Go Away! 1st place Agent Badge 2020

aka: Go Home (you're drunk)

It was a tough choice on what to run for this event. Hell's Comin' With Me was legal for this event, but having been on the PT team I figured I wouldn't run any of those cards right away. Rham's Readings was the single exception, since it's only a deed (and happens to be one of the ones I helped design, so I couldnt resist!).

In the end, I chose to build a deck entirely around Swinford Finds Trouble. I had never really given the card much thought before, but I could see it's crazy power if you have some big bullet, unbooted dudes - kind of like multiple pistol whips in one card potentially. Add another 4 pistol whips, and I was sending dudes home all day long (Go Away!).

The list is pretty straight forward, with a ton of synergy between all the clubs. Unprepared helps Swinford - booting the dude so they can be sent home, and also blanking any goods like Pedro and Yagn's Mechanical Skeleton. All the various bullet buffs/opposing debuffs help Outgunned, which is probably the card I want to see most in my hand, as much of the time I'll just have a flush with this draw structure. All the cheatin' res + a million ways to get rid of/reduce studs makes it very hard for the opponent to have a legal hand rank 7 or above, but if I don't have any of those cards in hand, I really need the +2 ranks from Outgunned to deal with the problem of what to do when I have a legal rank 6 to their legal 7 (that's also why You Had ONE Job! is in there, as well as the pedros and other cheap dudes).

The home also allows for all these cards that require my dudes boot. I originally was going to run Des Row, but that doesn't go well with a bunch of cards that requiring booting your dudes. Staying in the TS was ideal, and allowed for all sorts of unbooted dudes to send dudes home, raise my hand rank, and get CPs with the home (and in one game, not have to worry about an opposing Jael's Guile).

I've never tried a x14 value + 35 club straight flush draw structure (Khudzlin's Kung Fu is well known for a very similar structure), so I thought I'd give it a try. It requires a good amount of stud to be reliable - if you get 3 clubs and 3 8's, it's always a tough choice on which to go for. I got pretty lucky most hands in the event, mostly just going for flushes and SFs, letting my other in-hand clubs ensure even a flush was usually good enough. It's not the most consistent draw structure, but when things go well it's very hard to fight against.

And in the end, I was really tired of playing decks that sometimes went to time. I knew this would win or lose pretty quickly either way, and knew I'd have fun playing a super aggressive deck that was very high risk/high reward.

The Agent Badge Event 2020

Round 1: Joe with Oddities of Nature + Grimme

2 homes that want to be in the town square - prepare for some Joe on Joe violence! His deck opens up with grifting with Funtime Freddy to present either Soul Blast or Puppet. Of course I chose Soul Blast to ace, since my deck is very low value and weak to that and shotguns, etc. Puppet could still prove a huge problem if I was booted out and he was able to steal Allie with a bunch of CPs.

I hired Silas right away, and sent him into the TS to quickly become puppeted by Leonardo "Leon" Cavallo. I had a pistol whip in hand, so I wasn't worried about killing my own dude. I quickly took over the town square and booted my traitorous dude home.

We got into a couple more shootouts that didn't go his way, and at turn 2 it was the beginning of Groundhog Day. Each day he would immediately puppet Silas, send him out to the TS to call me out, and then I would pistol whip Silas home. We were trying to keep count, and we think that same situation happened about 4 times in a row. By that 4th time I had built up enough CPs that he was forced to come fight with his hucksters, and the game was quickly sealed. My sort of deck is a nightmare for any deck that wants to build up, so Joe had a disadvantage from the start.

Round 2: David Winner with Eagle Wardens

I'd faced this deck (or similar, at least) the last Agency event as well as Worlds in Tombstone. Another matchup where both homes want to be in the town square - this was sure to be a quick and bloody game, one way or the other.

David opens up with a Cookin' Up Trouble, only to see 3 different cheatin res in my hand (and that was after I used a Disarm in lowball, to basically have zero effect since I was also cheatin, other than getting it out of my hand). Between my cheatin res to keep him legal, and pistol whips to make that difficult, he had an uphill climb. The first shootout I had a straight flush to his 2 pair, and his Willa Mae MacGowan did what she does best. He was able one following round to send my Barton home with Mariel, then sun in yer eyes Ramiro, but each shootout round I was able to either get a higher hand rank, or use Outgunned 2 different times to get over him by 1 or 2 ranks.

