Wilson Richards, Fine but Underwhelming - ARKHAM INVESTIGATOR DISCUSSIONS #15

I don't really like Chainsaw Wilson. For me, what really makes a Chainsaw deck come together is the combination of Live and Learn, Act of Desperation and Pushed to the Limit. Wilson can only run one of those, and if he Ad Hocs the Chainsaw he's going to run out of juice. I know Venturer and Cleaning Kit help address this issue, but it's a lot of setup and gets really expensive even with his ability. I much prefer Ad Hoc-ing something Like a Gravedigger's Shovel for cheap consistent tests while throwing out Sledgehammers, Fingerprint Kits and Lanterns for compression, only to reuse them and put them back in the deck with Pushed to the Limit.

I mainly think he’s fun for the Sledgehammer 4 shenanigans with Ad Hoc and Pushed to the Limit.

Wilson is a flavorful investigator, not a good one. Sledgehammer and fingerprint kit, using toolbelt to swap them back and forth is fun, not crazy.

I would love to see a video on Flex deck building in general. I'm some 30 campaigns into my Arkham life, and have mainly been sticking to the Nerd-Goon formular, and I feel like I build solid specialist decks. I've recently started to play Double Flex and I find deckbuilding to be pretty challenging. I wonder how other players approach things like consistency and "role ratios".

I genuinely detest Wilson after playing with him some, and have been waiting for your opinions on him honestly. I’ve tried him as main cluever, main fighter and second fighter/flex

He could be so decent with survivor recursion but he’s a guardian for some reason???

The best unique thing he does is Fingerprint Kit clueing with guardian’s card pool, and access to some weapons, and the pushed to the limit sledgehammer combo

but that leaves him with the need to add additional hand slots to start doing his flex niche? with guardian’s card draw and economy?

that leaves him no space for any mythos resilience whatsoever outside of his base stats, since tools don’t protect u from the mythos.

i don’t know, i play on Hard which makes playing him far more agonising as the mythos phase will destroy him. i have him as third worst character in my head, after calvin and lola.

I do look forward to you trying him though, maybe he performs better at Normal difficulty or with your build!

I think the issue with the tier list is that you have one tier list when you are grading each of the investigators by different specialties / rolls. Even though it kind of sounds silly, you should have a tier list for just fighters, cluevers, flex, support etc. even though the classes share a cardpool for the most part the investigators themselves lend themselves to one of the roles rather than being part of the class.

Wilson is a really good investigator - the only thing that keeps him back somewhat is that backpack and tool belt take up the same slot. One thing that can launch him into space is a way to get additional body slot or a way to fish for upgrade cards so that if your backpack fishes out a 2 handed tool, 1 handed tool and a tool belt you will be able to play them all and go ham.

I wonder if flex Wilson would have done better if he was level 0-4 survivor instead of guardian so he would be able to keep dumping his tool assets with Ad Hoc and then recur them with scavenging. Although that may require lot of set up time to get WIlson's book number to be consistently high.

My problem with Wilson is usually Ad-Hoc. Sure it's a fun card, but it's either too expensive to play or by the time I draw it... I don't have the time to play it, cause I have more important things to do. Even when I get it out, I rarely get the dream of launching the sledgehammer at an enemy for +6 damage from my hand for no actions.

Honestly I believe Wilson should be ranked even lower. He has become the epitome of the flex problem, and that 25% of the time you can’t fight or cluever will drag your team down. He literally becomes an extra clue on locations and an extra encounter card.

Gravediggers Shovel, along with a few damage boosting skills and events, is good flex for Wilson, considering his asset discount, his potential for recursion, and his tool bonus. Hatchet lets him swing at base 7 off the bat with In the Thick of It. But I'd start with two Ever Vigilants and one Hatchet, because assets, assets, assets. And with assets in mind, Backpack makes much more sense, especially when combined with EV- Play out your Dissection Tools, Hawkeye Folding Camera, and Tool Belt (or Tinker) for but one action and 2 resources, then flex away while boosting your less than remarkable horror soak in the process. In this set-up, you might find Matchbox unmatched, too (since Wilson lights them with his teeth and waistcoat zipper.) And, although Fingerprint Kit leaves a definite impression, Chemistry set is cheaper, hangs around your kneck (don't ask why), and will usually provide somewhere in the region of another six cards worth of draw in conjunction with Match Box (because Bunsen burners, I imagine.)
In the later game, I assessed MK 1 Grenades as the best choice of weapon, due to the go-it-aloneness of the flexigator, the slotlessness of the grenades, the tempo saving potential of the AOE, and the Fight boosting pep provided by Cleaning Kit(3). It was quite efficient in a two player game. Still, I think Wilson does need some extra tempo polish, but I found him to be a fairly solid, if somewhat messy, flex on standard difficulty.

I find Wilson to be deeply frustrating to play around with. His ability is basically a slightly above stat line with conditions and a slight discount. The only thing he can do that stands out is using his signature, but you have neither the means to find it easily, nor the card draw to trigger it consistently.

I don't know if I can ever have an accurate feeling about Wilson, my first run was with Geared Up in our blind play of Hemlock Vale. It wasn't fair to Wilson but man, I can't wash the taste of that misery out of my brain.

I played a fun flex-support Wilson on the waking side of Dream Eaters with Pocket Multitool (Spring Loaded, Pry-bar, Detachable, etc), Safeguard, and Fine Tuning. Was the ultimate problem solver, even helping evade with his 3 foot.

This might be a hot take, but by this point in the games life I'm just not interested in playing an investigator with an all-3 statline anymore. Their abilities always end up just as ways to try and compensate for their bad stats. In the same way, Wilsons ability just translates into getting the bare minimum stats to perform his role with Tools, which isn't enough imo. I'd always prefer to play an investigator who already starts with those stats AND has an ability as well.

I've been waiting for this one. Wilson is IMO the toughest nut to crack right now. I think your immediate thoughts of dropping non-flex wilson is correct (although I would like to see a primary fighting wilson with a microscope one of these days). I think the mark of a good flex is being able to reliably do 1 per investigator point of damage or clue per turn. Wilson can get there, but it's inconsistent, on both ends of the spectrum.

The consistency is the main problem, as you've alluded to. I think the way you are intended to fix that is adding extra tools in your deck for clueving and fighting, which you can pitch to Ad Hoc late game. This all nombo's with backpack, unfortunately. At which point your problem is that your only reliable card draw is stand together (3) and the cantrip skills, as you probably aren't killing enough for glory to proc reliably.

Ultimately, maybe card draw doesn't matter if you can productively do stuff with whatever shovel/lantern/flashlight/lockpicks you can get your hands on (testing at 6,5,6,7 respectively), at scenario 1. Maybe Wilson eshews the normal ally slots for Tetsuo, to help soak and reoccur tools for Ad Hoc later, or just act as more needed card draw. Then, as Wilson upgrades his deck, he adds his fingerprint kit (4) and chainsaw on top of his existing set of tools. Then he sits with a grip of tools and prays he draws ad hoc before the end of the scenario and hopes he has the time to play it, then dumps all of his excess tools for extra value, allowing him to flex past his normal limits to close out a scenario.

For me Richard felt like a trap. The deckbuilding with every tool and also the new card, which gave you hand slots. Also those funny Ad Hoc sledgehammer combo. Basically 4 in both do something stats. Cost reduction, something I always love in blue. But when I played he he felt really underwhelming and I needed a lot of Xp to make him good.