The Concept

The recently printed Cleaning Kit (3) provides a support card for the Old Shotgun which solves most of the issues with the weapon: it gives tons of ammo, frees us up from having to use an event to play the weapon to begin with (although we will still use an event to play it, why not); and even gives an additional skill boost to help with making sure we get maximum damage out of our Shotgun attacks.

Old Shotgun being a +3-attack at up to 3-damage per attack (4 attacks with haste) gives us a top theoretical damage output of 9/12 per round, matching or exceeding the damage output of basically everything but the Big Blue Shotgun (4).

Technically Cleaning Kit also doubles the damage output of Ornate Bow making it into a rapid fire weapon that also does 3 damage consistently without having to oversucceed for the damage, but I think the sawed-off is much more entertaining. on Hard/Expert a Bow Build (19XP) may be more reliable at actually putting out 9 damage, but it has less swagger.

Variations

This is a standalone ready deck at 29XP intended to showcase the full concept - I think a version which doesn't use Underworld support is probably more consistent, it just would have taken more XP to show off everything I wanted to show off.

Alternative versions of the list:

• Underworld Support Campaign - Showing the 0XP deck and including upgrade suggestions.
• Campaign 2x Version - Showing the 0XP deck and including upgrade suggestions.
• 19XP Standalone - In case you want to see the minimum viable concept
• 29XP 30-card Standalone - Increased consistency for the main combo at the cost of versatility.
• 49XP Sawed-off Standalone - what an extremely high XP version of the deck could look like. (Separately Published) Kymani is in fact the only Investigator that can combine Cleaning Kit (3) with Sawed-Off Shotgun.

(note that the campaign starters have 5XP because Kymani actually starts with 5XP in campaign per their cardback.)

Summary

Clueing: ☆ Fighting: ☆☆☆☆☆ Mobility: ☆ Mythos: ☆☆☆ Consistency: ☆☆☆☆

Sales Pitch: Play this deck if you want to Blast Monsters in the face with Shotgun Shells.

In the Thick of it should be two (2) physical trauma.

Mulligan

Bewitch: "I'll Take That!", Swift Reload, Sleight of Hand

In Scenarios with Bosses:

• Hard Mulligan for the Old Shotgun, seeing 10 non-weakness cards you've got a 43.5% chance to see it.
• If you started with the Old Shotgun, ditch the other 4 to try to open with Cleaning Kit (3) too; another 40% chance of that.
• Consider keeping Crafty or Pickpocketing to help pay for stuff.

In Scenarios without Bosses:

• Keep Any Assets
• Ditch the rest to dig for assets

In Scenarios with very few enemies (e.g. Miskatonic Museum)

• Don't play this guy, the entire deck needs enemies to function.

General Playstyle

The general idea is to use Old Shotgun to shore up Kymani's vulnerability to Elite enemies and make them a more than capable anti-elite fighter.

Using Bewitching to hide: "I'll take that!", Swift Reload, and Sleight of Hand gives an effective opening draw deck size of only 23 cards, so a hard mulligan gives us a 43.5% chance of seeing old shotgun in the opener, and a 17.8% chance of seeing both old shotgun and cleaning kit.

We can get Old Shotgun into play with ammo using "I'll take that!" or Sleight of Hand, which we are guaranteed to have when we need them thanks to Bewitching, assuming we had a chance to engage an enemy at some point in the scenario. Sleight can be used on the Shotgun itself, but I think it's way more fun to use it on the Cleaning Kit (3) first since it gets you extra bullets that way. (up to 4 more in fact, since Sleight is fast and Haste will let you fire all 4 that round).

Swift Reload will give us 2 more rounds on the weapon itself, Contraband (2) is better played on the Cleaning kit if possible; that will give us up to 4 more shots instead, so that's usually better. (If you choose to run Emergency Cache (3) you can sequence them to wind up with 16 supplies on the kit.)

Using Cleaning Kit we can get a +2 so we fight with 7, or we can combine with Sharpshooter to fight with a more impressive 10 while also picking the better of the enemies Evade or Fight value for the target. Since damage output is based on the over-success value, we pretty much want to hit as hard as possible. For the really big bosses, follow-up shots will "only" be at 8 since Cleaning Kit Exhausts, but Streetwise (3) will help keep your stats up, as will skills like Opportunist.

Between the bullets on the gun itself and the Cleaning Kit you can anticipate having 4-10 shots at your disposal, combined with Haste you're looking at a potential damage output of 12 damage per round, 24 in two rounds, and up to 30 before you "run dry". This is enough to kill basically any enemy that can actually be killed in the game.

Most of the rest of the deck is the usual Evasion-Management-Focused Kymani for dealing with non-elites, letting you save your bullets for the things you can't easily evade to death.

