I’ve somehow ended up a Law Dogs loyalist, and I’m struggling with what to do with the new home. The first component requires that your opponent cheat, and the second is a “win more” ability if I’ve ever seen one. The other aspect of this card is the ability to turn a discarded dude into an aced dude, but there aren’t a lot of promising avenues for making that matter. Does anyone have any good ideas for what to do with this home?
2 Likes
The hammer is probably the best way to take advantage. If they cheat in a shootout and youre legal, you get to pick a booted dude to gain bounty, then force him to discard thanks to the hammer, then ace him. Boom! Headshot.
Also, a kidnapping becomes more dangerous. Of course the deputy needed would still have to be at the location.
1 Like
Good idea for a thread!
I’ve not tested it properly yet, but as crx3800 notes kidnapping runs in to some issues - you need a spare deputy at the location who wasn’t part of the job to trigger the home, as any deputies involved in the job will have gone home.
The trait for making dudes wanted is probably too random to rely on, so I’d avoid playing bounty hunter, old fashioned hangin’ etc. In particular, it is unlikely to trigger against defensive decks with poor draw structures like slide or showboating decks - this is one of the matches where you most need a home like the original one, to make key dudes wanted and hit them with removal effects.
I agree that jael’s guile certainly works well with this home.
Beyond that, I agree that this risks being a “win more” home. Timing doesn’t really work well with kidnapping and you’d basically end up playing a poorer Sloane deck.
Perhaps playing it with the Ayncoil Gun would avoid the issues around Kidnappin’ timing and needing a spare deputy?. If you were feeling really wacky, perhaps you could risk fewer clubs and rely on Jael’s Guile, Tommy Harden and Maybe Rich Man’s Guard Dog?
Aiming to test a few things and report on what works!
First of all the trait is a bit unreliable for giving bounties, thus using your main tricks(or at least the ones you’re supposed to use, if no imho you should go play other outfits). So, you’ll need an alternate way to issue bounties.
Seems like the drifter to go is good Andrew Burton, he’s already a deputy cheap and expendable once he triggers his ability. Also he places a bounty, which I think is enough to use our wanted punishing cards until our opponent cheats.
The reaction seems to work better in long term strategies than in aggro ones, forcing those aces will deny recursivity of dudes onces the deck cycles.
Lemme give a try on dtdb and i’ll post a rough draft of my idea.
1 Like
You can always include some easy bounty-adding effects. Framed should be easy to use
My fear with Framed/the Evidence is that you might not draw them, leaving your bounty hunters and other bounty effects as dead cards in your hand. It makes the deck unreliable.
Far better to avoid bounty dependent effects in this kind of deck - a strong 108 shooter can often avoid cheating thanks to the home, or you might face a slide deck that seldom cheats. If you want to use wanted dependent cards, just place the original law dog home.
Look forward to checking it out in practice, as noted previously, a lot of this is theory.
The idea is that you have your home for bounties, and those cards as backup for wanted effects. You might not want to go full bounty hunter etc, but it should be enough to power the new deputies and give you opportunity to use your home ability.
Ok, so here’s something:
Justice in control
Justice In Exile (Blood Moon Rising)
Dude (12)
1x Andrew Burton* (Frontier Justice)
1x Constance Daughtry (Ghost Town)
1x Father Tolarios (Blood Moon Rising)
1x Hattie DeLorre* (Blood Moon Rising)
1x Henry Moran (Ghost Town)
1x Jake Smiley* (Election Day Slaughter)
1x Lucy Clover (Exp.1) (A Grand Entrance)
1x Olivia Jenks* (Base Set)
1x Philip Swinford* (Base Set)
1x Rafi Hamid (New Town, New Rules)
1x Steven Wiles (Base Set)
1x Xiong “Wendy” Cheng (Base Set)
Deed (9)
1x B & B Attorneys (Base Set)
1x Baird’s Build and Loan (Double Dealin’)
1x Blake Ranch (Base Set)
1x Charlie’s Place (Base Set)
1x Circle M Ranch (Base Set)
1x Gomorra Gaming Commission (Blood Moon Rising)
1x Nickel Night Inn (Blood Moon Rising)
1x Shane & Graves Security (Frontier Justice)
1x The Gomorra Gazette (A Grand Entrance)
Goods (6)
3x Jael’s Guile (Dirty Deeds)
1x Legal Instruments (Frontier Justice)
1x The Gambler’s Gun (The Showstopper)
1x Winchester Model 1873 (Frontier Justice)
Action (25)
4x Bounty Hunter (Base Set)
4x Comin’ Up Roses (The Curtain Rises)
3x Faster on the Draw (Faith and Fear)
3x Fiddle Game (Ghost Town)
4x Framed (Ghost Town)
4x Too Much Attention (New Town, New Rules)
3x We Got Beef! (Blood Moon Rising)
52 cards with printed value (required 52)
Cards up to Blood Moon Rising
Deck built on DoomtownDB.
