to shift the three Avies and 2 extra deeds for a Kevin and Tyx/Clint, as well as 2 forget and 2 deeds which means that you'll have to drop an extra card somewhere. I just like the 3 extra Avies better. I played with 4 Hex slingin' before - but decided to drop 1 for the This is a Hold-Up!

Rumors is a good card - but I dont think we need 4 in this deck. And then the big question is - why would I build around 8s when Avie Cline is a better choice than Steven? ;)

So I actually just went through the deck and found out that I had made a few adjustments before the tournament. 1st of all - I took out Circle M Ranch and the Pharmacy and put in Bunk House and Bobo...

See the next version here:

dtdb.co