You've got a couple options for Clueing, but realistically you're here to Kick the Hornet's Nest, so bring someone else to search for clues.

Specific Card Choices

"Watch This!", Kicking the Hornets Nest, Crafty, and Pickpocketing help with financing the rest of the deck (and Pickpocketing helps you find missing pieces). Other Events are basically broken into two groups: Breaking and Entering, Cheap Shot, Slip Away, Sneak By, and Under Surveillance are all classic Kymani Evasion Enemy Management tools, and help conserve your bullets for the Elites - But these could realistically be almost any Rogue Utility Events or Skills you'd prefer instead.

"I'll Take that!", Sleight of Hand, Contraband (2), Daring Maneuver, and Swift Reload directly support the primary Old Shotgun Package.

Because we are running Haste, Calculated Risk and Quick Thinking help support the "big" turns. Since we are trying to oversucceed by 3 with the shotgun, Opportunist helps us get there and should be relatively reliable to get back with the ol' double barrel. Guts and Unexpected Courage are there to help with the Mythos and any miscellaneous skill tests we might have to do.

Side Deck

Between Blur and Suggestion, take the one you prefer more. I went with bonus actions since an extra action or two on turns you're evading really helps Kymani out.

If you don't want to start with In the Thick of It downgrade Blur to Blur (1).

Chuck Fergus (2) could replace Pickpocketing, or Delilah O'Rourke (3) could replace Crafty if you want to have an ally in play, both have their uses.

If you want to use Emergency Cache (3) for even more bullets, you could either Replace Crafty or Downgrade to Contraband and Replace Under Surveillance, although adding yet another 3 cost event may make the financing tight - if you are partnered with a clueing Bob Jenkins fitting in E-cache is probably worth it though.

If you sequence Emergency Cache into Contraband on a fresh kit you get 16 supplies on Cleaning Kit. Combined with using Sleight for the first play of the kit, this brings the theoretical total number of cartridges in the deck up to a dizzying 24 shots for a theoretical max output of 72 damage.

Finally, you could pull two of the "classic Kymani events" to run Tool Belt and Hidden Pocket, which would theoretically let you get both Grappling Hook and Old Shotgun into play at the same time (but now we're talking about putting 10 assets into play in one scenario, and that's a lot of assets.) Similarly, this is a small deck and there's 4 targets for Backpack (2), but I just couldn't figure out how to squeeze it into the build.

Remarks

I'm not sure what the maximum theoretical damage output in one round from every weapon is, but I suspect that 12(15 with Quick Thinking) in one round has to be close to the record for a 2XP gun. Also, this is a shotgun so there's some style points here that are missing from things like the Flamethrower.

If you want to go even bigger the logical stopping point is Sawed-Off Shotgun (5) a 1-hander Firearm which can dish up to 24 per round. check out the Sawed-Off 49XP Standalone as mentioned above if you want to see what that might look like.

I debated a lot on how best to showcase this concept; Guardian or Rogue, Campaign or Standalone. I settled on Kymani because they a) don't really have an alternative equally effective anti-elite option (unlike the guardians who can mostly just take a flamethrower or cyclopean hammer) and b) because they could combine it with Bewitching to help ensure that I'll take that and swift reload are always available. I went with Standalone because I think it makes it clearer how it all works together, but this is absolutely playable in a campaign, see the (unpublished) Campaign decks 30 Card and Underworld complete with upgrade guides for more details.

Unlike most of my other published decks this is not a Solo capable deck. For Multiplayer Pairings I think that Bob Jenkins probably works the best, Schoffner's Catalogue, Jenkin's Ability, and effects like Black Market will help you assemble your rig faster, and Jenkins is a pretty capable Clueing Investigator on his own. acotgreave's Bob Jenkins Dishes Things Out happens to also be 28 XP and perfect to combine with this one for standalone play; but any Cluever should work.

Alternative Investigators

The only other investigator who can take the combined combo of Sharpshooter (3), Cleaning Kit (3), and Old Shotgun (2) is Lola Hayes, who can't reach attacking for 10 without a much larger and less wieldy rig. However, if we're a Guardian we might just have 5 to begin with, in which case the Sharpshooter is less necessary.

I think Leo Anderson - Old Reliable (Separately Published) is a sufficient demonstration of the 0-5 Guardian build, but the guardian faction core of Cleaning Kit 3, Old Shotgun 2, E-cache 3, PFTW and SttP can realistically be run in any Guardian with unfettered access to Guardian 0-3(+), Leo just gets the benefit of still having access to other key support cards like Haste (2) and Swift Reload, and gets the benefit of the Guardian set-up cards.

Similarly, using Cleaning Kit to get extra shots out of ammo limited firearms works equally well with any of the other big Guardian guns like Flamethrower or Lightning Gun, I just think Old Shotgun is more entertaining.