How to Tommy

HOW TO TOMMY

With all due respect to TheBlackHorror, there aren't a lot of good Tommy decks and guides, and why would there be? Tommy is a Guardian with middling stats, a confusing card pool, and a signature that almost begs to be built around but probably shouldn't. He doesn't have the big 5 fight, heavy card draw and skill boosts of Mark, he doesn't have the intense clue gathering capability of Roland, nor "the deck plays itself" obvious huge damage strategy of Nathaniel. Therefore, I write this guide to help my own dumb brain figure out how to play Tommy, and if it helps other players, bonus. I'm just a random asshole who knows how to read cards and doesn't interface with the community, so if I'm wrong, dumb, or missing something, feel free to drop a comment and I'll update accordingly. The deck is not legal, it's just some cards that are okay.

THE REACTION

The thing setting Tommy apart from his blue comrades is that if his assets are defeated, he gets an insurance payment and puts it back in his deck. This has a few implications:

1. Some assets turn into improved economy cards. Leather Coat goes from "get a resource now" to "get 2 resources later and also 2 damage soak". Madame Labranche gives 2/2 soak for 2, and grants 4 when she dies, if you can fill her up exactly. On the other hand, you'll never be using her abilities.
2. Cards with self-damage or death effects become much better, because they'll pay most or all of their cost when they die, and you can see them again and again when they get reshuffled. Beat Cop is great, but so are Tetsuo Mori and Brother Xavier.
3. Tommy is desperate for card draw and ways to play assets at <1 action each. Ever Vigilant is great, Glory is still best for Nate, but it might be second best for Tommy.
4. Most of the time, especially at 0 XP, the value of taking damage and horror is near 0. You don't WANT to take damage, you just don't mind it. You're not Calvin Wright, who is happy to take trauma just to speed his setup, but you're definitely not any of the other investigators who think hard before taking damage they don't have to. If you can trade damage for a good effect, like Self-Sacrifice, it's usually all gains for Tommy.
5. Tommy does NOT want to fill slots with cards that don't have health or sanity values or need to be in play for long periods to grant benefits. Police Badge pales next to Cherished Keepsake. Bandolier is a trick, because it doesn't pay off its cost, and you never want to lose it or you'll lose your third gun hand, possibly losing an expensive weapon in the process. Hands are generally free for whatever you want, body and accessory are generally soak, allies are always soak, and arcane...well, there's not a lot there, especially at 0 XP. Do what you want.
6. Most Guardians play a bunch of assets and then stay poor for the rest of the game. Tommy plays a bunch of assets and then does some insurance fraud and ends up with a mountain of resources. Not like, Keen Eye resources, but enough resources he can do things that other non-Zoey guardians would say are too inefficient or expensive.
7. Defeating assets awards you potential tempo in the form of resources, but loses you actual tempo. You don't actually want to lose assets unless you have a specific plan. Tempo wins games, resources win nothing.

THE SIGNATURE

Becky at first glance seems like a decent signature weapon. +2 fight, +1 damage, the tempting ability to reload it forever without specialized ammo cards, and a low introductory cost of 2. However, I think it's a trap. First off, it's 2 hands, which means you have no flexibility unless you also throw in a bandolier. Second, it just can't hold up well to end-campaign foes. If you limit yourself to Becky and worse weapons, your accuracy won't be too amazing, and your peak damage output will be unimpressive. You won't be able to kill some things in a turn if you also have to engage them, you won't be able to do your share of boss damage in a turn (and as the primary fighter, you'll often have to do your own share and most of a seeker or support's), and without the serious hardware or Mark's 5 fight and a few passive boosts, you'll be testing your 6 or 7 vs whatever an endgame enemy is, sometimes up to 6, sometimes even higher. Thirdly and finally it's one card. Never, ever build your deck around 1 card unless you can guarantee access to it. Even with 2 Prepared for the Worst and 2 Tetsuo Mori, you could end up not finding Becky. If you want to build her up with cards like Reliable, now you need to see even more specific cards before your kit is fully set.

THE WEAKNESS

Rookie Mistake discards any assets with damage/horror on them. It also reshuffles if you don't discard anything. To play around it, only stack one asset at a time with damage/horror, and if it's an important asset (say, Agency Backup) make sure to think about whether you really want to draw cards during your turn.

ASSETS

This is Tommy's most important set of choices, in my opinion. It's how he'll do his main job (kill enemies) and his specialist role (take damage to gain money and recycle cards). I'll break it down by slot, and assume all taboo is active.

Hands

.45 Thompson Yes, you're allowed to play this. You have the resources. It's okay. You get a lot of bullets with a solid fight bonus and the expected damage bonus.

