Why does Cleaning Kit make Firearms sing? (Arkham Card of the Week)

0:01 Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Card of the Week. I'm Justin and I'm here on my third favorite website, Arkham Build. I'm joined by Russ as you can see here. Why don't we roll our card and see what our topic of conversation is today. It's a guardian card and it's new. Whoa. Okay. Cleaning kit. This is a threecost asset. Takes up the accessory slot. It's an item in a tool. uses three supplies and supplies on cleaning kit may be spent as if they were supplies or ammo on assets you control. There also is an upgraded version that also came out in Feast of Hemlock Veil where you get to get plus two skill value and comes in with an extra supply and it's 3 XP. So, uh as I said, this is a pretty recent uh card here uh the from Feast of Hemlock Veil which was two player expansions like if we're not counting the core set or the upgrade starters. So, this one is still relatively new. Um, but it has seen a a a good amount of play since its release. And I think a big thing was that it is supporting the like the ammo. Like that's the big thing. Like yes, this also does supplies and there are some good decks that do use cleaning kit that supplies for it.

1:20 I'm pretty sure like for example, I've seen like fingerprint kit, especially like the fully upgraded version of fingerprint kit works really well with cleaning kit. But I think what uh cleaning kit was such a big kind of win for a lot of the um the guardian card pool especially was support for firearms. Firearms have been in a very interesting kind of like position for the majority of Arkham Horror's lifetime. And I think that now with the more modern design sensibilities and like we've seen this with like the Tommy Maldun evergreen starter deck and even in some ways the um the new core set the core 2026 that firearms are starting to have a better place in the Arkham Horror card pool. Uh, so for some context, the the first firearm in the first set, you can actually kind of just see it right here, was the 45 automatic for the guardian class. And this was a gun that just gave you four bullets plus one fist deal plus one damage. Nice and simple.

2:23 And it was kind of the foundational gun that everything was kind of built from, right? There were some top-end guns. There were the shotgun in the core set. And this kind of represented the idea of what guns could be. Ammo has always been a very interesting thing in Arkham Horror the card game as well. Even since since its inception, there were cards like warning shot and eat lead cards that required ammo to be spent in some way beyond the purpose of its damage. But the reality was was that the storytelling aspect the designers strive for were like every bullet counts and you're going to want to use it efficiently. You're going to want to use it to tell the story. you're going to want to use it to escape from a bad situation when you're backed into a corner. It ultimately didn't really manifest because um because killing enemies was just very important, right? So, this is where like the machete from the core set came in.

3:25 This was like the machete problem where just having the ability to deal two damage to an enemy without having like limited uses was very good. There was like uh in the core set you would have a 45 automatic in one hand and the machete in the other and you would use the machete if you were surrounded by enemies to just cut down the enemies to then finish them off with the machete. Right? So it was kind of this thing where machete was just the more reliable tool. you didn't have any big consequence for lose missing a shot beyond just the fact that you wasted an action, right? Assuming the enemies don't ever retaliate, but like let's just say you're attacking a swarm of rats and for some reason you're using your 45 automatic versus your machete and you draw the auto fail. When you draw the autofail with the machete, you just miss your attack. When you draw an autofail with your 45 automatic, you've wasted 25% of the damage. Now, waste is not the right word for it because you're taking the shot, right? you just like you didn't go out of your way to draw the auto fail, but this was kind of the philosophy behind the thought process as to why melee weapons just became better over time. They were more reliable.

4:35 Their damage was guaranteed. And it's also kind of see you can see how other things kind of adapted to this sort of idea in almost an unhealthy way over the course of Arkham Horror up until, I'd say pretty recently. We're starting to see a a purposeful change for what firearms should be, right? So, this is again just like a big Arkham history lesson, but I I have a lot of Arkham history to talk about, so that's what we're going with here. Uh 32 Colt came out in Path to Carcosa. There was the lightning gun in the Dunage Legacy. Um then there were problems like Survival Knife that came out, I believe, in the Forgotten Age, maybe Carcosa. I actually don't recall off the top of my head where it's actually from, but it was again this kind of thing where it's like, "Oh, well, I want to use a melee weapon because it's just better, right?

