I have studied the blade | Katana Flex

Ever since Katana came out I've pretty much only heard everyone say that it is really bad. That made me and a friend want to try it out to see how it actually is. Turns out it can be quite good if you build around it! I think it helped a lot that we decided to try it after drowned city came out because Artistic Inspiration makes a huge difference. The main problem we encountered was that it was scaling really badly for later scenarios, but for a 0xp weapon that is kind of to be expected.

We are playing a 2 player Innsmouth campaign we nicknamed "Katanas and Trenchcoats" because he is playing Joe Diamond, also with a Katana.

Strategy

The idea behind the deck is of course to use the Katana as much as possible. The ability is not really viable at all for Roland so we try to use Steady-Handed, Artistic Inspiration, and luck to succeed by 2. If we don't find a Katana we have a Brand of Cthugha and Roland's .38 Special as backups. Even though the ability isn't a big focus for this deck, occasionally it was relevant to use against a low enemy. I think the best part of Katana is the burst damage against non-boss enemies. We often killed enemies up to 5 health with a single action which saved us a huge amount of time

Getting clues is a bit harder, this deck it leaning a bit more towards fighter than cluever. But Rolands ability helps a lot there and if you want to get clues more reliably it is easy to add cards like Evidence!, Scene of the Crime, or Breach the Door.

Upgrades

This is the upgrade path I decided to go with in our "Katanas & Trenchcoats campaign.

Pit of Despair - 6xp
-1 Beat Cop
-1 Prepared for the Worst
+1 Michael Leigh
+1 Death • XIII

Killing everything was very easy, but I had a hard time getting as many clues as I wanted so I decided to get some assets that increase my . Michael Leigh is also my plan for increasing my damage in the late game.

The vanishing of Elina Harper - 5xp
-1 Beat Cop
+1 Michael Leigh

In too deep (8xp) + Devil's Reef (9xp) - 17xp
-1 Overpower
-1 Chemistry Set
-1 Stand Together
-1 Plan of Action

+1 Overpower
+1 Stand Together
+1 Stick to the Plan
+1 Prepared for the Worst
+1 Ever Vigilant

These scenarios went very well and we did everything in In too deep and almost everything in Devil's reef. I went with a Stick to the Plan kit to make the deck more consistent. Also upgrading one Stand Together for the same reason.

For the rest of the campaign I put the same three cards on Stick to the Plan: Prepared for the Worst, Practice Makes Perfect, and Ever Vigilant.

One thing I've never thought of before this campaign is that the upgraded Prepared for the Worst can help other people search for weapons. That really saved a situation for us later when only I had a weapon and we were facing a boss with high HP.

Horror in high gear - 8xp
-1 Stand Together
-1 Overpower
-1 Deduction
-1 Crack the Case

+1 Stand Together
+1 Overpower
+1 Deduction
+1 Strong-Armed

Did some straight forward upgrades because I already had all the key pieces of the deck. I replaced a Crack the Case with Strong-Armed because money was not a problem at all and auto-fail protection is always nice to have.

A light in the fog + The Lair of Dagon - 12xp
-1 Chemistry Set
-1 Deduction
-1 Crack the Case
-1 Practice Makes Perfect

+1 Strong-Armed
+1 On Their Heels
+1 Deduction
+1 Empty Vessel

I wasn't really sure what to get with this xp that would really help with the general gameplay so I got the last of the important cards and then some fun stuff in the form of Empty Vessel and On Their Heels

Conclusion

I'm not sure if we were really lucky or if the Katana is actually decent, but this felt fairly easy. The only scenario we failed was The Lair of Dagon and that was probably not only because of the Katana but because we got stuck in act 1 for too long.

If I did something like this again I would for sure play with 2x Artistic Inspiration. I was pretty lucky to draw it early most scenarios but it felt real bad to not have it. Being able to adjust the value by 2 instead of just 1 is an enormous difference.

I would probably go with events to get clues instead of trying to investigate. This worked out ok but I think events would be safer. Probably save some xp by playing Beat Cop instead of Michael Leigh.

Stick to the Plan with Ever Vigilant and Prepared for the Worst was really good. I often put all important assets into play on turn 1 or 2. I had Practice Makes Perfect on it as well but I would probably replace it with some clue event.

Brand of Cthugha as a backup "weapon" wasn't really needed. I would probably go with a couple of fight events instead.

I will for sure try out the Katana again and see if I can make an even better deck with it. I don't think it will happen, but I would really love to see an upgraded version of it. I think a version that doesn't exhaust when you get the +2 damage would be good because the maximum damage output in a single turn is low and is mostly good for one-shotting 3-5 health enemies. My friend tried to improve the scaling by playing Bandolier and two Katana but that was (quite predictably) more fun/silly than good.

This turned out to be more of a campaign report than a deck guide but when I try this again with the ideas for improvements I will make a proper deck guide.

Have you tried the Katana? What do you think about it and did you manage to get it to work? If you have any ideas for how to make the next deck better, please let me know.