108 Hit & Run PAX Unplugged 2nd place

Disclaimer: I've been playing this deck for long time now. It's not the most intuitive or straightforward deck to play but it is incredibly effective.

The deck plays to take as much advantage of the LH as possible. In order to do that you need to A) win lowball as often as the odds allow and B) keep the holster on the table for as long as possible. To accomplish these things you need as loose of a draw structure as possible using only A-4 and to avoid shootout resolutions due to that weak draw structure.

The deck runs 11x As, 11x 2s, 12x 3s, 8x 4s and then 5 off value cards. Which gives you a fairly consistent lowball, but sometimes you'll just flop a full house or a 4oak.

The first part of the deck, the "Hit" is the holster. Having the first action in a shootout is incredibly powerful as your opponent has very little opportunity to boot your holster or stop you from acing their dude. When you win lowball you'll want to pressure the town as much as possible, use the plethora of dudes you have to force opposing dudes out of position where they can be singled out and sent to their forever home in boot hill. Very frequently your LH or shotgun wielder will be your only dude in the shootout in order to enable the "run".

The second key part of the deck is the "Run" - literally running away from shootouts where your opponent's posse has dudes remaining after using all your acing effects and you would need to go to resolution. Both Highbinder's Hotel and Make the Smart Choice let you run back to the safety of your home for the next round keeping your LH or shotgun on the board for the next day to claim another victim and avoid taking any casualties.

You rinse and repeat this until your opponent doesn't have enough dudes left to contest your control.

Until you've got the combo online you'll want to play safe at home like landslide, since your draw structure is so terrible. Your goal in moving around town is to force your opponent to get dudes booted at deeds so that they're vulnerable to being called out.

A couple small nuances in the game play and deck construction:

If you know that your opponent is running on the tighter side, you can often sacrifice a 0inf dude to angle for a SIYE + Coachwhip combo.

Because you don't plan on going to resolution the bullet type of your dude with the holster doesn't matter, only the amount. Luckily there are 5 backup shooters in the deck, 4 of which are super low cost.

At is core the deck aims to win in a similar fashion to landslide, put out more control points than your opponent can deal with, but has a significantly better matchup and game plan against aggro decks.

tl;dr - the deck takes advantage of the first action granted by winning lowball to abuse a combo between LH/Shotgun and Highbinder's Hotel/Make the Smart Choice to avoid the resolution mechanic in shootouts negating taking casualties while acing 1 or 2 of your opponents dudes each turn until they can't contest your cp.

Sounds like you had a good showing at Pax, well done!

Did you choose Property Is Theft mostly because it is new and shiny (always encouraged)? I'm curious, because it doesn't seem very useful for this kind of deck, other than maybe an occasional card draw.

I'd guess Property is Theft is there to enable a lot of card cycle with Jim Hexter once the deck is set up. Get in a shootout, ace a dude with the holster, pay to make Jim a stud, React and cycle 2 cards, run away.

@Prodigy - I choose Property is Theft over 108 Righteous Bandits because the ability on it is situationally crazy strong (more card draw to hit holster early or acheatin' res if you don't already have one in hand). That being said, I only used it maybe 3 times the whole tournament, but every time I did it was worth it.

The deck definitely runs better out of the base outfit as it overall generates more opportunities throughout the game. I hadn't had a lot of time to test with Property is Theft but I knew the action could be really strong in the deck so I wanted to give it a shot.

@Prodigy - I choose Property is Theft over 108 Righteous Bandits because the ability on it is situationally crazy strong (more card draw to hit holster early or acheatin' res if you don't already have one in hand). That being said, I only used it maybe 3 times the whole tournament, but every time I did it was worth it.

The deck definitely runs better out of the base outfit as it overall generates more opportunities throughout the game. I hadn't had a lot of time to test with Property is Theft but I knew the action could be really strong in the deck so I wanted to give it a shot.

Thanks - appreciate the list and thorough rundown. I remember this kind of hit and run deck was very popular back in the days of 108 Worldly Desires, before it was rightfully banned. Winning Lowball reliably was way too powerful. Interesting to see this still work well, congratulations and hope you had fun.

Appreciate the thoughts on Property Is Theft.

The deck was significantly more consistent out of 108 Worldly Desires and has definitely become weaker since it was banned because it isn't guaranteed to win lowball every turn. The deck still has some legs to it though now it can require a bit of luck to dodge bad lowball hands.

I used this deck to great effect in our tourney here in Perth over the weekend. Definitely a NPE for the blokes that I faced off against it.

(Putting on Playtest lead hat) Cheers - knowing what is effective/frustrating to play against is helpful. :)

lambretta - It definitely can create some serious NPE when people first play against it, especially if they aren't expecting it. The deck definitely has some moments where it's vulnerable but identifying them can be difficult, especially with the amount of pressure it puts on the board.

Hopefully you enjoyed playing it!

@TomTheOlympianHad a ball playing it. @HarlathNothing to see here, move on....