Roland Banks is easy to like, maybe especially for new players. He looks great in his trenchcoat and fedora, he's has a beefy 4 Fight and a decent 3 in Knowledge and Willpower. Add his cool Roland's .38 Special to his ability to pick up clues when he kills something and you have someone who can really make a difference. After all, the whole game centers around picking up clues while killing off distractions and Roland can do both at the same time! He's versatile and thus fun to play; qualities too easily overlooked when designing hyper-optimized power-decks.

The real problem with Roland is that he can dish it out, but he can't really take it. He has the lowest Sanity of any investigator released so far, and his weakness card really preys on this. Roland also needs to kill stuff to use his special ability, so you have to put him in harms' way to get the most out of him. Several people have pointed out that this combination makes Roland one of the more difficult investigator to play in a campaign and I can only agree.

That's the short of it. Now for the longer analysis:

Statistics: 4 Fight is good. Fight is an easy stat to increase - most weapons do so as part of their function, so you'll easily reach 5, 6 or even 7. That makes him really good at killing stuff, which again makes it easy to activate his clue gathering special.

3 Willpower and 3 Knowledge is decent, really. You will need to use skill cards on the more critical tests, but 3 is a good start. It should be enough for Easy and Normal difficulty campaigns, especially since you want to include plenty of skill cards.

2 Agility is bad, but why evade when you can fight? There's quite a few Agility skill tests in the encounter decks, but they do stamina damage in most cases. And Roland has 9 Stamina! That's an insane amount of stamina, so no worries there.

But what he has in brawns he really lack in brains. 5 Sanity is the lowest of any investigator so far, so you really, REALLY have to nurse his head. There's several Treachery cards that inflicts multiple Horror if failed, so a single Tentacle autofail token can reduce him to a whimpering wreck.

The Roland's .38 Special is a decent weapon even if you're in a location with no clues. If there's clues around you almost can't miss with the +3 Fight benefit. It does +1 damage, so you can take out almost all lesser enemies with a single attack. You will need a few backup weapons, but as a Guardian you have the pick of the litter. The machete is great, and you can buy actual Lightning Guns when you earn some Xp.

Rolands weakness is really in character with his FBI theme; Cover Up. Basically, he has to cover up his (FBIs?) tracks by doing 3 successful investigations to complete it. If he can't do so before the game ends, he loses 1 sanity for the rest of the campaign. When you (and you will!) draw Cover Up late in a game, you can easily find yourself with few clue tokens within reach. In a worst case scenario you wont even enough clues left.

I might sound overly worried here, but remember that the each cycle has (at least) 8 adventures in them. Losing a single point of Sanity makes it so much easier to lose the next, and the next, and so on. No other investigator has a weakness so potentially debilitating as Roland Banks. I'm not saying you can't play around it, but you need to plan for it. Roland is probably the only investigator who should try to draw his weakness early on, just to get it over with.

(Note that the FAQ states: "Any investigator at the same location as Roland Banks with Cover Up in his threat area may trigger the to discard clues from Cover Up". That helps a little!)

You still want to play a half-crazed FBI agent? Good for you! Roland is a challenge, but a fun one. First you'll need to mitigate his mental problems by including plenty of Willpower and ? skill cards. Unexpected Courage and Guts are almost mandatory. Inquiring Mind is good too. You might want to take up smoking, since Smoking Pipe lets you trade stamina for sanity. "If it bleeds..." is also really good, both for you and for your friends. Dodge is also a lifesafer - it lets you avoid an attack; a common source of Horror, and it has a Willpower token when used as a skill card. Allies are nice dump-offs for Horror, especially if you eventually invest in Charisma. Elder Sign Amulets are bulletproof vests for your mind, so you might want to consider one early.

I'm not gonna go heavily into deck building in this review, but DadouXIII has a great write up here.

All in all - Roland can be frustrating to play at times, but I personally prefer him over Zoey Samaras, even if Zoey is far deadlier. He's always useful and his Guardian/Seeker combo gives him a lot of options for spending Xp in campaigns. And last but not least - Roland's nightmarish descent into insanity will give your campaign that extra little edge. :)

A lot has happened in the four years since Roland was released to round him out, and he’s a stronger investigator than ever.

Most of these cards are used by soloclue in his ARRR deck, which adds seeker splash for search and finances. There are new ways to increase your horror threshold and heal yourself as you go, like seeker allies, enchanted blade (3), or hallowed mirror, that weren’t available before.

Roland can also move lickety-split for a guardian, with copies of safeguard and shortcut. With a level zero deck, it’s possible for him to move himself and an ally to another location for zero actions.

A new wrinkle is that the “get clues by killing enemies” tech is even better. Grete Wagner and the updated evidence(1) combo well with Roland’s talent. Assuming you finish off four health worth of enemies in a turn, you can get four clues. Or use the Disc of Itzamna and On the Hunt to replace the encounter phase with "summon a two health enemy at your location, kill them instantly, get three clues.” Don’t mess with the Bureau.

Roland Banks is certainly a fun investigator to play with. He is mainly Guardian class and secondarily a Seeker class which makes him versatile in the two main objective in the game, fighting and obtaining clues.

He has a nice ability that lets him find clues whenever he defeats an enemy which, though you might not always be able to activate it, due to there being a lack of clues in the location, can save you an action or two when you need to gather clues (and possibly even more resources when trying to gather clues in high shroud areas).

Stats

He has 9 health practically making him a tank when it comes to taking damage but his low sanity of 5 make him quite vulnerable to a lot of the monsters in the mythos. You will definitely need cards that can either heal horror like Smoking Pipe or cards that shield you from horror like Elder Sign Amulet.