.45 Automatic It's just a basic gun, onehanded, gives a +1 to hit. Not as many bullets as the .32 Colt, but you need the accuracy. Baseball Bat It's a super cheap .45 Thompson, but with variable and unknown ammo. It could break on the first swing, it could last all game long. It's nice, it's just not reliable. Expected swings is somewhere around 4, I think, but it depends a lot on the campaign. That's good economically, but I don't know if it balances out the times when it breaks on the first swing and you can't draw a gun to save your soul.

Survival Knife Lets you turn your soak into tempo, especially effective against less damaging/horroring enemies. Tempo wins games. The drawbacks are that if you're not killing the enemy DURING your turn, what are you even doing? You're not a clue finder. Secondly, it's 1 hand, and a lot of your good choices are 2 hands, meaning you'll struggle to fill both hands. It also exhausts, so you can't blow up multiple enemies per turn.

Meat Cleaver It's a scarier, and sturdier baseball bat. It has the same +2/+1 profile, but only if you're at 3 sanity or less, and take a horror on every swing. You net positive horror if you swing at 1 health enemies, or shoot a 3 health enemy and finish him off with the cleaver. Most enemies you'll break even and big enemies you'll find yourself behind. Sometimes this is helpful to turn your assets into resources, but having a mandatory drain to do your primary job sucks. It's a nonbo with survival knife, since the cleaver wants to last hit, and the knife happens in the enemy phase, so the optimal timing actually keeps enemies alive through the mythos phase, and the more times you do that, the more likely it is you'll get a crunch turn where you can't keep up. Your whole job as a guardian is to prevent crunch turns.

Enchanted Blade It's 3 charges of +2/+1, but you can still stab at +1/+0 if you're out of charges or are stabbing someone with odd health. It's similar to if you averaged out a baseball bat.

Clue Stuff Generally, clue stuff will distract from your main task, but if your group needs help scooping those little green bastards, you better be running one-handed weapons

Body

Leather Coat This is your body slot. 0 resources for 2 soak and resources, it doesn't get better.

Fine Clothes This is the weird meta pick. If you expect to parley a lot, take it. If you just need more horror soak, then take more slotless horror soak.

Ally

Guard Dog Yes, Tommy likes dogs! It's testless, actionless damage, and it is generally better than Beat Cop except you don't get a bonus to fight. The dog might be the best 0 xp ally.

Tetsuo Mori You can net 1 resource off his death, you can find items, your friends can find items, he's solid.

Grete Wagner She breaks even on resources, she hits herself to play Evidence!, she boosts your fight. Not a bad pick.

Madame Labranche On paper she's good, since she's 4 soak for 2 resources, but Tommy doesn't have the actions to empty his hand or his bank account. Pick allies who do something instead.

Accessory

Cherished Keepsake It's a leather coat for your psyche.

Hallowed Mirror It's slow, and it clogs your deck even worse, and it doesn't have soak on it, but it does put 6 flexible healing over time into the game.

Arcane

They're all bad, just don't. Enchanted Blade is fine and incidentally takes an arcane slot, but the hand is much more important.

Slotless

Solemn Vow So you're tanking all the enemies and all your own treachery cards, but the other investigators are flagging and being worn down by treacheries or other effects? Vow lets you indirectly take the burden of those too. If your hand is clogged with assets for slots you already have filled, help your friends kill off your items.

Something Worth Fighting For Tommy has more health than sanity. His best assets have more health than sanity. He's got a little bit of a sanity problem. The solution? Adding an efficient, slotless sanity soak that allies can enjoy in a pinch.

EVENTS

Lucky! It's a classic for a reason. Fail a test by 2 or less? You pass instead. Costs a little, but Tommy has money.

Live and Learn If Lucky! protects you from missing iffy checks, L&L protects you from autofail and other singularly monstrous tokens (like the -8).

"Look what I found!" Straight up buy 2 clues for 2 and an action at a low shroud location, or with some decent luck or a flashlight. You're not a clue finder, but you can take a little of the heat off your Seeker with one of the best Survivor cards.

Scene of the Crime Take a chunk out of a high shroud or high cost location.

Prepared for the Worst It's like another weapon, but worse. Is it better than your worst weapon? I don't know!

Evidence! It's Working a Hunch, but for 1 resource and 1 enemy. Fast, testless clues are great.

First Watch Taking the enemies and damage treacheries while pawning off the agility tests and tough choices is a real pro move.

Skills

How many skills should you run? I have no idea. But some skills are better than others, and you need a few, if for no other reason than a deck that's all (mostly slow) assets and (mostly slow) events will never be able to efficiently play out its hand.

Daring Basically 3 free fight. If you can't hit on a 7+, you're doing something wrong. If you draw the autofail, oh well, wall of soaks activate.

Steadfast You never take damage/horror unless you want to, so this is always 3.

Vicious Blow Free damage.

