Monkey Goes to Mother Bear's

Matthew Rising Sun had never quite got the hang of Shamanism. Once the Spirits were bound to a totem he could channel their power just fine, but for some reason they never listened when he tried to call them himself. He did, however, seem to have a fine talent for the art of 'Chi Mastery' practiced by the Spiritual Society, a skill they had learnt through co-operation with the immigrants from across the great ocean. It was a good idea of Laughing Crow's to send him to train with them. He began to wonder if he could effectively combine his talent for commanding totems with his Kung Fu...

This was the deck I used for most of my games in the OCTGN Savage Lands series league. It's a bit clunky and generally didn't work very well in most of my matchups. The general gimmick was to send Matthew out into town square to fight solo, with Monkey Goes to the Mountain ready in hand to evacuate him and a choice target (ideally booted) to one of my deeds. I decided I'd start the Kiva to always have a location ready to move to. It had the added bonus of helping gain the town square benefits of The Spiritual Society and Alexander Sequoia, as well as repositioning Matthew in town square if I had a Monkey ready to use. Once dragged away from town square, Matthew could then use Mother Bear's Rage to call out the extracted dude.

This trick turned out not to work so well against gadget decks with high bullet dudes and Yagn's Mechanical Skeleton, Khudzlin's Jade Rabbit Drunken Masters and Blargg's Gideon & MacGruder deck that featured high bullets plus was geared towards solo shootouts. I did manage to scrape one win with it, helped more by Trimm pulling a club for an Asyncoil Gun and discarding a gadget-loaded Jen than anything else.

I'd probably leave the Kiva in the deck and rejig the starting posse if I was to do this again, as it's too fragile. Matthew can use Totems but can't plant them, so I needed a Shaman. If I wanted a reliable backup caster I needed Eva Bright Eyes or Black Owl. Eva won out through being cheaper, but she was also my most expendable dude, which left me without a way to plant Totems in a couple of games. I'd bring Henry or Willa in place of the Kiva.

An earlier version of the deck had a couple of Silver Pheasant's Bounty, but I dropped them as they were only showing up to spoil shootout hands and fail Kung Fu pulls. I also originally had a pair of Bowie Knives, but they made way for Nunchucks. The knives kept getting their bonus cancelled, while the Nunchuks gave Wei Xu more targets when he was called to use Monkey Goes to the Mountain while still providing an extra bullet.