Some thoughs on what and why.
Olivia Jenks: Should be Thunder Boy Nabbe, but dtdb, or octgn hasn’t updated it yet, I think. Cheap, good influence and your main shooter.
Andrew Burton: Your snitch, as I said before use it to have one wanted dude until your outfit triggers. Once you use it you can look for trouble with him, forcing shootouts in this deck triggers your outfit, so the more draw hands the better.
Philip Swinford: cheap influence and sinergizes with the deck nature.
Hattie Delorre: good shooter and a cheap influence.
Jake Smiley: Not sure about this one, just though that you’ll need as much influence as possible.
The backup dudes are mostly influece boosts and some muscle. Tolarios is interesting, he can tutor the hammers and gambler guns.
Bounty hunter and We got Beef! combo nicely making everyone adjacent to a wanted dude a target for the bounty hunter, or in case of dire need you can move a deputy to the action.
Card proportions have to be worked out, as I said, this is just a draft of the idea. Wait a bit for people to get wanted, control them by booting them with too much attention and framed and hit them when they’re alone or easy targets. Looks like a plan.
1 Like
Comparing this home to the original, as both homes issue bounty in importantly different ways (proactive vs reactive), the main difference to making the homes work is the flexibility in the starting posse.
With the original home, you basically have the freedom to choose whatever starters you want, because the home has a native way to proactively generate bounty. You can count on being able to do this.
Justice in Exile, by contrast, is not afforded this luxury. So I think the best way to address this is to choose dudes for your starting posse that can get things kickstarted. People have mentioned Andrew Burton, but I would add Riorden O’Lithen and maybe Lucy Clover to that list. Perhaps Ebenezer Springfield. One of the players from the San Diego tournament was using Father Tolarios to fetch the Confession miracle as well.
There’s a start.
Also, I disagree that cards like Bounty Hunter and Ol’ Fashioned Hangin’ won’t be useful under Justice - it just won’t be a good idea to run x4 of them.
Which is cool because perhaps you can try your hand at a Law Dog deck that doesn’t run 8’s as a structural value…
1 Like
The proactive/reactive dichotomy is part of the problem here I think. @Pachinko’s deck above seems like it might be better with the original home, both because there’s more control over when opposing dudes get bounties and because the deck can get by without the extra income from killing wanted dudes. When would it be more advantageous to use a home that gives an extra reward for killing dudes, while still having enough power to be able to kill dudes in the first place before ever getting that extra reward?
One answer might be to focus on killing one opposing dude at a time? Use Andrew Burton to bounty some dude, kill them quickly and quietly, and then roll over to the next dude…
1 Like
That’s a great question to which I can offer my opinion, because I wonder the same thing. It’s a brand new home with killer art, but what does it offer the Dogs that the original home can’t do better?
I think Pachinko nailed it though - “seems to work better in long term strategies than in [shorter term] ones” - I suspect that when facing a deck that cheats regularly (one with standard 3-value structure), this home sacrifices the short game for the long one. I think this manifests in three ways.
First, in how Justice doesn’t require booting to produce bounties and thus can maneuver better in all phases of the game. Setting up early economy is key to winning a long game, as is positioning your dudes to disrupt your opponent’s economy.
Second, there are a few key skilled Lawdogs and other cards that interact with bounty in a different way than just “bounty and ace” - there is both a mad scientist and a blessed that reduce opposing bounty to attach their respective hearts with greater ease. Or there are cards like Too Much Attention and Back Ways that exercise board control utilizing distributed bounties.
Third, doing the math independent of other card effects, the original home essentially says “+1 GR per turn” and the Justice home says “+1 GR per cheat and +2 GR per ace” - which means to me that the original home is a lot more steady whereas Justice could (theoretically) be leveraged to output greater GR rewards. Both require set up, and I think that looks different for each home.
So ultimately I think it boils down to a question of both quantity and quality that you need to ask yourself what your Lawdogs are trying to do. Quantity in how much bounty you reliably need on the board to enact your strategy - Quality in how exactly you will go about enacting your deck’s strategy based on the available bounty.
That’s my analysis so far. Cheers!
1 Like