The Fixer is not your regular grifter that you add to the deck if you have 2-3 gr to spare. No, you have to think beforehand on how you’re going to use him.
Some people use his ability to get a good action and then discard him immediately, refusing to pay his upkeep. For them, he’s just an extra card in their starting hand (your choice out of five) for the price of 2 gr.
Other people I’ve seen using his ability to grab a Kidnappin’ and immediately go on a job, or get a Stakes and threaten a 4-stud in any shootout. They keep him for the first turn, but might decide to discard him on the second.
In my meta there’s one guy who never uses The Fixer’s grifter ability but always pays his upkeep. When I asked him about the reasoning behind it, he said that he originally started Sloane herself in his Desolation Row deck, but then he decided that if you pack enough cards that turn a draw dude into a stud (Stakes, Pearl-Handled Revolver, Winchester), then you might as well play 2-cost 3-upkeep Fixer rather than 8-cost 3-upkeep Sloane. Now he’s thinking about dropping The Fixer and taking Marion Seville instead - one less bullet and one less upfront cost, but two less upkeep.
I wonder how you guys use The Fixer? How do you decide whether to run him or Travis (or neither), and if you do run him, do you always use his ability, and for how long do you keep him around? And do you only play him in the Desolation Row, or in the core Sloane Gang outfit as well?
I prefer to use the Fixer staight up. Run a decent amount of jobs so I can get one turn 1. Then also run PHR and Stakes and so on. I grab my job, give him a weapon and off I go to cause mischief. In a DR deck, I usually grab the job to give to someone else and then do the DR job with Fixer. Then one of my wimps does the other job (kidnapping, coach comes to town etc) and I threaten a Stakes in my hand with Fixer.
Before Faith & Fear there was mysticpickle’s famous Sloaneslide Job Rush! deck than packed Recruitment Drives and Establishin’ Who’s in Charge. But I haven’t ever seen any of these jobs (or A Coach Comes To Town) played in Desolation Row. I imagine this is because you don’t have enough shooters to defend multiple jobs per day. So it is very rare that I see The Fixer grabbing a job and unbooting. It’s rather a nice bonus if you happen to grab Kidnappin’, but you cannot rely on it, so in most games The Fixer starts booted. At least this has been my experience, but I haven’t seen any job-packed Desolation builds so far.
I like him in a Legendary Holster deck. My current version evolved from “Sloane Stands Alone” but because of his much cheaper start you can give him some better friends than Sloane’s and he’s still a holster beast.
He’s the ideal guy to run the Des Row job with nobody in their right mind is standing in front of a 6 bullet holster voluntarily.
My current use for him is just for his grifter ability, where I choose the best “mind games” card available to me out of the 5 and then just discard him during upkeep, in my DR deck he is a great value and never hurts when he comes back into hand later in the game.
That’s exactly how I use him too Scott. I want my opponent to know that I am / not taking a cheating card to hand etc. really messes with the flow of their game.