Skids has a bad reputation, but I think he's strong - at least at Standard difficulty, 1-2 investigators - if you can adapt to him.

His card pool is his first difficulty. He can take Rogue (0-5) or Guardian (0-2). With the prevailing wisdom of "killing enemies is better 'cos then they can't hunt you down", it seems a lot of decks treat him an auxiliary fighter. This gets him bogged down in combat, and misses his major ability - speed. Some decks lean into Guardian - don't. You're not there to fight, you're not even there to waste time evading (if you can), you're there to run.

Skids can regularly take 4 actions a turn. That is awesome. There's a reason that Leo De Luca is one of the strongest allies in the game, and Skids can take him as well. That's 5 actions a turn, if he can afford it.

Oh, Hot Streak? Lone Wolf? "Watch this!"? Resources shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Skids should try to rush to the finish. With his low , and the fact hunting enemies do appear over time, you want to minimise the number of turns you take. Rush to the finish, before the encounter deck finishes you.

Your encounter card mitigation is getting through the game fast, by aiming to take 5 actions each turn.

How do you do this? Well, Skids has access to two Awesome allies. Leo De Luca is expensive, but excellent. Cat Burglar doesn't see a lot of love, but plays beautifully when you're trying to run to the finish. Testless disengage and move? Sign me up!

You can also mitigate attacks with cards like Narrow Escape, Dodge, and On the Lam is actually really good when you just need to press on, regardless of the enemies around you. Elusive is a great mobility card, and gets you away from the horde of enemies you've got chasing. Consider "I'm outta here!" too - when you need it, it can win the game.

With 4 , Skids can evade - but evasion takes time, and this should be a backup option. Cat Burglar gives some of the benefit of evasion - the disengage - and a move, so can be very efficient, especially with multiple enemies.

But... you can't run away all the time. Sometimes you'll need to fight. Well, Rogue faction has you covered. Sleight of Hand makes firearms fun again, and Lupara is a great card to combo with it. Fast play a gun, use it twice at +2 +2 damage and get the gun back? Give them both barrels! .41 Derringer is another good one, and can play into the 'more actions' theme of the deck. And Switchblade is an awesome upgrade of Machete - cheap, fast, +2 , and a decent chance at additional damage.

Contraversially, I'm not a fan of Lockpicks in this sort of build. As they can only be used once per turn, they're too slow. Flashlight has no such problems. I suspect that Scene of the Crime might offer a good way to grab 2 clues before you run away.

What about his alarming Willpower? Well, ignore it. Don't try to shore it up; you'll fail anyway. If you're really worried about cards like Frozen in Fear, pack "You handle this one!", or beg another investigator to take Logical Reasoning. However, I've found that it can be quicker just to press on for the finish, carrying Frozen in Fear.

In short, try for fast events, fast weapons, fast everything. Fence may help with this (not tried it). Arrive, get Flashlight out, and go...

In multiplayer, I suspect this approach will suffer; more enemies will be drawn, Lone Wolf won't fire so much; I'm not sure how well it will work. I've also not tried this on Hard or Expert, so it might not be viable there.

When reviewing an investigator, the most useful question is probably "what is this investigator's specialty?" For Skids, this is action advantage. Between his ability and natural access to Leo he will normally have four or five actions in a single turn (and up to eight on a crucial turn at higher XP levels when combined with Ace in the Hole). As a Rogue/Guardian investigator, this means effective combat turns - especially useful when facing high health 'boss' enemies (like Umôrdhoth). Whilst Guardian characters have more consistent damage and access to more powerful weaponry, Skids excels in dealing out concentrated bursts of damage - mostly using events. In the late game, which is when the 'boss' normally spawns, Skids has usually gathered enough resources and put out Leo to allow him to take five actions - normally powerful damage dealing events such as Dynamite Blast and Backstab or attacks with low level Guardian weapons (and even the much maligned .41 Derringer since it helps offset his low ) combined with Vicious Blow and Physical Training. At later levels, he makes excellent use of Chicago Typewriter and Switchblade as these both offer additional and damage.

Of course, to make use of his expensive array of tools, he will need to be generating a large number of resources - but thankfully this is an area in which Rogues excel. Lone Wolf, Emergency Cache and Burglary on low shroud locations are all great ways to keep him flush with cash and his incredible trigger (+2 and gain 2 resources) adds even more. Though he cannot compete with Jenny in terms of pure resource generation, the fact that he can play as many Guardian cards as he likes and ability to convert resources into actions means he normally has something more worthwhile to spend a pile of resources on.