Combat: His 4 combat stat complements his beat up enemies to get clues play style and with a decent weapon like a Machete or his signature weapon, Roland's .38 Special, he can hold his own against a lot of what the mythos has to offer.

Willpower: Willpower is mostly a defensive stat. 3 willpower though on Roland isn't amazing but it's decent. There are rarely encounter cards that require you to succeed on a willpower of 4 or higher.

Intellect: Likewise with willpower, 3 intellect isn't amazing but it's decent. Having cards like Magnifying Glass or Flashlight definitely makes him better at gathering clues, especially when there are no baddies around for him to trigger his ability.

Agility: Roland's worst stat is agility, which isn't really game breaking as his playstyle mainly revolves around him killing enemies to get clues and he is in a class that has a lot of decent weapons. But it severely limits his options though as there are some enemies that he's better of evading and others that he might not even be able to damage at all (I'm looking at you Spoiler for Path to Carcossa)

Signature Cards

Roland's .38 Special is reliable even if you can't proc the +3 to combat buff it still functions as a cheaper version of .45 Automatic but when you get that +3 combat is when the signature card really shines. Also cards like Extra Ammunition works well with this card but if you have Lightning Gun you might be better off saving it for Lightning Gun's limited ammunition.

Cover Up is definitely one of the harder signature weaknesses to workaround which requires you to get clues (which thankfully Roland is decent at). Alternatively, you can have your allies help you especially if there is a more specialized seeker in the team. Also, the price for failure is the equivalent of being defeated in Roland's worse stat (sanity).

Overall, Roland Banks is a versatile as a fighter and clue gatherer but players need to work around Roland's 5 sanity and signature weakness Cover Up.

A solid investigator. Strong in killing and clue-gathering, the core of the game. Guardian and Seeker are among the stronger of the classes, so you have access to excellent upgrades. On the other hand, the lack of sanity is very hard to manage. Elder Sign Amulet is obviously an important first upgrade, which undermines the access to the better class upgrades.

In context of solo play Roland is very solid pick because his statline and cardpool allows him to get clues as well as deal with enemies. Roland´ ability is basicially a once per round use of evidence which can be used to clear clues of high shroud locations which he is unable to investigate with cards such as Flashlight and Magnifying Glass. This becomes especially important in solo play there the presence of enemies usually means that you need to waste actions on dealing with them. However, in context of Roland´s ability the presence of enemies is beneficial as they can be used in order to make progress towards the act deck. This theme is further developed by cards such as On the Hunt which spawns enemies at your locations and Scene of the crime which profits from the presence of enemies at your location.

Roland´s glaring weaknesses are his low willpower and sanity. Roland´s willpower of three makes him vulnerable to nasty willpower treacheries and the existence of encounter cards which can deal up to three (or even more) horror means that Roland is prone to go mad during the course of a scenario. What makes this situation worse ist that Roland´s unique weakness Cover Up forces you to either waste time in order to get rid of the clues on it or to take a mental trauma which makes it even more likely that Roland will go insanse.

While these weaknesses were huge problems at the beginning of the game when there were not a lot of good ways to deal with them, the growing card pool has mitigated them more and more: the dunwich cycle introduced cheap expendable allies such as Art Student and Dr. William T. Maleson who could soak sanity damage and provided additonal benefits for Roland. During the Path to Carcosa cycle Roland got access to cards such as Forewarned and Logical Reasoning which provided him with even more ways to deal with nasty treacheries or heal horror. At the same time Roland also got access to more and more cards which allow him to place clues on locations such as Quick Study from the current Forgotten Age Cycle. These cards allowed Roland to place clues on locations in order to mitigate a situation in which Cover Up came up and there were no collectable clues in play. All of this in mind I think Roland is a very beginner friendly investigator who allows you to play a guardian who contributes not only in regard of slaying the beasts of Arkham but also in regard of clue gathering.

Roland Banks is a very good beginner character, and I love his deck options with Guardian and Seeker combo, making him great at the 2 main aspects of the game, getting clues and killing things. The 5 Sanity is an issue, and can be conquered by Elder Sign Amulet (3), Kerosene (1), and Logical Reasoning. .36 Colt (2) is kind of broken in my opinion, and an auto-include. .45 Automatic (2) is a reliable weapon, and can take out some of the harder enemies. Roland's 4 Combat right off the bat tells you what he's good at. To amp him up to 7 Combat, Beat Cop (2) and .45 Automatic (2) can get the job done, nearly guaranteeing your attack will be successful (minus autofail). A Mystic friend would help him out with Clarity of Mind (3). For Cover Up, Deduction (2) can help rid Cover Up of clues faster. First Aid x2 (3) is OP, and necessary with some Ally like Beat Cop (2), for example, who just hurts himself. Just be sure to get rid of all the clues on Cover Up, because mental trauma as Roland Banks is bad. Timeworn Brand (5) is nice when your guns run out of ammo. Speaking of which, Venturer, Extra Ammunition (1),and Contraband can all help.

Playing Roland solo is very workable as long as you get good card draw. When I get an ally in play, and Pathfinder, and a weapon, I do pretty well. I've been trying to use his special ability to get clues after killing enemies by running 2 copies of On the Hunt. You also want to end your turn on a location with a clue just in case you draw an enemy in the Mythos phase.

However if you draw his Cover Up weakness mid to late game, it almost guarantees a bad ending. His sanity stat is so low you can't afford to just ignore the card. Roland has to work hard for every clue, so having to spend a minimum of 3 actions plus cards to commit or resources to boost your can be crippling. At least with my limited card pool (Dunwich & Carcosa cylces only) I find it very challenging.