Same deal, tell me where I am wrong and where I am right. Also mention things that I missed.

Guardian:
Interrogate - This is a decent card. Guardian is oddly the #2 clue finding class. I can see uses on Joe, Mark or really any Guardian that you want some clue finding on. The 2 cost can be a lot especially if your deck is heavily resource constrained.
Delay the Inevitable - Even better than Interrogate. There are those turns where you don't have enough actions to handle an enemy and can't afford to take a hit on you or another player. Better in a high payer count than a low. I also see it as more of a Carolyn and Diana card than Joe.
Steadfast - not a huge fan of most of these skills. I could see using this in some decks, but they have to be a very specific deck. It would also be high on my list to be replaced by a higher xp card.
Ace of Swords (1) - These cards are really good. Not sure I will always use them in my decks, but I will most likely always consider using them. For a multi class character, there will be hard decisions on which of the cards to choose.

Seeker:
Fingerprint Kit - This is a solid level 0 card and decent choice in any seeker deck. It is a tad pricey.
Connect the Dots - More clue efficiency, nice. Although at a 4 cost, its most likely going to find a home in Joe's Hunch deck more often than in other characters decks. If I had to choose including this or Working a Hunch, I would usually choose WaH. Although there will be cases where I choose both of them.
Curisosity - again not loving this card.
Death XIII (1) - again great card.

Rogue:
Well Connected - While it is clearly a card for Preston, a lot of Rogues could make use of it. I originally thought it could be a stepping stone to High Roller, but now I am thinking the two cards will work well together.
Money Talks - Again a very Preston card and not bad for him. As Preston is the only character in this cycle that can take Rogue cards, I think we will see a lot of these.
Cunning - yeah
The Moon (1)- yeah

Mystic:
Deny Existence - There are very few zero cost cards that I dislike. This is clearly a Diana card but has high utility in other characters decks as well.
Eldritch Inspiration - Nice zero cost effect that can find a lot of homes.
Prophesy - love the art here and I think this card is marginally better then the rest of its siblings mostly due to the wild card.
Four Cups (1) - yep

Survivor:
Track Shoes - Its a solid, good card. Bonus agility has limited utility so you really need it in an evader deck. I am thinking Rita, Finn and Wendy at this time. It is better than Trench Coat, although together they may be great. Or Pete, Trench Coat and Track Shoes.
Act of Desperation - This needs to be in a specific deck. Surivors tend to have cheap assets so the bonuses won't be that big. I could see Preston using this as he doesn't have access to most of the Rogue weapons.
Able Bodied - meh
Five of Pentacles (1) - While still a very good card, I think I would prefer the skill bonus to the bonus health and sanity. As a purely personal comment, I find cards that modify the printed value of your health/sanity score annoying/easy to forget.

Neutral:
Ace of Rods (1) - while extra actions are very useful, I just don't see my using this card. It conflicts with other Tarot cards and I see it having less of a benefit over the course of a game.

Weaknesses:
The Thirteenth Vision - This is a good weakness. Good to see the 1st card council card hit circulation.
The Tower - So first off if you have this weakness, you really have to consider not getting any other Tarot cards which is fine for now as all of them are higehr than level 0. Other than that, depending on what deck its in, it can vary from annoying to crippling.

I pretty much agree with all of this.

Alrighty then. Again, I'm gonna have a hot take on theme (mechanical theme, art, flavour text) as well as the mechanics. And I'm gonna talk way too much because it's a weekend and I'm ill and a nerd.

Guardian :

Delay the Inevitable : This card is OK. Not everyone who can use it wants to. It's useful for Joe Diamond because it can go in his Hunch deck and he can therefore avoid the up-front resource cost. It's good tech for Dunwich with Beyond the Veil and any other big damage/horror effects. Worth considering for Diana because of the "cancel" synergy, and Carolyn might want it for tanking and because she can easily afford it - it also helps counteract To Fight The Black Wind if you're running that and you have Alyssa Graham or Scrying , but it shares a design space with Deny Existence below which is pretty much strictly superior. The main use of this card is to give it to someone else before you move away - for instance, if one person is engaged with a big enemy and you can't help them out - because otherwise why wouldn't you just run Dodge or something? That means it has a support role, because an ordinary guardian would be better off killing the enemy or engaging it, or sticking around to use Dodge. Calvin Wright can use it and it would be pretty great for him, especially once he's up to the brink and firing on all cylinders. However, I love the design space of this card and I hope we see more like it - cards that you can hand to another player as a temporary buff.

The art is extremely goofy but it kind of works in a silly pulp sort of way.

