The Long, Grimme Strides

This is an incredibly fun deck to play, and has a bit of a toolbox and some unexpected surprises to pull on opponents at given times. So basic plan is to press on with building economy, which Maggie and Irving weirdly help with if all is going well. The home gives you a bit of extra movement and muscle as and when required, and starting with Theo is fun, because although there are few spells in the deck, there are certainly enough there to cause opponents pause, or better, problems. You've got a bit of a worry in that starting economy is very tight, but Grimme pays for himself if you can pull out even one or two spells with him, because his noon ability gives you a little thinking time as you try and fish out something useful. And running a deck this thin on spells without him is tricky. I've had this ready a few months now and have extremely limited access to my stuff, so I was relying on information I had in that it tested very well the last couple of times I played it, so seemed happy enough with it. I thought it was my strongest deck, but turns out this may not have been the case, as I shall reveal below! The Worlds then... Game 1 against Benni's Eagle Wardens started well as it earned me my Viking Jokers straight off. I can't remember too many details about the game as I've left this writeup far too long but I managed to push a win after time due to the play strategy mostly going to plan and was able to break out Lilian at a slight discount and keep her out long enough to make her mighty influence and really-good-now-that-I've-worked-it-out shootout ability. Just the one Calling the Cavalry in there can still be a decent swing if you can fish it out, and failing that, Unprepared will certainly help your day when facing off against gadgets. A well-timed Kidnappin' surfaced in my hand so off Mazatl went. So, 3 points and a solid start to the day. Next up was Mr Bushnall's mighty Law Dogs, and the first sign of trouble for the rest of the day. We had a bit of a light trading of blows at first, with Morgan not minding too much if the town square was crowded with law enforcement while Maggie went looking for horses, and the Long Strides Ranch providing solid income once this got going. Where it went wrong was the Dogs getting hold of the Legendary Holster, and with two uses of it taking out 2 influence moneymaker Irving and then disastrously, getting into a shootout with Lilian out whilst forgetting I wasn't first player and I watched a heavily tooled Lilian get gunned down before I could do anything else, ruining me for a couple more shootout plays. Denied the opportunity to either Call the Cavalry at a good time or better still, boot that Holster before it could do any harm and then follow up with with a Soul Blast and I think one more nasty which would have swung the shootout my way. After that, momentum really fell away and the Law Dogs just cleaned up the town following what had been a pretty tight game up to that point. Game 3 saw me take on old rival David Woof and his 108 Drunken Masters. I expected landslide and thought this deck pretty capable of dealing with such, only to hamper myself on my first turn by scrambling my dudes a little too slowly. Definitely didn't help following that to not see a deed of my own until the third day, which turned out to be a little too late and thus provide a critical control point on the board which exceeded my mobility at that stage. Hand then clogged with useless shootout plays when what I needed were removal jobs or cheap dudes left me in a bit of a hole and I ended up on the end of another loss. 1-2 down. Revenge of the Danes as Anders starved out my economy plan, whittled my influence dude by dude and ruthlessly exposed me finding out I hadn't packed nearly enough cheating res for the day. I don't think there was a Morgan left on the table by the end. Ended the competitive day on a high though when I came up against @sauronbeagle1 's excellently named Den deck. https://dtdb.co/en/decklist/2669/hexual-stealing I made some abysmal spell pulls and Grimme failed me repeatedly, but I ground out a win in the end with Lillian once again coming good. Didn't quite have enough juice to get the win over the line in time and lamented taking the Mustang out from an earlier iteration for Doris Powell's third control point for the day. All in all, I had a good time, though this isn't the easiest deck to pilot; you really need to stay on top of things with it as when the tricks go off, it's great, but when they don't, you occasionally have the option of hanging in and going for a plan B. I've some tweaks I'm looking to make to beef this up a little, but it's a precise blend, and even swinging one or two cards may wreck the balance. I'm looking forward to a revised version of this some time but I think I'm going to start my Tombstone series off elsewhere for a little while. Thanks all!