Between him losing dudes, and my CPs piling up in the TS, it was over in pretty short order.

Round 3: Case with 108 Gracious Gifts

The starting posse, and lowball hand was a very strong signal of slide, which indeed turned out to be the case (pun intended!). The nice part of a SF draw structure is that I was able to win a bunch of lowballs against a very weak structured slide deck - probably more than I deserved, though.

While my starting influence is only 4, at least it's spread across 3 dudes, so I'm able to take over 3 deeds, and even a 4th deed with the help of Ike Clanton, which turned out to be crucial toward the end of this game. I'm extremely familiar with the best ways to fight against slide, and also having Allie on my side was a big advantage. His only shootout tricks revolved around pistol whip, and Pedro was a help there. It also forced him to either lose a dude when his booted dude was called out, or to spend 2 GR to unboot the dude with his home.

Day 4 was the critical day where between allie, my other dudes with CPs, and the deeds I took over of his, that he was in check. It was a chess game of movement, positioning, and calculating how things would look once some combination of pistol whips and rumors were played by Case. Luckily I was able to find my Ambrose this game, and it was enough to secure another deed, despite a Rumors'd Barton. There was one point during which we both had more control than the others influence, but at that point I had more control so had the state continued there I would have won.

Finals: Rematch vs Case

Since there were only 8 folks we only cut to the top 2, and the computer decided it was Case vs Me again. I'm not sure how that works since both Winner and Case had 2 wins, and their only losses were to me, so there must be some other random stuff going on there.

Either way, this 2nd game played out pretty much the same as the first. On day 3, Case says he made a mistake in using 2 of his rumors too early, trying to seal a quick win vs my 2 (4-2) influence. I believe I used Ike to have Willa take back a deed and put me out of check. However, I had 2 Hired Guns in hand, ready to fetch an Ambrose or Steven Wiles, in case a flurry of rumors/pistol whips came my way, so I was pretty confident I could be ok in the worst case scenarios.

Like the first day, the game was over day 4, with about 7-8 CPs on my dudes and another 3ish in deeds of his I controlled. I believe the only deed I played this game, and any previous game, was Pats Perch. I saw the other 2 deeds vs Case in both games, but decided against putting any of my own CP deeds on the table so I could focus on taking over his. I didn't need the income, I just needed to have a few GR for a Hired Guns + Wiles or Ambrose, which was easy to do after only winning one lowball. This finals I won fewer lowballs (only 1, I think), which helped Case get a few more deeds more quickly on the table, but it wasn't enough to compete with my flood of CPs on dudes.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a slide deck (I've been saying for a long time it's been mostly missing, and I don't think that's good for the meta), and also glad that I'd thought long and hard before hand (as I always do) about how my deck would do against slide. I figured Allie, the Hired Guns, and the few extra dudes in the deck would be enough to have a strong chance against it. I even took out a kidnappin or two, leaving only one in there, pretty confident it could overrun most turtle decks, and left the single kidnappin in there for some weird situation that couldn't be solved with more turns of Allie. I didn't see the kidnappin in any of my games that I remember, and I'd almost prefer another Comin Up Roses or Pinned Down, instead.

I played a couple of games after the tournament vs Stephen Wales and Lapp, and in both games I suffered some pretty bad early losses, but somehow managed to climb back to a close win. Once in awhile with this draw structure, you will simply have a total flop, and that's the main reason Willa is in there. It can have a total flop, and maybe another smaller one, and still have a fighting chance - and that's often made up for the times when it gets a straight flush, plus some hand ranks or cheatin punishment on top.

Fun deck, very fun weekend of 2 days of Doomtown, and as always all opponents were gracious and fun to play cards with. I even got to see the secret Project X that Pine Box is working on, and it seemed very interesting and fun at first demo - very excited to see how that progresses!