Tony (Expert) - Best fighter in the game (End of Innsmouth)

Overview

Role: Dedicated fighter (Intel Report can still be used to help out)

Ideal 2-player partner: Any investigator who can quickly gather clues and can pass will checks (usually a seeker or mystic). Having someone who can also evade can be useful depending on the campaign

Intro

Since his release, Tony has been a fighter with very appealing attributes; high base strength, an ability that generate resources and, the biggest one of all, fantastic action generation. However, he was held back by a couple of prominent weaknesses.

1. The rogue fighting card pool is much weaker then a class like guardian. Even if you chose to go guardian as your secondary class, you still didn't have access to key asset cards like Beat Cop(2) that helped a lot against 1-remaining-health enemies and your weapon selection was much worse
2. On higher difficulties, keeping Tony alive was a major struggle. Low will makes passing a lot of treacheries very hard to do and at 5 sanity, you didn't have much room for error against cards like Rotting Remains or enemies that dealt horror and had retaliate

However, both of these weaknesses have been massively shored up with some of the more recent cards

1. The rogue fighting core has been massively improved with Garrote Wire to deal with enemies with awkward health amounts and Ríastrad as a fantastic, cheap single target nuke
2. The Lonnie Ritter and Leather Jacket combo makes Tony ridiculously hard to kill when they come out in addition making his combat strength even higher

Note on other secondary classes

Seeker: Probably the least popular of Tony's secondary classes, it still has some nice features and is what I ran on Tony when I played him in a solo run. Deduction and Working a Hunch helps a lot with clue gathering, Logical Reasoning and Forewarned are both solid anti-treachery cards and Shortcut is always really useful. However, your overall fighting capabilities will suffer.

Guardian: A very popular choice and not without reason. Vicious Blow will always be a fantastic inclusion for any fighter, cards like "Let me handle this!" and "Get over here!" are nice for quickly engaging enemies and the combat events help to add even more fuel. However, for me it's hard to say no to Lucky! and Live and Learn since they make you so much more consistent in landing all of your attacks and with the more recent inclusion of Brute Force, I end up having a heavy preference for survivor

Upgrade Path

Early Campaign Priority

Ríastrad x 2 + False Covenant (cuts: .41 Derringer x 1, Overpower x 1

Leo De Luca x 2 + Charisma (cuts: Unexpected Courage x 2)

Brute Force x 2 (cuts: Perseverance x 2)

Switchblade x 1 (cuts: .41 Derringer x 1)

Total Cost (Taboo): 18xp

Mid Campaign Priority

Another Day, Another Dollar x 2

Chicago Typewriter x 2 (cuts: .45 Thompson x 2)

Ace in the Hole (cuts: Overpower x 1)

Haste x 1 (cuts: Quick Thinking x 1)

Total Cost: 22xp

Late Campaign Priority

Borrowed Time (cuts: Quick Thinking x 1)

A Test of Will x 2 (cuts: Act of Desperation x 2)

Total Cost: 8xp

Card Overview

Weapons

For starting weapons, I believe that .45 Thompson is by far the best level 0 weapon for a dedicated fighter. Tony's .38 Long Colt also help shore up the weaker weapon selection rogues have. However, it's often a good idea to include an extra one or two weapons past these to add consistency and there are a few options to go with

• .41 Derringer: Lowest risk option, even though it suffers heavily from it's lack of ammo

• Mauser C96: Decent choice, but having it exhaust on a miss can suck (even though that's part of what Live and Learn is for)

• Knuckleduster: Most consistent option since it doesn't have ammo, but also the highest risk. Getting attacked if you don't have Lonnie Ritter out can be a big issue.

• Switchblade: Dirt cheap to play out and doesn't use charges makes it a solid option on lower difficulties, but getting the extra damage is hard even for Tony on expert

I currently have a slight preference for the Derringer, even though all options have some validity.

Once you get some xp, I believe that Chicago Typewriter is your best main weapon and Switchblade is your best backup weapon

Non-weapon fighting core

Ríastrad Having a very cheap, easy to hit 4 damage event is incredibly useful. The curse downside is easy enough to live with and False Covenant helps further mitigate it (bonus points if you're in a curse comp anyway)

Brute Force Another very effective combat card for 3 damage. Getting the bonus damage can be a bit inconsistent, but it has the upside of only dealing 1 damage on a missed attack if the enemy is engaged with another investigator.

Garrote Wire Helps tremendously in ensuring that you always have a clean kill on an enemy and aren't stuck in a situation where you're forced to either overkill it or starting taking basic fight actions. Is able to largely take the place of Beat Cop

Act of Desperation Easy to hit 2 damage when your gun runs out of ammo and helps ensure you're never light on resources

Action Generation

I'm not going to go through each card individually here, but this is what really sets Tony apart from other investigators. While most fighters are stuck with 3 actions, Tony can take 4 actions or 5 actions or 6 actions or 7 actions or 12 actions in a given turn based off of need and setup. The amount of room for error that this gives is insane and also give Tony one of the highest boss killing potentials of any investigator, both in theory and practice.

Other Key Cards

"You handle this one!" I think some people still see this as a meme card, but this is honestly a core part of being a rogue. Let your partner with higher will deal with those nasty treacheries and take a fast resource while doing so.

Lucky!/Live and Learn Two really important cards for almost any investigator, but fighters in particular. Massively help in allowing you to consistently convert your actions into damage.

I think most other cards in the deck list don't need any additional notes, and I don't want the write up to be too wordy or dive too deep into theory, but feel free to leave a comment if you want to ask why a card is included/excluded or any other questions.