Interrogate : This card is fine. It reminds me of Eavesdropping , only good. The requirement for Humanoid enemy means that it won't always be useful, depending on the campaign, so I see this as an early campaign card that you end up replacing later on. It's a test that you are by no means guaranteed to pass so you need to invest more to pass it. The ability to spread clue gathering across multiple locations is both a blessing and a curse - it lets you clean up across the board and pick up clues from occupied locations, but it also means you can't double up on a single high-shroud location like Scene of the Crime or Drawn to the Flame . I don't think this card makes Guardians a strong clue-gathering class - obviously Seeker is at the top, but Mystics with Rite of Seeking , Drawn to the Flame and lots of intellect boosts, and Rogues with Lockpicks , Lola Santiago , Skeleton Key , Streetwise and lots of intellect boosts are both much better at getting clues than Guardians - they're now about par with Survivors, able to pick up a few clues here and there and just about lean enough into it to get by in solo, but not doing it as their main job. This card is particularly great for Mark Harrigan , who otherwise lacks access to many clue gathering abilities and who has the best Combat stat out there, but Zoey , Leo , Roland and even Joe could get a lot of use out of this. It synergises well with Handcuffs and that's a huge flavour win as well: At some point I wanna do a Joe/Roland run where they handcuff some poor dupe then re-engage the enemy, drag it around using Scene of the Crime and Interrogate to harvest clues, then finally Roland executes the prisoner for Evidence! and his investigator ability. Grim, fun, gritty flavour gold.

The art is great as well, lots of great background details. It has flavour text, and it's fine, but I feel like they could have done something much cooler, like a good cop/bad cop quote or something.

Steadfast : Gotta agree with @Jobu , none of these skills are interesting to me. I'll put a longer explanation here and a shorter one for all the others. These are essentially "conditionally better than Unexpected Courage " skills. We've seen this before with Rise to the Occasion , "Not Without A Fight!" , Inquiring Mind , Leadership , Take The Initiative , Torrent of Power and Last Chance (also the Desperate suite, but that's a whole build to itself, and arguably Defiance , but I'm not getting into that here). And the thing is, many of these skills suck. The benefit of Unexpected Courage is its supreme flexibility - regardless of what test you need to take, what situation you find yourself in, whatever, it gives you a big bonus that will definitely help you pass. These skills that do nothing but help you pass a test are already a problem because they stack up against almost every other card in the game - assets that you can play for permanent boosts or commit if you need to for one-time boosts, events that give you boosts or you can commit if you need to for one-time boosts, skills that help you pass a test and also give you something extra. Because we have lots of situational events that also have double icons, lots of skills that also give you a benefit alongside the stat boost, lots of assets that give you boosts all day every day rather than just one test, etc., it's very hard to justify taking these pure boost skills. Those that do see play are generally the ones that give you large, flexible boosts - Unexpected Courage , Rise to the Occasion , Inquiring Mind , Take the Initiative and maybe Last Chance , and all of those other than Inquiring Mind and Unexpected Courage are limited to specific builds and playstyles. The five new skills ( Steadfast , Curiosity , Able Bodied , Cunning and Prophesy ) all have too many restrictions to make them attractive compared to generic skills - if you want pure boost skills, take the good ones listed above, or neutral ones (particularly the cantrip skills).

In the case of Steadfast , it only remains a triple-icon card relatively early on in a scenario, assuming the Guardian is doing their job of taking hits for the team. Mark Harrigan might want it because he is inherently incentivised to keep his health high, but it also has anti-synergy with Sophie . Zoey and Carolyn have more total health/sanity than the other Guardians, so they could keep it online slightly longer, whereas Leo has lots of allies to tank for him and Roland really likes the willpower boost. For off-class Guardians it could be handy to help Skids or Joe shore up their terrible willpower, and Diana certainly can use both Willpower and Combat. But this card is still worthless. It just takes one unlucky Mythos card to put you dangerously close to going below the 10 health/sanity threshold, at which point you wish you had Unexpected Courage . For dealing with willpower tests in the Mythos phase, Take The Initative is a strictly better option. Can you imagine being low on Sanity and pulling like Rotting Remains only to have this card in hand? It is at its least powerful when you need it the most. You have better options for what this card does - I never intend to use it and I recommend no-one else ever does.

I think the mechanical theme (use when on high health) could have legs but it is a bit of a non-starter except as an idea for like, an asset that is cheaper the healthier you are as a kind of "prevention is better than cure" theme. Otherwise I much prefer the opposite idea of pushing your luck and "when the going gets tough...", that would have been a much better idea, though it's a bit more Survivor-y and is already seen in Fight or Flight . Shame this card sucks because I like the art (same as Composed in Eldritch Horror) and the flavour text is pretty cool.

