Sliding You With Me - Edinburgh "2016" Sheriff Winner

Black Lion Games held its delayed 2016 Sheriff event on the 2nd of April, which also offered an excellent chance to celebrate Doomtown Reloaded’s continuation under Pine Box Entertainment’s management.

Thanks to the various players that travelled up, helped get us to nine players and made up for a few of the Edinburgh regulars being missing due to work/illness. My win was slightly devalued by the previous sheriff’s absence through illness, hope Mark is feeling better. Thanks too to Black Lion Games for hosting such a fun event and persevering with the Sheriff tournament after last year's delay (where they admirably came up with a deputy kit at short notice).

I decided to try out a slide deck with two strong shooting values. The very strong 108 Worldly Desires home helped support me further in shootouts while also helping me win low-ball. I’ll confess that I don’t like this home even after the errata: it is very powerful and versatile, particularly alongside Longwei Fu's floating stud bonus (he never left my home all day but was probably my MVP).

I'm on Q for lots of 2GR for 1CP deeds plus Takin' Ya With Me and good dudes. The Q goods are there for a bit of movement, help v calling the cavalry and to be discarded and stay in my draw structure.

This is a mixed shooting/slide deck. Your opponent generally spreads out to cover your deedslide at which point you pick off dudes by drawing shootouts/cheating to victory in shootouts or Takin' Ya With Me/Shotgun-ing (you can fetch it with Doomsday Supply). Pistol Whip is ideal for defending your dudes from jobs or booting out your opponent’s bullet catchers so you can hit dudes with influence with your Takin' Ya With Me. Sometimes you can force out opposing studs and simply kill dudes or hope your opponent cheats and that you can Coachwhip! people.

Randall is very strong thanks to his 2 influence for only 4GR and helps slide/lose to win by giving you a larger hand.

I think a LD Faster on the Draw/Bounty Hunter/Point Blank deck would work well against this. Faster on the Draw lets you boost your bullets, hopefully taking you out of range of my Takin; Ya With Me dudes (penalty wears off when my dude hits discard but the +1 bullet is generally enough to take opposing dudes out of range). Point Blank and Bounty Hunter help inflict casualties and the Bounty Hunter can eat casualties from Takin' Ya With Me too (they're heroic and self-sacrificing for hired killers!). That said, you can survive an early loss of Randall by parking Clementine Lepp at a Saloon and there’s plenty more influence in the deck and lots of GR to pay for it.

All the games won before time, first game was slightly inside the final 10 minutes.

Round 1 v Chris’s MCC

• A very tight game.

• Chris was wise to my lose to win strategies, prudently hitting me with Point Blank whenever he suspected my draw scrubs were going after his more valuable dudes to use Tak' Ya With Me or try to cheat a victory. Grrr.

• T'ou Chi Chow came in late and helped guide me to a win (along with some votes for Nicodemus), albeit a turn after he should have given me the win as I forgot that I could trigger his ability with my own adjacent deeds. I am dumb (he's a really strong dude!). I’m not sure I drew him again after this as the gods saw fit to punish me for my stupidity. Still, he was awesome once I’d actually read the card properly…

Round 2 v Steve’s Avie Cline 4R

• Steve was playing an Avie Cline (Exp.1) experienced body snatching deck, where he drags dudes to the The Whateley Estate and murders them.

• Hamshanks came to the rescue, forcing Steve to target him after a couple of turns of killing my 1GR dudes. In the Hamshanks fight I try to Carter's Bounties in Eve Henry so I can grab a shotgun and ace Valeria Batten, but Steve pistol whips her home. Luckily, Longwei Fu helps hamshanks generate four of a kind (joker assisted) to Steve’s full house and I stay for round two as I have 2x Taking You With Me. Steve has a cheatin’ full house to my three of a kind, allowing me to Coach Whip Arnold McCadish and ace Valeria with 2x It’s Not What You Know.

• This gives me the influence advantage I need to win.

Round 3 v David Avery’s Morgan Regulators Mad Science

• Opposed a T1 Technological Exhibition, pistol whipping Postatron and then using “Taking You With Me” to discard Diego Linares at the cost of Xiaodan Li (as the Bullet Penalty from Pistol Whip has worn off by the time my dude hits the discard pile).

• I then throw out deeds with slide, Dave wisely sits on some of them but I’ve got several and Clementine to help protect my Saloon income and continue to add more and more deeds.

• Nicodemus then entered play and I voted my way to victory, as Dave couldn’t get enough dudes in to place to stop the march of democracy as his dudes were at my deeds to strangle my slide. Unusually, Doomsday Supply was useful here to grab a Knight’s Chasuble to help a scrub seize a deed and boot to vote (we didn’t get as far as playing this out but just calculated out the final turn together).

Round 4 v Dave Hogg’s 108 Worldly Bandits

• I get a strong start on deeds and play several, Dave sits on some and Clementine protects a bit of my income. I don’t force the issue on T1, hoping for a second pistol whip and/or more Takin' Ya With Me. My wish is granted thanks to Randall giving me six cards.

• Dave actually started with less GR than me, but I think I win lowball every turn. This was good luck on T1 (as I can now see we had similar draw structures) and from T2 onwards I had the advantage of Companhurst's often giving me the extra card in lowball while Dave didn't have a copy. It's hard to send a dude to contest Companhurst's against slide.

• I start a gunfight at my California Tax office where I Pistol Whip Steven Wiles and Jacqueline Isham and then kill Shi Long Peng. I was hoping this would clog Dave's hand with miracles too as this was his sole blessed dude in play, but there wasn't much sign of this.

• I think I may have plinked off some other dudes with Taking You With Me if memory serves?

• A turn or two later I get in to a fight v two draws (Jacqueline + Asakachi Cooke?), winning by three ranks. I don’t need to waste my Coachwhip to ace Asakachi Cooke as I think I can win that turn.

• Then had enough deeds to win – Dave managed to spend all his GR for a desperate last dude with influence but I was able to discard the dude with California Tax Office.

Sorry to everyone for taking the sheriff with a deck that combines lots of things people don't like (lose to win, slide and 108 Worldly). The shame will linger...