Drunken Belligerence - 2018 NA Championship Winner

Learn some wisdom from the master, grab a drink, and head out into town to start some trouble among the various saloons! If you like being belligerent, and averaging somewhere around 5 different shootouts per game, this deck is for you!

Technically undefeated both days (tournament report will explain why I say "technically"), but realistically had one loss. Definitely a fun deck and I highly recommend some Drunken Belligerence!

I originally made this for the Dead Mans Hand tournament, to see how many dead men I could stack up throughout the tournament, but ended up liking it so much I chose to play it in the main event instead. It originally had 2 more 1 ghost rock belligerent dudes in Willa Mae MacGowan and Denise Brancini, but I realized the increased number of off-value cards would hurt early aggression too much. This deck wants to be aggressive from either day 1, or day 2 at the very latest, and it still has 3 Hired Guns so its essentially like having 3 more 1 GR dudes in the deck (although hired guns makes them cost 2).

I only say day 2 because you often want to wait for Benjamin Washington to be unbooted so you can have maximum shootouts in a day. This deck employs a combination of cheatin through the pain (CTTP), running your opponent out of shootout actions, and attrition. Ideally you get into as many shootouts as you can in a single day. Who cares if the first 2 shootouts go badly because of their shootout actions and cheatin punishment when you only lose 2 GR, and the next 1 or 2 shootouts can be very deadly for the opponent.

I was asked a lot about why I chose Drunken Masters over original 108 since I had no kung-fu, but it was a combination of 1 more GR, and the Baijiu Jar giving me the essential influence on the many influence-less dudes (and cycling a ton of cards when needed, which wasn't often, but critical when it was). I knew I was going to run aces as a value for Hired Guns to quickly get my off value dudes on the table, so baijiu jar fit in nicely with the saloons. Also great synergy with Clementine Lepp and Buford Hurley, both on-value dudes.

My values were already A, 3, and 4 so as an afterthought I threw in one Legendary Holster. If I saw it, great, if not, it didn't matter. If I really wanted to make it a holster deck I would have thrown in a Junior so he could be searched out with Hired Guns, but Holster is an afterthought for this deck and not necessary.

I don't need to say more about this deck, it is relatively straight forward and very different from most "serious" tournament decks I make, since they've tended to have a lot of moving parts and take time to build up (Putting The Pieces Together, blessed, and gadgets). This was a nice break from that. Fewer moving parts means fewer things to go wrong, and it worked out much better than expected. It doesn't have the sheer inevitability of those other decks, but I made sure to make games as quick as possible, or at least throw a wrench in the opponents works early on.

I wish I had recorded exactly how many shootouts I had, and how many dudes I lost (discarded or aced), because that number was astronomical! Fun deck to play, for sure.

Tournament report, and other thoughts

*Please consume this deck responsibly