Howdy folks! I wanted to open up another round table discussion, this time on one of the outfits seeing a lot of play and success lately.
As we approach PAX Unplugged this weekend, I’m reminded of Zachary Seldon’s winning list from last year, featuring Raven. Looking over some of the results on dtdb, I’ve seen a number of players doing very well with this outfit.
So I’m curious Doomtown players, what do you like about this outfit, and why do you think it is seeing more play post Too Tough to Die?
Here’s some lists since GenCon, including the Top 8 ‘Job Slide’ deck:
I’ve noticed people tend to wait and see on outfits. People know how the old works, but need time to experiment, have casual play with, compare deck ideas, and rebuilds.
Protection Racket has first turn opportunity to get extra economy. Desolation Row has that as well, but the job leaves your posses dudes booted at home, and can fail to give any benefit if your leader is sent home during shootout. PR leaves them in town to help keep control of the town. PR also can easily work with Clementine at your saloon with little risk.
It’s a home that has built in economy assistance that can scale with the game, and ramping control points if opponent won’t fight.
I really like what Frank Stillwell can do in PR, allowing him to flee a shootout after using Home Ability, or letting him boot to join a shootout and immediately unbooting so you can use pistol whip or Home Ability later.
I used Protection Racket in that list mainly for the potential early GR boost. It was a close choice between that and the Sloane Gang outfit but Protection Racket won out as with the anticipated Summoning job I didn’t think I’d be able to commit enough to the job and also defend town square well early on. Too Tough To Die wasn’t legal for the event, so it didn’t factor.
From Too Tough To Die, I think Frank Stillwell provides a boost to the Protection Racket outfit as described above. Ike Clanton allows for aggressive play with 0-inf dudes who can boot at an opposing deed for GR and also control it with their bullets, so also provides good support.
As @jayjester and @Doomdog say, Frank Stillwell is a massive boost. Protection Racket has been my favourite outfit for a long while now, but I’ve always struggled with it against more aggressive decks. Frank helps massively there.
Having an Outlaw core deed is also a big boost, especially one that helps with Protection Racket’s movement game. Until 2T2D you had to either rely on finding/taking a deed early, use the mildly underwhelming (for this outfit at least) Gomorra Lot Commission, or some kind of relatively expensive Ol’ Howard option.
From experience of playing it on Octgn quite a bit, I do get the impression that it has hitherto been a bit of a sleeper outfit. Several times I’ve found myself having to explain that, yes, it really does give that much of an economic boost until the opposition plays 3 deeds of their own. Maybe the sheer weight of text on the card has kept it from popularity until now?
The new cards are good and certainly give the faction more power. But overall i think Outlaws has been massively overdo for a shining moment.
In terms of just raw fundamental power Outlaws have always been at the top. The best values for Outlaws are also values with some of the most powerful effects in the game, and most of the decks played out of the faction are easy to understand pressure decks that push the win condition. In addition the fact that the faction has many cheap dudes with influence and has access to high amounts of control point generating cards lets the faction deal with any slow or slide deck relative easy.
Quite honestly it is shocking that, outside of the hot lead flying meta, Outlaws have always been a fairly underrepresented faction. However they do have a horrible weakness to acing effects, such as shot guns and soul blast due to their reliance on lower values. With many meta decks shying away from these reusable acing affects its no wonder that Outlaws are seeing a rise in competitive play.
On the topic of why protection racket? Its a solid home. Many players like to play very greedy starting posses in Outlaws and the home allows players to mitigate some of the downside of starting low income. The home also is much lower risk than desolation row, even if the reward might be lower, protection racket is a significantly more flexible home as we can see from these lists a much wider structure sample than desolation is able to provide.
Looking over these lists i do think there is a little “getting away with murder” in the sense that nobody is packing unprepared or any way of dealing with the factions largest weakness. So i imagine that there will be a shift towards acing affects in addition to other low value punishment in order to put a dent in this gameplan.
I think it’s biggest weakest - in any form - is it’s early game. The home is built for the longhaul. Compare to the The Sloane Gang (which eventually goes broke), Desolation Row (which eventually comes tumbling down), and the Den of Thieves (which eventually succumbs to it’s own cheatin’ ways). The Sloane/Outlaw dudes are awesome, and this home propels them right into a chess match.
And just look at the creativity it inspires! (Holder’s “Jobslide” Gencon deck comes to mind)
The only type of Outlaw home I could see pulling my interest away would be one that actually stole money from your opponent…
Funny story, I’m told the Bank of Gomorra was made because the original design for the Sloane home was to take money from your opponent. Don’t know if design will ever go that route, but would be interesting
Just to echo earlier comments, the big appeal of Protection Racket for me was the safe economy boost when combining the Home ability w/ Clementine. I was working on the core of that jobslide deck first, then tried to figure out which home fit best, and PR was really the only one where I felt I’d actually get use out of the home ability.
I recently re-worked it w/ 2t2d but haven’t had a chance to play any real games with it yet. We’ve got an Abomination Series coming up on Dec. 9, though, and I’m really interested to see how Frank works out.
It’s one of my favourite homes currently in the game. Slide is strong in London and there are now up to three potential players of that strategy who tend to turn up at tournaments there. Yet I never fear playing against it with even my most, shall we say, ‘experimental’ PR decks.
I’ve settled into a small habit to my preferences which is to start with a core deed because you not only benefit from the deed but also find yourself less likely to get caught short against an opponent playing no deeds/barely any. At least a couple of ghost rock early on with that can be crucial. Once you’re at a stage of spewing control points even your most turtley opponent has to come for you and you’ve of course been saving those sweet action cards for something in that time, haven’t you?
