With NTB out, 2 new miracles, a new anti-wanted action and even nastier judge Somerset, Law Dogs are getting significant goodies to support any number of strategies.
Bounty Hunting has become much faster and opportunistic as not only can you get bounty hunted Turn 1, Play 1, but you can’t even afford to leave your wanted squishy dudes unprotected for fear of granting cheap Control to the Law.
Miracle Makin’ gets a significant boost with a cheap and easy anti-cheatin’ miracle and even more survivability in shootouts via Shield of Faith. Together with Lay on Hands and Holy Roller, Blessed can keep going intot fights again and again and assuming a decent bullet rating, be almost impervious to harm.
Gadget support in the law has not received any direct boost, but the addition of Isham certainly helps protect your early game, especially if she is there to support Wendy for when she gets that damn sun in her eyes. In with 1 or 2 starting reliable studs, all those bullet increasing gadgets can be put to excellent use.
What are your thoughts. How are the Law Dogs shaping up in your meta?
Abram can also just use a Rapier now if you want it cheaper
But yeah, if you’re going with a Solo stud, Holy Roller can be very useful. It’s on value with Faster on the Draw, so a high Stud Blessed isn’t too difficult
I don’t think solo (“voltron”) decks are going to work as long as we have the ruling that eliminating the solo participant ends the shootout immediately without the other player taking casualties.
Well, yeah, you could also give Abram a Shield of Faith… but really, it’s just too unrealiable.
Also, I’d like to see a LD gadgets deck starting both Wendy and Jaquie (and still having enough influence to not get decimated by control clowns, and some money left).
Eliminating the solo dudes only ends the shootout immediately if it’s done before the casualty step. So only coachwhip or pistol whip can help you. But while a voltron blessed can’t protect against the whip other than using proper positioning to catch you booted, a coachwhip is usually not a concern if you’re coming in with 4-5 stud.
I don’t see why a Shielf of Faith on Abram is unreliable though. It’s just one spell and you cover your ass even against Coachwhips or Point Blanks.
Abram + Shield/Holy Roller + Rapier == 4-5 stud with no fear of ties.
The good thing about Isham is her K-value, making her all but impervious to control. All you need is some new hats which are also conveniently at K-value which work just fine in a gadget deck.
Shield of Faith is good. Holy Roller is bad. You need Shield of Faith for it to work, otherwise you have to go solo and eat those coachwhips and takin’s.
You can’t eat a Takin’ if you got a Holy Roller (and it wouldn’t save their own casualty either), and you can also just go for the legal hand and avoid the Coachwhips. They’ll need a fiveO to break through a legal full, and nothing can kill you through a legal 4of. If you plan right with Point Blanks/TYWM/HLF and/or anti-cheatin’, whatever happens you’ll come out ahead. Just keep that Lay on Hands handy in case it all goes tits-up!
They can give you a 4-of-a-kind twice, over two rounds. How many Rollers/Shields does Abram have?
Okay, so i have Abram Exp. with a Rapier, Holy Roller, and Shield of Faith. How do i protect him from Suns or Unprepared? With Hidin’ in the Shadows off-value?
That. Or you don’t and rely on your still significant draw to carry you, and live to fight another day, or you take your lumps, play a TYWM/HLF and run away with Lay on Hands
Bounty Hunting/Deputy decks have lots of fun toys to play with now. They’re in a very good state.
I’ve been trying out Blessed again recently, and I’ve found the problem with the Abram focused deck is that if you lose him, there’s no decent backup Blessed stud to take his place. You can use Consecration on one of the other dudes, but that’s unreliable, and Faster on the Draw while helpful if it’s in your hand can fail Burton/Otwell/Springfield’s spell pulls. Consecration is pretty awesome when you’re facing against someone who cheats a lot - I’ve run Abram with a couple of Shields of Faith, Consecrations and a Rapier and he can reach massive amounts of stud. The bonus influence it provides has kept me in a game when everything was going badly.
I’d say we definitely need to see more Blessed dudes with influence and/or stud bullets and a few more miracles. One of the tricky things with starting Blessed is the current lack of a cheap one influence dude.
I’ve yet to actually play a Law Dogs Gadget deck, so I can’t comment on them.
Law dogs blessed archetype is quite frustrating, you got somehow good dudes, but no influence. The best option is Abraham, but making a deck around one dude stacked with cards is a suicide, specially when there are so many ways to control him in and out of shootouts.
Also, most of the miracles are focused on “not loosing” and thats a theme I don’t like very much, and most of them cost money and are off value with most of the interesting cards.
I haven’t attempted a Law Dog gadget deck, but it can be fun as you got many cheap dudes who can make use of all those weapons.
On the other side bounty hunting/deputy decks are top for Law Dogs in my opinion, solid dudes, great agression and now from turn one thanks to the new judge and some very good values to work with, 6 with faster on the draw and the winchester is great.
But the deck is not strong, Abraham can’t be everywhere and lay on hands is only a patch for the problem, also he goes home booted.
You need 3 blessed to get him running around the same turn as LOH boots the blessed and you want to use perry’s ability…
So until I get Lay on Hands I should stay home and stare at CP stacking Sloane and hex stacking 4th ring and gadget stacking Gadgetarium? Blessed deck are so unrealible because they require specific cards to work. With how expensive Abrahm and the fact that there are no good cheap blessed dudes with influence, we are forced into start without Grifter and that decresses chance of getting right cards. And all that planning goes away because of Unprepared, Pistol Whip, Sun in Yer Eyes.
It’s not a fast deck, yeah. You need to be patient 1-2 turns to build up. Yes Unprepared can ruin you but them’s the breaks. You can work around it by waiting for initiative to be able to use at least one miracle first before running away, or waiting for Lay on Hands. You can run Faster on The Draw and Andy Burton to do the same thing more economically or just another time. You can use Petty or Walk the Path to recover from a Pistol Whip etc.
Like any spell deck, you need your spells to work, that’s normal. So it’s slower than action-based decks to get going, but once it does, it does not rely on the luck of the draw anymore. And once it gets going is more solid than gadgets and almost impervious to spells due to Abram’s Q value.
Huh? Perry alone is enough.
Anyway, I’m not promising the deck will win you tournaments, but it’s fun to play and in my experience wins enough, especially if your opponent doesn’t have unprepared in their deck/hand.
