Poor Ol' Pete is Too Broke

"There may be dangers out there, but some souls just have to roam."

WARNING - THIS DECK ISN'T YET TESTED AND I ONLY PUBLISHED IT NOW TO GET FEEDBACK

Howdy Y'all!

This is a Dark-Horse Pete I am making for a Co-op PtC blind run I'm doing with my roommate who is playing a money hoarding Jenny Barnes. I'm fairly new to this game having only played standard Seeker/Guardian combo. After looking hard at 3 popular builds on this website, I would say this is a bastardized version of:

https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/4363/broke-ass-pete-s-spooky-adventure-w-dark-horse-1.0

meshed with the high-skill card+draw concepts of:

https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/4911/insane-pete-s-20-skill-card-solo-god-mode-black-stars-2.0

(Gotta give credit when due)

I figured I could make Pete even more poor so I avoided St. Hubert's Key and replaced the often praised Peter Sylvestre with Madame Labranche because she is cheaper and helps feed Fire Axe and the eventual Scrapper that should be the first upgrade.

Since we didn't take the Key and we don't have Peter's self-healing horror soak, we took Cherished Keepsake which along with Leather Coat will be 0 cost tank items that we will use Scavenging to bring back from discard as needed. The extra coat, keepsake, axe, and Magnifying Glass you draw after deploying the first copy should be discarded to re-activate Duke for a second move/investigate per round with the hope that we get some of those items back with Scavenging. The Magnifying Glass is there primarily to help Duke gather clues at a success level that would trigger Scavenging more often.

In addition to the recursive armor above and because we are missing Peter Sylvestre, Duke can also take a hit or two in a pinch as we have added Inspiring Presence to re-activate and heal him. He should only be used to fight if you don't have your Fire Axe+Madame Labranche+Dark Horse combo going as his move/investigate action is much more beneficial most of the time.

Now that we covered some card interaction and differences from the inspiring decks, the actual strategy of this deck is to put your starting funds into Dark Horse and Madame Labranche and a measly 3 more coins to get Fire Axe, Magnifying Glass, and Scavenging in play. Madame Labranche can help accomplish this by spending all your resource and exhausting her for another right before upkeep. Once you have this set up, the goal is to stay broke to keep Dark Horse active and use Madame Labranche during Fire Axe combat to boost your to 5 or more with the +1 damage you get from ending that action broke (And of course throwing skill cards at it to increase your chances and trigger other things).

Once you get Scrapper as your upgrade, you can actually start collecting your upkeep resource right after using Madame Labranche so you can spend them to boost a skill test during the Encounter phase or save them Fire Axe combat or Scrapper boosted evading the following phase. Even if the Encounter Card doesn't test or , still spend them to get the stat bonus from Dark Horse on the other stats.

Besides the above strategy and item interaction, the literal other half of the deck is comprised of 0 cost skill cards, many of which add card drawing to more quickly get your needed setup and pass pretty much any skill check. You may have noticed that Survivor favorite Lucky! is missing. After Scrapper, my most likely upgrade path would be to replace "Not without a fight!" and 1 of the Neutral Skills with the level 2 Lucky!'s to maintain the Card Draw momentum. Being able to pay for Lucky! during encounter phase would be another reason to collect your resources from the Madam and upkeep once you have Scrapper. After that, upgrade Survival Instinct to Survival Instinct and the other thing to start spending EXP on would be on would be Stroke of Luck.

Outside the above upgrades, I'm actually note sure what to do next. I guess we will see... Thought about replacing Magnifying Glass to get Newspaper or Gravedigger's Shovel or something along that effect, but maybe not. Maybe I just keep using and rebuying Stroke of Luck the rest of the game? Or Charisma if I get a decent number of story allies?

Please let me know what you think of my first ArkhamDB deck!