I wanted to start a thread as we move towards future expansions to try and identify the cards and strategies you love about the game. So Doomtown players, we ask you, the community, what cards have been the most fun for you in Doomtown’s run since it’s debut in the expandable card game format in 2014?
For Classic players, is there a fun card you’d like to see returned and why?
Feel free to share your stories and experiences of great times flipping cardboard in the Weird West!
Dudes:
Goods/Spells:
Actions:
Deeds:
Outfits:
Legends:
Favorite card is Run Em Down. I love the forced callout without going home booted like happens after a job. Also, you can just sit a guy down and walk away. It’s a super versatile card supporting my favorite theme.
Favorite combo is having a shootout featuring a couple Lemats and Quickdraw Handguns.
Knowing you can go low and push your hand rank up if needed, while threatening to give your opponent hand rank 3 if they cheat. Lemat is just dumb. 
My first thought is decimator array. Its totemic of the change in gadgets from goods which made you lose tempo to a genuine top teir concept. Its enabled other deck structures including a functional SF on hearts build which has never really fired in reloaded.
It combos with a bunch of cards including tech expo and of course lemat for the hand rank concept. I do have to agree with my learned college Shinjo
The card art is of course amazing encompassing the idea of a device which can do almost anything very much like the card itself.
I frequently rely on Tlalocs furies and Abrams Crusaders any time I’m considering blessed. Having the possibility of one melee weapon adding up to 5 bullets to one dude is amusing in itself. It also boosts skills which can take the normally tougher spells and at least make them reasonable to pass since there aren’t many Blessed that stack up to Erin’s skill.
Whateley Estate has been a go to for me in Fearmongers for a while now. It isn’t just about getting cards back that you intentionally sent to boot hill, but it’s also for getting back cards your opponent has managed to put in your boot hill for other reasons and it gets jokers!
Recursion has always been one of my favorite things in this game. Ivor xp might have made it a little too easy, but bringing things back from the dead has been a personal favorite all these years.
I can’t remember what recursion looks like without Ivor XP. it would be fun to find out.
Have to give the MVP cards to mech horse and shadow walk here. Chessing around (and having to deal with chessing around) is one of the two mechanics (along with jobs) that stops Doomtown from devolving into a brawler in town square, and I’ve had great fun building decks that walk around my opponent’s much more fighty builds with those cards.
To the point of jobs, I think jobs that are not important enough to warrant sending your whole posse are good design and fun decision making. Tech Ex., Maggie… Honorable mentions here.
Putting the Pieces Together, by far!!! No other card in Doomtown has such a fun mix of risk/reward, as well as entirely dictating the draw structure of your deck. A well oiled PTPT deck that fully comes together during a game is like watching an Olympic athlete - it seems so easy (and if you’re against it, possibly unfair), but you have no idea what work and sacrifices were made to get to that point.
Decimator Array is a close 2nd, but you can ignore the hearts straight flush portion of it, and still enjoy the massive benefits of an influence, minus upkeep, and sidekick. Technically it can sometimes be useful in normal 3 value decks, too, to either avoid cheating or turn your off value hearts into an on value card.
Rope N Ride - fun to pull of tricks
Pinned Down - so satisfying to snipe a 4 cp Allie Hensmann
The Stakes just Rose
Election Day Slaughter - even though I rarely play it myself
Grim Servant of Death
Carter’s Bounties
Yan Li’s
The Brute - so thematically beautiful
These are not all the same cards I would have mentioned if I were to choose which cards I enjoy playing the most. But hey, I like competitive decks.
I won Knoxville’s 2nd Sherrif Event with a Stables deck that ran 4 Pinto, 4 Mustang, & 3 Espuelas (1 Quickdraw).
Also had 4 Pistol Whip, 4 Run Em Down, Mariel, Wendy, and 1 Ridden Down.
Longstride with a Mustang and Espuelas is super fun. You can get 12 moves without booting if your opponent is chasing you instead of controlling Town Square.
You basically had to job me to start a remotely fair fight.
I think it was mainly Raising Hell and Soul Cage. And man, that was situational. I think if Summoning had been able to get an abomination from boot hill, it would have been a much more interesting card.
Raising Hell was fun, but I can’t tell you how many times my opponent was able to keep me from using it, either from unprepared or just kicking the huckster out of the shootout.
Soul Cage was just not frequent enough for me with the people I played with at the time. There were enough SF builds that I almost never got to trigger it in lowball and shootouts would often shut down the dude with the Cage before I got to use it.
Some of my favourite Classic cards were the ones that let you do rule-breaking trickery with movement - such as Lost in the Badlands (Reaction: When a Dude is moving to an out-of-town Deed, move the Dude to another out-of-town Deed of your choice), RADAR (Gadget - Reaction: When another Dude moves, boot RADAR to move this Dude to the same location), or the Texas Rangers home (Reaction, Boot: Alllow a Dude to make a move which would normally be illegal (including joinng a posse at a non-adjacent location)).
I also miss the cards that let you destroy or steal opposing deeds. I get that some of them were overpowered (coughBurnt Offeringcough) and that nearly-completely-removing them was a design choice, but still feel like it’s such a natural thematic component of the setting that it it ought to be possible to make some room for it.
My absolute favorite moment came from when I discovered the Hit & Run combo (LH + Make the Smart Choice).
My second favorite moment was when I first saw Highbinder Hotel and thought “THEY PRINTED WHAT!?” and then promptly had to apologize to my playgroup.
My favorite decks to play in card games are the kind that put opponents in a bind and oh boy does that combo do that. It’s a deck that I keep finding myself coming back to and absolutely loving - to the point that every time I’m playing another deck I find myself thinking “I really wish I was playing Hit & Run right now”