Despite his strengths, Skids also has some unfortunate weaknesses, the most glaring of which is his miserable 2. Though he has more Sanity than Roland, he is extremely vulnerable to Treachery cards that require checks - a number of which cause Horror. Thankfully he has access to Physical Training which is a key card for Skids as it not only helps shore up his fragile but also contributes additional for when he needs to deal damage through normal combat. His other main problem is that although his is a reasonable 3, he has no real access at level 0 to cards that make him better at investigating. Flashlight can only do so much and at the beginning of a campaign he will be reliant on discarding cards to help him investigate in high shroud locations. Once he has some experience, however, everything is fine as Streetwise provides a strong boost to his and he improves as a killer by gaining better weaponry so Evidence! helps him pick up the odd clue (and its two icons are extremely helpful to boot).

4 is not the most useful of primary stats as a lot of the time enemies are better defeated than evaded, but it helps him evade tough but slow enemies for a single action that a slower character (Guardians especially) would have to waste time fighting. It also means he is unlikely to take damage from Treachery cards that target - although these normally deal Damage which he is not overly concerned about anyway - it is Horror that will usually do for him in a game.

No investigator review would be complete without a look at their signature cards. On the Lam, his signature card, is an event that prevents all non-elite enemies from attacking for a turn. It is not the greatest signature card as in a lot of situations it will be the equivalent of Dodge as it will prevent one enemy attack - and Dodge is often better as it can be used against Elite enemies which On the Lam does not affect! The times when this card is most useful is if Skids is somehow engaged with multiple non-Elite enemies and needs to either gather clues or move the enemies out of the location to let another investigator move in. Normally, however, On the Lam will just be used for its icons, which in fairness to the card are quite strong. The is not often necessary but can help insure a Backstab hits or an enemy is evaded ready to Sneak Attack, the can really help with his otherwise weak investigating and the make it useful for any type of skill check. His signature weakness, Hospital Debts is a rather benign weakness as it causes no Trauma if not completed and does not force him to miss actions to resolve and cannot kill him. Plus Skids is normally sitting on a decent pile of resources and if not can usually pay off the debts with a well timed Burglary or two. Even if it is left in play at the end of the game, losing two experience isn't the end of the world - yes it will delay his access to the powerful but XP-intensive high level Rogue cards, but at least it doesn't make him more likely to die from bad luck in later scenarios.

So. "Skids" O'Toole, poor fella.

It isn't unusual for starter-set cards to be far too good or far too weak, the tempo of the game still not completely clear to the creators. "Skids" O'Toole suffers from this issue in that he "Has" some abilities, but they don't actually line up to become a particularly useful investigator.

Skids is the first , a faction that depends on and a wonky, flexible, cardpool. as a skill type wasn't particularly useful as a skill type for the longest time, Evading is barely a viable strategy in the first campaign, there are so, so many enemies that you -want- to kill or -have- to kill in that campaign and the first and last scenario are both very claustrophobic, so you can't run from an evaded enemy, he'll eventually get in your way again! There was also the lack of effective cards that turn into defeated enemies and clues (Clues mostly, until Lockpicks was released), Backstab and Sneak Attack attack are decent cards, but they dont synergize with "Skids" O'Tooles cardpool.

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So, lets have a look at what "Skids" O'Toole does:

He uses and cards, the former leans towards combat, is weak at getting clues without experience, good at generating actions and possibly the best faction at generating resources. The latter faction further leans into combat, recently got a big clue boost, and mitigates damage. So, "Skids" O'Toole has access to a very large pool of combat oriented cards, damage mitigation included and all the action generation in the game.

2 Makes Skids very sensitive to bad treachery draws. Frozen in Fear shuts him off completely. This makes preventative measures like Physical Training and Guts necessary. (Edit: Take the Initiative is a great defensive card for Skids).