5:28 We got some We talked about in the um the Contraband episode. I think that's the name of the card. Already forgot about it. It was that memorable uh where it was like the M1918 bar where you wanted to like double your ammo and there was the ideas of ammo synergy that came with all that kind of stuff but it continued to just fall to the wayside. We got Enchanted Blade which was a melee weapon that had uses. It had charges. So it was kind of like a gun, but it also still just was able to fire when it was out of their uses. Like it was still able to deal some form of damage. That's the thing about firearms. when you're out of bullets, you can't use that that you can't use the weapon anymore. It's kind of just done. They tried to expand on this with like cards like extra ammunition where you could put ammo on. This was here in the original core set and we have the new like stock reload, I think it's called, in the new in the new current pool. Um, and the uh the they further tried to enhance this with stuff that would like attach to firearms. So the idea you want to build a super firearms like custom ammunition, there were custom modifications that came out on the Scarlet Keys. But I think what was really missing from this entire package was a cardlike cleaning kit. I think that cleaning kit is totally fair and reasonable and it's very supportive of these firearm decks. So now let's paint a picture. You have your gun, your prized gun. You put all your upgrades on it, but you run out of ammo, right? So

7:00 now you need to wait to find your other ammo cards. When you only had two of those in your deck, they were a lot less reliable to find. But now when cleaning kits around, you can actually use cleaning kit to basically act as another copy of that gun, right? So it's like you get to play cleaning kit, you get three more shots with your your uh your kitted out gun, and that is really fine and dandy into the upgraded version, which is kind of fun. the plus two fist value, the plus two skill value, sorry. So that means it's even if you're using a gun like the hammerless that just came out in the new core, uh it gives you plus two skill value. So you can actually like, you know, use your foot and get the bonus with it, right? It's not just linked to just fist. This card here is to kind of support as uh this card in two ways, right? So it's like it gives you the extra supply, but like the plus two skill value is like really nice as well for things like shotgun decks.

7:54 shotgun decks. That card that I mentioned that came out in the original core set and there's the new [clears throat] honestly put a gun to my head. I don't know the name of it, but it's that new card um in the uh in the new core basically the new shotgun. Um works really well for that as for that too. Um, I think that like this is a cool thing to support it. And also cleaning kit here can kind of act as four upgrade cards while you are digging out your upgrades because a lot of upgrades they kind of just make your weapon better. Um, I think that cards like this are very beneficial to always have an eye on cards that scale with your deck. So scaling is something that we don't really talk about in too many of our Arkham videos, but it's a very important thing to keep track of. I think scaling is the most like basic definition I can give is the fact that like your you need to get stronger. You need to scale your strength equal to the difficulty like the the the difficulty increases of the scenarios, right? So like assume you're scen you're in scenario one and this is the difficulty scenario uh 5 6 7 8 depending on the length of your campaign is up here. If your deck stays at this level until the end there's a huge gap of difficulty like of strength between them. But if your deck scales up in the final scenario if you're level you're going to have a much better time of winning. Scaling is done most commonly

9:27 in Arkham Horror the card game with the XP that you get between scenarios. So, this is why we commonly say the most important scenario is the first scenario because that gives you the XP to properly get a good foundation and get your scaling going. But cards necessarily don't always need to scale like with XP. Cleaning kit is an example of a card that scales with your deck without putting any XP into the card itself. This is also why cards like we talked about in the past like prepared for the worst or backpack 2 or alternatively just like seeker card draw or like card selection like lucky cigarette case 3 are so good because they help you find the thing that is worth XP. So your deck becomes more consistent. You're more likely to hit your powerful cards. As such your scaling increases, your strength increases. Scaling is not just directly linked to card strength but also card efficiency in a way. Cleaning kit scales because whatever gun you are firing it cleaning kit is essentially another version of that gun, right? So in scenario one, you're firing your 45 automatic. So cleaning kit is a level zero card that is shooting off of a level zero card. But let's just say for example, you upgrade to the 45 Thompson.

10:48 You're level your 3XP card, right? So now that cleaning kit is firing on a 3XP card, but it's still level zero. And that's a very huge perk to cleaning kit, right? So it's cost you no XP, but it is essentially firing at the same rate of your 3XP card. Now, you attach some upgrades to that 45 automatic. Let's say, for example, you put like 6 XP worth of of upgrades on that 45 automatic. your cleaning kit is now firing for not like equal to 9XP, but in theory every shot you get out of your cleaning kit is hitting at an XP rate that is much higher than its like potential. So, you're squeezing every bit of value that you can out of the cleaning kit and it just makes your deck better. I don't think cleaning kit is like a card that is an auto include. I don't think it's like a necessary card that you need to play in every one of your decks. even if you are using firearms, right? However, I do think that Cleaning Kit was a very good first sign from the new development team that they are here to support fire assets. And honestly, as far as I'm concerned, I think they've done an incredible job making sure that firearms stay viable and continue to actually not necessarily outpace melee weapons, but I think in Legacy, they are so much closer. They are so much closer to power level and I think that cleaning kit is uh it should be commended as a card.

12:18 Like it's that it's like it's it's very commendable that it was able to do what it did. I think it's fantastic design. Super healthy, super good, and quietly very powerful in the right deck. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me for another card of the week. We have one more card of the week. It's the season finale of this series next week. I'm going to talk about that in the video next week. Card of the week will be back eventually, but it's going to be taking a little break. In the meantime, thanks for watching everybody. Have a good one. And as always, a GG's.