Basics of making your starting posse
You can start the game with up to 5 dudes, generally it is agreed upon that you should start with the max so you have the most possible actions, decent starting influence so you don’t just lose the game to someone playing 2 deeds, and you have some people who can take a bullet for your more important characters.
Now don’t get me wrong, it probably is correct about 90% of the time. Unless you want to start two kinda expensive dudes and are running in analysis paralysis because now you are staring at your starting posse and are trying to squeeze that 5th starter into your already well taxed starting Ghost Rock. So instead of cutting the card you wanted to play and settling for some other cheaper dude, let me introduce my most recent Law Dog deck’s posse:
Now what I’m asking is for someone to review this and hit their personal deck building checkmarks or at least against the general starting posse I said above.
- Someone who can take a bullet for your more important characters
- Decent starting influence so you don’t lose to someone playing 2 deeds
- Most possible actions you can take
So I hit two out of three of my arbitrary starting posse requirements. Now I’d like to make the argument that I have elected for quality over quantity. [Virgil Earp] and [Rafi Hamid exp] both on their own right could be the star of my deck. Two bullets, two influence, and relevant deck building keywords (Deputy for both, harrowed for Rafi). With my [Law Dogs] outfit, I have left myself 2 starting GR and 1 income. That is going to immediately scare some players from ever trying this, but I then ask those same players, “Would seeing this posse on the other side of the table make you think twice about your own strategy?”.
Some starting dudes in a 5-man have good influence or good bullets and the rest find themselves somewhere in the middle usually. Looking at [Philip Swinford] he fits that bill perfectly. Going back to arguing for quality I can now have Mr. Swinford operating in more than one role instead of being that needed influence bump or being my second deputy for cards like:
I’m not gonna pretend I’ve reinvented the wheel by saying “Hey try a 4 man posse to see what’s different”, but I am gonna say I think I made a more interesting deck because of it. (Also I think the 4-man quality posse is great for running Legends like [Hank Ketchum], and [Raven])
If you would like an example of a deck list with the above posse, follow this link: https://dtdb.co/en/decklist/3696/rafi-s-government