3 is decent, it doesn't yield clues from a 3-4 difficulty location without Lockpicks or a decent skill card dedication but he can take care of the easy spots. Lockpicks are a saving grace for Skids so you should never simply pass them over unless you're building a Tommy gun Skids. An focused Skids can be build by focusing on cards like Flashlight, Lockpicks and Perception but the lack of multi-clue pickup makes this a rather slow process

3 is "Skids" O'Tooles first design weakness, for a character that seems to be so combat oriented such a mediocre number is going to make dealing with enemies a bit more expensive. There are plenty of good weapon options however, you start with the baseline Machete, you can go for the sneaky options of Lupara or .41 Derringer or you can go for broke as a full-blown war-Skids with Chicago Typewriter. Personally I've been rather impressed with Switchblade in a Skids deck that focuses more on his . If you decide to use a gun, consider Sleight of Hand as a way to cheaply cheat it out and effectively double your ammo. Remember, as a character, that the best way to conserve ammo is by ducking out, use your to ignore threats in locations that you don't think matter anymore.

4 is "Skids" O'Tooles strength, in many scenarios an evaded foe is as good as a dead one, ideally you'll have completed all the clues on your location and you'll be free to just evade the enemies who come your way and run away. You need to be able to finish clue locations quickly so that you can be free to scamper away from enemies. can also be used in combat to deliver Sneak Attack or Backstab and it is very useful against large threats as a way to "turn off" their retaliate and/or their roundly attack. A fun new solution to the "gotta get these clues and skedattle" problem is Scene of the Crime, if an enemy ambushes you while you're working on a multi-clue location then you can turn that to your advantage, grab your clues, evade the bad guy and get out of there even faster then expected.

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In addition to the carpool and skills, "Skids" O'Toole has the ability to buy himself an extra action. Actions synergize well with , evading an enemy leaves you just 2 actions, assuming that you evaded the enemy to move away then youre left with just one action to pick up any remaining clues, otherwise you have just 2 actions to try and defeat the evaded enemy. Every extra action increases your possibilities in this "window of peace".

Skids's ability creates bonus action, you need to pay for it so you can't spam it every round, but for the rounds where every action is crucial (as is usually the case in rounds where you evade) the extra breathing room is a huge blessing.

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So, I've spoken about each element of "Skids" O'Tooles abilities, now to put them all together.

Skids's highest stat is , this stat can be turned into Clues with Lockpicks or Damage with Backstab and/or Sneak Attack, notice that these cards are somewhat costly.

With a stat of only 3 Skids will have to pay a little extra to net the desired effect from his attacks. Especially on higher difficulty the extra cost is going to stack up.

And that, quite simply, is the crux of "Skids" O'Tooles's problem, the things he likes to do cost a lot of resources. He likes Leo De Luca, the cardpool is notoriously expensive and the resources you need to spend via Hard Knocks or Physical Training to to try and make your attacks hit, all combine to make life very expensive for Skids, a character who needs resources to activate his special ability. In other words, even when you bring as much economy as is humanly possible, you are effectively playing a character that for the majority of most scenarios, does not have a special ability.

Skids's saving grace is perhaps that he can elect to dip a little less into the role and focus a bit more on his and , compile your abilities and focus on what Skids can do with his cards.

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In multiplayer you are not the primary clue gatherer (you just cant grab many enough clues at once!) and you aren't the main muscle (It's just too expensive!), you share the load and take care of yourself. You kill your own enemy draws (or leave them in the dust when possible) and you can pull your weight in clues. If you try however to take over someone else's duties and you'll soon find that a poor "Skids" O'Toole is a dead Skids.

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P.S: "Skids" O'Toole -HAS- a weakness and a strength card but neither of them matter, just ignore them, play On the Lam for the icons and only pay for the Hospital Debts when the map is obviously won.

P.S.P.S: "Skids" O'Toole is flatly better in single-player and on Standard rather then Hard/Expert. On Standard his and are more likely to beat easy checks and remain useful. In single-player the situation where you need to cover for someone else, where the cluehound just can't muster the power to finish locations or the monster hunter cannot finish off a beast, will not arise. As I said above, "Skids" O'Toole can take care of himself.

Skids has two new archetypes that weren’t available when the game came out, and they both push him in fun directions. First, he can become a big bow hunter, as one of the few people who has a worthwhile agility score who can take Venturer. Two shots with the bow a round is plenty for all but the highest player counts. And with haste, you can get in a truly ridiculous number of shots.

Second, you can go parallel and focus on fortune & gambit cards. Load your deck up with Luckys and use cards like momentum to auto-pass your fast action financial skill check. You’ll be made of money and able to glide over all of your problems, and even able to punch them if you need to. Go forth, be a thug with some spicy rogue weaponry.