Ace of Swords : Again I'm gonna do a much longer look at the Tarot cards as a whole here and shorter comments on the others. First off, the mechanical implications of the Tarot slot: We might see cards that interact with the tarot slot (e.g. something that gives you an extra tarot slot, or that takes up the tarot slot and something else); it also means that you can replace a tarot card in play by playing a different one, which you couldn't do if they were instead simply "limit 1 tarot in play" like with Composure or Footwear (see below). All these cards are immeasurably superior if you start with them in your hand, as you get to put them into play at the start of the game, saving you an action and 3 resources. This means that their value needs to be looked at in terms of whether they're worth playing if you can't get this effect to trigger - e.g. can you afford to play them 'manually', and is the boost worth it, because if not it'll be a dead card if you don't start with it. Your chance of starting with them in your opening hand changes depending on the investigator. Diana and Lola have a harder time using them because these two investigators have larger-than-average decks, so they're less likely to see a given card in their opening hand (and Lola also needs to worry about making sure her starting role matches the tarot card), and this theoretically applies to a lesser extent to Finn and anyone using both normal and replacement signatures, as they have more cards in their deck, whereas "Ashcan" Pete and Preston Fairmont start with their signature assets in play so they are slightly more likely to draw a given card in their opening hand. The additional problem with tarot cards is that you want to mulligan for them, and to keep them before mulliganing. This is a problem for people who already have cards they want to aggressively mulligan for - mystics want their key spells and/or Arcane Initiate to find them, Guardians want to get a weapon (though Stick to the Plan + Prepared for the Worst alleviates this), anyone running Dr Milan Christopher wants to start with him if at all possible, and certain investigators and builds want to start with certain cards. From these perspectives, the best investigator to use tarot cards is Sefina Rousseau , as she sees more of her deck (as a percentage) than anyone else (slightly more than someone doing a full mulligan) and she cannot mulligan so that is a non-issue. Beyond that, all tarot cards provide a boost to the relevant class' "primary stat", Combat for Guardians, Agility for Rogues, Intellect for Seekers, Willpower for Mystics, Max Health+Sanity for Survivors (the neutral tarot is different and I'll discuss that later). As such, their utility differs depending on whether those investigators use those stats often enough to need a constant boost, and whether they can get those boosts from elsewhere.

In the case of Ace of Swords , its utility depends on a few things. In bigger multiplayer groups the guardian is more likely to be spending the majority of their time fighting so it's more valuable with bigger groups. As mentioned above I wouldn't take it until you have Stick to the Plan + Prepared for the Worst , but I still wouldn't mulligan a weapon away to get it. If you're using the Lightning Gun , Flamethrower or BAR as your main weapon it's probably not worth it because you already have high chances to hit, whereas it's pretty good if you're using Shotgun and great if you're sticking with Machete/Timeworn Brand . I'd say Mark Harrigan never wants to use it because he already has 5 Fight and with his huge card draw and lack of access to off-class economy cards, he is perpetually resource-starved and won't be able to afford using it if he doesn't get it in his opening hand; conversely, Zoey really wants to consider it because she often sticks with Machete (thanks to her engagement synergy) and has great economy, plus it's flavourful for her as a superstitious person. Leo can also make use of it because his Rogue secondary makes for good economy. It works well alongside Handcuffs and Interrogate .

The mechanical theme of all the tarot cards is pretty cool. I find the art for this one a bit uncanny valley, though the rich woman holding it is an interesting element. I love the flavour text and the subtitle text.

Seeker :

Connect the Dots : I don't know how I feel about this. If you can get it to work it can give you a huge efficiency boost, but it's very expensive and it's less valuable testless investigation because it has to be a lower-shroud location. As such, I think it would be worth considering on Finn or Jenny because they can easily afford it, and on Joe given the discount from his Hunch deck (though it's a bit situational for the hunch deck). Anyone using Milan naturally has loads of resources to burn so if you're running that build it's a strong choice. It also works well alongside other testless investigation tools as it works off discovering a clue rather than specifically an investigation test - use (say) Working a Hunch to pick up a clue off a 5-shroud location then Connect the Dots to pick up 2 clues from a 4-shroud location. I think this is another card that's better on high player counts as you're more likely to have a useful target as your friendly investigators explore elsewhere. Finally, it has 2 matching icons so it's inherently attractive - you might be able to use it for a big efficiency boost or to discover tricky clues (e.g. with convoluted or large maps, or locations that have other penalties for investigation, or where enemies are waiting, or that have an effect such as Locked Door blocking them; since it specifies printed shroud, you can also use it to get around Obscuring Fog ), but if it doesn't have a good use you can use it as a sort of skill card.