Self-Sacrifice You want to tank someone else's treachery or retaliate? You want to draw cards? Do both with this one card.

Take Heart Free cards, free resources, you'll meet some tests you have no shot at passing sooner or later.

Resourceful Get back some Survivor card. How good is this? It depends what Survivor cards you have. Even a Take Heart isn't bad.

Unexpected Courage A +2 to any test staple.

Overpower Guts +2 to fighting or resisting most treacheries, and card draw.

Reckless Assault Say Your Prayers If you're running a meat cleaver, or take a few horror on the chin on purpose, you can get big boosts by running the insane skills. You can safely hover 3 sanity because you're generally sitting behind a wall of soaks.

UPGRADES

This'll be a long and unfocused list

Timeworn Brand It's a solid weapon, with unlimited swings, but is it worth 5 xp? It's basically just unlimited Becky plus a single megaswing. You probably want other stuff.

Purifying Corruption Skipping 3 treacheries isn't bad, and you care way less about the damage and horror than most investigators. Worth 4 xp/resources? Probably not.

The Red-Gloved Man This is a hugely popular card for Tommy, but I think it's overrated. Fast? Awesome. Low cost? Awesome. Huge soak? Awesome. Sets 2 skills to 6 for a turn? Sweet. But here's a riddle for you: how are you supposed to kill ol' Glovey Boi if you're the one who's supposed to kill enemies, and fighting doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity? If you're spending actions accomplishing nothing but getting him killed on time, what is the point of his skill boost? A lot of the theory around using him involves needing to play a weapon while engaged, or doing base investigates while engaged.

The Black Cat It's a cheap ally with a reasonable amount of soak and turns 2 of the picture tokens into probable successes. Very xp heavy for what it does. Consult your difficulty and overall frequency of tests (as Expert decks will do anything in their power to make as few tests as possible)

Relic Hunter Charisma More slots for more soaks is cool. Not your top priority though.

A Chance Encounter This is entirely dependent on your other investigators. If they take some sweet allies like Red Gloved Man, Agency Backup, or whatever, this is a budget option to play them, costing both fewer resources and fewer xp. On the other hand, all the allies you want to grab with this are the allies only you would consider spending xp on. Your best realistic scenario is like an upgraded Beat Cop, which is still fine.

"Look what I found!" I know you're not the clue guy, but if you end up having to pull your own weight, this 2 xp upgrade lets you steal clues on up to 3 shroud locations, or any location next to a 3 or less shroud location. That describes most locations. You could grab 2 clues from a 6 shroud location with Haunted and your Seeker would love you.

Stick to the Plan It's good for every Guardian, and Tommy's a Guardian.

Spiritual Resolve Okay, it's crazy expensive (5 xp, 3 resources), and it doesn't go super well with Tommy's ability, but hear me out. For 3 resources, you get 6 soak. That's a good ratio. It doesn't compete for valuable slots. Tommy is often choked with cards and not enough actions to play them. You can refresh your resolve with a fast action discard. When it does eventually get defeated, you net 0-3 resources. and have soaked between 3 and 8 damage and 8 horror for 1 action. And you get to reshuffle it. for another 3/3. Is it overkill? Probably.

Survival Knife The upgraded knife lets you pump out 4 damage for 0 actions if you dual wield them with a very reasonable +2 to hit. If you need to do 6 or more damage in a turn, you're going to be sad though. Or if you only draw one. It lacks consistency.

Safeguard You can spend 3 actions shooting, and still follow your Seeker across the map for a low cost, and no slots.

Mk 1 Grenades In keeping with the principle "tradeoff? Damage is no tradeoff", Tommy can use grenades cheaper than anyone else. However, part of the job of the guardian is handling enemies without disrupting the seeker's turn, and making them scramble from a location with clues still on it to avoid getting caught in the blast definitely counts as disruption.

Flamethrower It's the premier guardian gun. It does 4 damage with 4 shots (and therefore the best suitability to reload), but there's the engage requirement and the body slot. If you don't need your body slot for soaking damage, this is your gun.

Lightning Gun If you don't want the flamethrower, this is your next best gun. 9 damage for 6 resources is a bit steep, and it's only 3 shots, making reloading a little more painful. On the other hand, you'd find it hard to miss if you tried.

Grete Wagner Big Grete is your clue-focused ally. She's not bad.

Beat Cop The cop is as good as ever, dealing 3 testless damage over 3 turns.

Agency Backup The big bad backup. Worth 3 clues and 4 testless damage (or vice versa) over 7 turns unless you have extra ways to ready them. Large upfront price though.

Brother Xavier A really solid ally for Tommy. He can net positive resources, he can tank for your team, and he's testless damage. What more could you ask for?

Ace of Swords +1 fight, relatively high chance to play it for free (if you have Stick to the Plan, higher), no contested slot, low xp cost.