The Pack Protects

It's good to be part of the pack. The pack protects. This deck is meant to do one thing, and one thing only - take attacks for everyone on the map. Given that, this is best played in high player counts for more attacks to soak, but can scale downwards too.

With Guard Dog (2) (see below), this deck clocks in at 29 XP, perfect for standalone.

The Dogs

The general synergy of this deck is using Rod of Animalism to keep 4x Sled Dog and 1x Guard Dog out at any given time. Take Charisma if you'd like to upgrade that to 2x Guard Dog. With Rod of Animalism, playing each sled dog costs 2 resources instead of 3. With The Star • XVII, Sled Dogs have 3 health/3 sanity, refunding Tommy up to 6 resources upon defeat. Lucid Dreaming is in the deck as well to always search out more copies of Sled Dog, and Ever Vigilant is in the deck for building up a handful of dogs and playing them for a resource apiece when combined with Rod of Animalism.

As a note, this deck is meant to use Guard Dog (2), which is not on ArkhamDB as of this writing but is available in the Arkham Nights 2020 PnP Kit (PDF Link). This upgrades the dog's health/sanity from 3/1 to 4/2, and adds " Exhaust Guard Dog: Engage an enemy at your location. That enemy attacks you."

Protecting With The Pack

With events like "Get behind me!", "Let me handle this!" and Heroic Rescue, as well as Solemn Vow and Self-Sacrifice, Tommy has multiple ways to become the target of attacks and/or soak horror/damage for his teammates. Optimally, any teammate with access to "You handle this one!" should take it as well. This portion of the deck allows Tommy to prevent attacks to investigators as well as tank horror/damage from encounter cards, either directly or via Solemn Vow.

Fighting Back

Given the Bangle of Jinxes, which is not unique so you can have 2 of them in play given Relic Hunter, Tommy will have access to a +2 boost for just about every test given how many attacks he should be soaking. That combined with Keen Eye and the amount of money generated by constantly cycling dogs through the deck (profiting 3-4 resources per dog) should make Tommy a very stout fighter and even cluefinder - with his natural 3 , he should be able to parlay his resources and bangles into some solid investigation when he has the free time too. Additionally, with Survival Knife, Counterpunch, Guard Dog's reaction ability and Sled Dog's attack action, Tommy is a capable fighter with access to extra damage as needed.

Downsides

This deck is very action heavy. Optimally, Tommy will be spending a good chunk of actions playing out his allies - while an opportune use of Ever Vigilant can help with that, it's still a good chunk of actions. I'd recommend playing this deck in higher player counts as your flex/utility investigator rather than a primary fighter - he should be capable of plenty of damage and clues, but really needs his actions to keep the team alive.

To shore up some of that reliability, a good addition would be Stick to the Plan, which you can use to ensure that Ever Vigilant has on-demand access. You can work some other cards in there to fit like an Emergency Cache of any level, but "Get behind me!" and Heroic Rescue work just fine as options 2 and 3 too.

It would also be good to pair Tommy with investigators that help with card draw/search, such as Mandy Thompson or Harvey Walters. But then again, who doesn't benefit from those two being on the team?

Gameplay

First Turn

Mulligan every card that isn't a copy of:

• Ever Vigilant
• Guard Dog
• Sled Dog
• The Star • XVII
• Rod of Animalism
• Backpack

Optimally, your setup should use Ever Vigilant turn 1 to play a Rod of Animalism and two dogs of either flavor.

As noted above, you can add Stick to the Plan for an additional 6XP to ensure that you have Ever Vigilant turn 1.

Upgrade Path

This deck was originally designed for standalone, but here are my thoughts on a level 0:

Start with In the Thick of It, using your 3XP on 2x Rod of Animalism and 1x Ever Vigilant.

Additionally, make the following changes:

• Use 1x Daring instead of the second copy of Ever Vigilant
• Take 2x Smoking Pipe and 2x Painkillers to help you manage your damage/horror economy instead of 2x Bangle of Jinxes and 2x The Star • XVII. You could also take one copy of each and instead take 2x Keen Eye (0)
• Use the level 0 version of Heroic Rescue
• Use the level 0 versions of Guard Dog
• Don't take Keen Eye/Relic Hunter

And make your upgrade path as follows:

• 1x Painkillers and 1x Smoking Pipe 2x The Star • XVII
• Upgrade 1x Daring to your second copy of Ever Vigilant
• Upgrade both copies of Guard Dog
• Add Keen Eye
• Relic Hunter x1
• 2x Bangle of Jinxes getting rid of your remaining pipe/painkillers
• Second copy of Relic Hunter
• Upgrade Heroic Rescue

Additionally, if you make your way past the ~26 XP this deck asks for after In the Thick of It, my first upgrades would be adding Stick to the Plan, upgrading Backpack to Backpack (2), and dropping one of your events for Safeguard (2).