This is the first draft of an idea for a weenie rush deck. The idea is just to get as many cheap characters down as quickly as possible and rush the stories.

all comments, hints, abuse, gratefully accepted

Well, the most obvious thing of course is that we've got a little trimming to do in order to get close to the 50 card mark. That's OK, a lot of first drafts are oversized and I often play them that way for a few games to help me better judge which cards I want to shed.

Two things jump out at me from your deck that I think you may be over-spending on. Day and Skill manipulation.

You currently have nine cards that make it Day: 3xCrooked Attorney, 3xDaybreak, 3xSan Marco Basilica. This is really more than you need and I would look at cutting a few of them. Personally I would probably start by dropping Daybreak. San Marco is a stronger card and Crooked Attorney also buffs your Criminals so they both give you more of a boost. While Daybreak can block Terror, I wouldn't expect that to be a big problem for your deck. You can get widespread Willpower with Pit Boss, copy Terror with Paul Lemond, shoot the monsters with Shotgun, keep them away with Government Exorcist., exhaust them with Hard Case, steal Terror with Lena, etc... Bottom line, it's more Day than you need and the added benefits of skipping Terror seem relatively minor. However, if after testing you find you do have some Terror issues, I would suggest that you look at maybe adding some more exhaustion cards. These will let you accomplish a similar task of keeping Terror away from a story but are also more versatile tools since they can be used for other jobs as well.

Next, skill... You have a lot of ways to reduce skill. Clover Club Bouncer, Torch Singer, Henry Knoll, Clover Club, and Lena Di Boerio. While objectively speaking reducing skill is useful, your deck does not currently have a lot of ways to benefit from this other than having an easier time winning the skill struggle. You do have Henry Knoll that can take out an opposing character but he's Unique meaning you'll only ever have one of him out at a time. In addition, his timing can be a little problematic since his ability triggers when he readies. That means, not until after story resolution at the earliest, and it's possible for your opponent to block Arcane to delay it further. If he does this and delays it to the start of your turn, then the skill reduction you spent resources on ends up being partially wasted. Normally in a deck that has this much skill manipulation you'd see more cards designed to feed off of this like Tear Gas, Concrete & Chains, Mr. David Pan, Bound & Gagged, etc... If you search for "syndicate skill deck" you'll be able to see various examples. Anyway... Since you're not really going down the road of a dedicated skill deck I would remove some of these cards. Lena should stay since she also messes with icons. I'd probably drop the Bouncers and maybe cut one Torch Singer. If you mostly want her for her ability, and she doesn't exhaust to use it, then you really only need one of her in play. Lena could potentially be dropped to 2x as well if you want since she's Unique, but she's good enough that I wouldn't consider it bad to have a 3rd copy.

Clover Club I'm not sure about either. Being Loyal in a dual faction deck could be awkward (even though it's only a cost 2), playing a 2-cost support over a 2-cost character slows you down a little, and again you don't have a lot of ways to benefit from reducing enemy skill. I'd probably drop it.

In general, you've got several Unique cards that could potentially be reduced to a 2x if you need to trim space. Not a big deal, but if you end up a couple cards over or need to make room for something...

Two more cards I'd like to touch on... First Bauta. This grants you Arcane, Investigation, and +1 skill. How much do you need these though? You have 12 characters with Investigation in the deck, and Agency has more if you want them. You can also steal Investigation with Lena or Paul. Your Arcane is somewhat limited now but you can get it on all your Criminals if Crooked Attorney is out. I would consider replacing this card with a character that has these benefits all the time instead of only when it's Day. Jenica Capra would be a good option, she also helps you find your Agency supports faster, which in turn could help you cut one copy of Basilica if you needed to.

The other is Dutch Courage. It can be a useful card, but you probably don't need 3 of them. Also, keep in mind that it only protects against wounding. If an effect destroys, discards, sacrifices, or returns to hand then Toughness won't help. As I mentioned above about Terror, you may also be able to replace this with exhaustion. You don't need to be able to eat a wound if you don't lose Combat in the first play, and one possible way to do that is to prevent your opponent's big Combat guy from showing up at the story. This could also let you solve your problem with a 1-cost card instead of a 2-cost card which means that you can get your 2-cost characters out faster. If you're unsure, try running both for a while and see which one works out better.

Note that all of this is based on the deck as it is currently and you can potentially go in several directions. For instance, if you want to keep more of the skill manipulation then instead of cutting cards there you could add in more cards to capitalize more strongly on low enemy skill.

Oh, one more thing... since right now you do not have any characters that cost 3+ your deck is potentially very vulnerable to Negotium. In local/casual play that may not be much of an issue but from a competitive point of view it would be something to worry about.

Thank you very much for the advice, it's muchly appreciated.

It's been quite a while since I built a deck for CoC and the idea of a rush deck appealed. To be honest I viewed a lot of the cards as ways to protect the rest of the deck, rather than trying to work out a really good synergy between the cards, the lack of use of skill reduction being a prime example. Some of the cards you have suggested I won't be able to use due to not having them. This is one of the main reasons for putting this on boards, some of the things you have pointed out I hadn't, and probably wouldn't, have noticed, so thank you again.

Off to make some changes, play testing on Saturday, I'll post the changes.

Yeah, without knowing what's in your collection I have to assume you have more or less everything. If you want to post a list of what you have I can try to suggest some swaps for any suggested cards that aren't available, or you can always just change approaches if you don't have the tools to support a strategy.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing what your updated deck looks like and how it worked for you. Also, if you find after testing that some 3-cost characters would be helpful I would not hesitate to put a few of them into the deck, it's still going to be pretty fast but it may give you an option for a late-game push that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Good luck!

How did your testing go?

yes your all is right.... (Y)

Not as mush play testing done as I would have liked, but the store champs isn't until March 15th, so time yet.

Currently the deck looks like this:

Total Cards: (50)

Even if you don't have more cards, I'm not sure that's a big problem since you have useful ways to use your domains with cards like Paul Lemond, Torch Singer, Lena Di Boerio, Shotgun, and San Marco. So, your domains should not generally go to waste.

However, if you do find that you cannot productively use all of them, you could look at reducing the copies of Eldritch Nexus in favor of some other cards.

I should also mention that the Agency box is supposed to hit the streets on the 27th, so that may shake up your deck considerably - you should double-check with your venue to confirm if they are allowing these cards or not. Some places want the cards to be out for some minimum time which varies from TO to TO.

Been waiting on the Agency dlx for what feels like forverer!! Having only seen the spoiled cards, I'm not sure anything from those would be a must currently, although Jeremiah will be going straight into my MU deck.