"Jobslide" NA Championship top 8, top Sloane

published Aug 07, 2018 | | |
Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
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sholder 83

This is the deck I ran at Gencon this year, finishing 7th in Swiss and top Sloane.

Jordan Caldwell requested stories, so here goes:

Elliot Smithson had a plan: give up the outlaw life and build up Gomorra. With his buddies The Fixer and Antoine Peterson, he figured he could open enough Saloons and Casinos to Establish(in') Who's in Charge. Clementine Lepp would work the bar and an Agent Provocateur with a surprisingly large inventory of rare, investment-grade fiddles to sell was brought on board to supply initial funds. Everything was humming along nicely until some abominations with hammers showed up and started smashing things...

It is essentially a slide deck that relies on jobs for extra economy and control points. You really want Clementine in a Saloon both for the influence boost and so that you can safely use the Protection Racket box ability at your own deed for at least the first day or two - you'll often have one in your starting hand, but if you don't use The Fixer's ability to grift one. If you don't need a saloon, your best options are Fiddle Game followed by Establishin' Who's in Charge.

Plan to keep The Fixer around - you've got 6 GR to start, so even though all your upkeep goes to him you'll have plenty to play with. Usually after the first turn or so your economy will kick in and you'll have plenty of money to go around. Agent Provocateur both functions as protection for your dudes at home and as a body to run Fiddle Game - she never leaves your home when running the job, so it works fine.

Keep one side of your home free to play Cliff's #4 Saloon once you find it and use it to make The Fixer a stud. Draw structure is fairly loose, so you don't actually want to shoot if you can avoid it, but opponents tend to assume Sloane == good shooting and play cautiously around The Fixer's four bullets (especially if he's a stud via either Cliff's or De Annulos Mysteriis). Your goal is to build out a bunch of deeds so that between Fiddle Game and the deeds you've got a ton of money. Force your opponent to spread out to cover them, and then run Establishin' Who's in Charge wherever they aren't. Remember Elliot can unboot himself if he leads, so as long as you have a target where you can't be opposed he can run the job by himself, cover the cost for you, and still be mobile for later in the turn.

Antoine Peterson is key - as one opponent said, "that guy does a lot of work!". Move around, get your opponent's dudes out of position, and run home booted. Then Antoine shows up, giving you influence, a job, and unbooting a dude that your opponent thought was done for the turn. If you're careful and time things right, you can run Establishin' 2-4 times in a turn and still have most of your dudes unbooted, which makes for a big swing.

Mugging is not something you want to do often, but is useful for neutralizing goods/spells and sometimes just to boot a dude home. I won one game by Mugging with a stud Fixer in a situation where she had to defend and managing to pull a legal four of a kind.

Cheating in lowball can really ruin your day by discarding your fiddle games if your opponent has reliable cheating resolutions and has realized that the deck isn't that strong a shooter. In my first game against Rich Carter he got out Jael's Guile early. Whenever I had a cheating lowball hand (which happened more often than expected), he would use the hammer even though it had no effect in itself just to discard the Fiddle Games. The same thing happened with Fetch in a later game.

Full Moon Brotherhood causes problems as well by shutting down Clementine - you have to be much more careful about when it is safe to Protection Racket with her, which cuts into your GR. It didn't help that out of 6 games in the tournament, 5 of my opponents were Brotherhood :(.

As far as changes - I'm thinking about dropping a dude or two, it was very rarely worth the money to play Milt or Rabid Rance. I originally had 4 Someone Else's Problem in the deck but during testing found it wasn't as useful as I expected. With 2 I don't remember if I ever drew one across 6 games, but I also can't remember ever really wanting one. I might drop them altogether; if I do I'll probably switch values from 10 to something else as well.

Railroad Station or other movement would be useful in order to jump on opposing deeds when your opponent is camping in town square. It would also be good to tighten up the draw structure just a bit so the deck presents a more credible shootout threat.

Overall, had a blast as always - everyone in the Doomtown community is great to play against, regardless of how the game goes!

11 comments
Aug 07, 2018 jordan caldwell

This is a wildly imaginative deck!

Aug 08, 2018 Harlath

Congratulations on finishing Top Sloane!

I was looking forward to this list and it doesn't disappoint, bravo. Innovative and I like how you played on the expectation that Sloane = shooting. Wonder if Heist or (not a job) Hostile Takeover from 2T2D would find a place here?

Good to see you and thanks for sharing something different and meeting @jordan caldwell's fiction challenge. :)

Aug 08, 2018 Robert

I'm glad you got top Sloane! My deck was pretty standard, this is quite unique. Nice meeting you!

Aug 08, 2018 sholder

Heist seems like it would work nicely - both with Someone Else's Problem if you just want the money, or to try to tempt them to boot someone out of position if your real goal is to pull other jobs/take deeds later. I haven't had a chance to really dig into 2T2D cards yet, but I think I'm going to take a v2 stab at this deck once they're out.

@Robert thanks! It was great chatting with you as well.

Aug 11, 2018 Cadavaca

I love this deck! I know I told you on the day, but this was easily one of my favorite decks that I encountered at GenCon.

Aug 14, 2018 ironcache

How does this deck deal with the fact that, at any time, opponents are allowed to look at your discard pile, and will eventually come to the conclusion that this deck is so loose it can't put a legal 4 together (w/o Jokers)? How does a deck based on jobs and >1 CP deeds win when it can't reasonably fight to defend either? You mention that people "tend to assume" Sloane can fight... are you relying on them not tracking the board state?

Aug 14, 2018 ironcache

How does this deck deal with the fact that, at any time, opponents are allowed to look at your discard pile, and will eventually come to the conclusion that this deck is so loose it can't put a legal 4 together (w/o Jokers)? How does a deck based on jobs and >1 CP deeds win when it can't reasonably fight to defend either? You mention that people "tend to assume" Sloane can fight... are you relying on them not tracking the board state?

Aug 14, 2018 ironcache

Accidental double-click...

Aug 14, 2018 sholder

@ironcache So ultimately, this plays similarly to other slide decks: build a wide street that your opponent doesn't have enough dudes to cover, pull their dudes out of position and then run away, etc. I definitely had opponents that within a turn or two (or right from the start, when I played Carter for the 2nd time) knew I didn't have a particularly tight draw structure.

The key to making it work is targeting your jobs carefully: sure they can oppose your Fiddle Game, but if they have to boot into your home and at best are going to kill a single Agent Provocateur, is it really worth it? Once you've got a wide street, use Establishin' Who's in Charge where they either can't oppose you at all, or would have to boot to do so. When you have a bunch of mobile influence at home and they're spread out all over town, you've got a positional advantage, especially if you're holding something like Antoine Peterson who can get even more use out of your dudes.

Aug 17, 2018 Prodigy

Always enjoy your decks, and its too bad we didn't get to play at gencon. Here's to remedying that next year (or whatever event we're at next)!

I think Frank Stillwell is going to make an amazing addition to this deck, if it's played after 2T2D is released :)

Aug 18, 2018 sholder

@Prodigy sounds like a plan!

Frank Stillwell will definitely be interesting - an earlier iteration of this deck played with some bounty tech (Fred Aims is basically leftover from that version) but I couldn't make it worth the effort. I'll likely revisit some of that when I make v2 with 2T2D.