The art is really awesome, brings out the theme and really helps with the feeling of investigating ancient conspiracies, so extra appropriate for this cycle. Flavour text is also great for that.

Curiosity : If you're rocking a heavy draw build, and particularly if you're going for Higher Education , this is likely to be online anyway. But if you have Higher Education why would you even bother with this card? Look at Inquiring Mind to see just how pointless this card is.

Shame because the art is cool (though doesn't really emphasise the idea of curiosity) and I love the flavour text. What a waste.

Fingerprint Kit : If you can afford this card it's fantastic. It's like the .45 Automatic of investigation - a consistently useful efficiency boost. It's a tool , so Joe Diamond really likes it, and you can recharge it with Emergency Cache (3) , Venturer and Contraband . It can be combined with a Magnifying Glass , and with Magnifying Glass (1) you don't even have to worry about hand slot management as you can return a magnifying glass to hand when you draw Fingerprint Kit . Basically pretty much every seeker wants to consider this, though some will upgrade out of it (e.g. anyone using Archaic Glyphs (Guiding Stones) , or if Daisy or Norman lean enough into mystic to have major economy problems).

Flavour-wise, it's really awesome for the more forensic type of characters (e.g. Joe or maybe Carolyn ). Not sure whether a librarian would easily have one but whatever. Likewise it makes a lot of sense for investigating missing persons, but less so when exploring a jungle or an otherworldly abyss (but the same is true for lockpicks). I like the art, quite a lot of details and the low light has a nice "burning the midnight oil" theme.

Death - XIII : If you're running Milan this is an easy include, since you can easily afford it if you don't start with it. If you're using your intellect for other things (e.g. "I've Got A Plan" , Mind Over Matter , Slip Away ) or using Archaic Glyphs (Guiding Stones) you'll be happy for any boosts to intellect you can get. But otherwise Seekers have some decent options for boosts already - Minh and her skill synergy, Magnifying Glass (obviously Dr Milan and Higher Education but then that's hardly a fair baseline for comparison since nothing will stack up to them). If you're not using Milan , first off well done, and second, you probably don't have a single card that you really need in your opening hand so you can happily hard mulligan for this.

Both the art and flavour text are kind of uninspiring, but they do their job, and the subtitle text has a nice implication as to how it sharpens your mind.

Survivor :

Able Bodied : To make this better than Unexpected Courage you need to have very few items in play. You need items as weapons, for investigation, for defense (and survivors have 0-cost defensive items), and all kinds of bonuses. The vast majority of people want to have multiple items in play if they can. What I'm trying to say is, never ever use this card. What were they thinking?

I like the art and name, and I wish they were attached to another card. The art features someone throwing a javelin and I'm pretty sure a javelin would be an Item , so even the art makes no sense.

Act of Desperation : This card is awesome. I don't recommend using Old Hunting Rifle but if you do, you should pack this card. But it's great for anyone who might want to do the occasional bit of fighting. An empty Flashlight becomes equivalent to a .45 Auto (2) shot. The refund is extra awesome. Yorick can make incredible use of it - discard for Act of Desperation , then when you kill them with it, play the discarded card from your discard. Even Minh might want this, throwing a used-up Pnakotic Manuscripts for a +5 attack and a refund. Together with the rest of the Survivor combat support ( Oops (2) , Stunning Blow , Live and Learn ), I would love to play a 5/2 Guardian/Survivor. It's the perfect mix of combo utility with Survivor cards and mechanics and great flavour. Love it.

In terms of mechanical flavour it's awesome but there's some weirdness (e.g. throwing an empty .45 Auto is more accurate than throwing an empty .32 Colt or smacking someone with the butt of a rifle). Love the art as well.

Track Shoes : Oh look, an immediate reason never to use Able Bodied . Anyone with a good Agility and Survivor access should consider this card. A slotless agility boost for 3 resources and 0 exp is worth considering even without the second ability, which is exceptional - taking tests you don't need to is generally not a good plan unless the payoff is worth it, but the payoff here definitely is - free movement and possible enemy avoidance. The fact that the difficulty remains constant can be handy for getting around high-evade enemies. Obviously Rita and Wendy are the main people who want to use this, but it could work well for Finn as well.

Weird that this helps out with using Ornate Bow and Lockpicks - I guess they help you brace for your shot or something, but when it comes to Lockpicks I got nothing. Art is pretty cool, understated but with background details telling a story, just how I like it. The blood on them is a bit weird, since the card doesn't help out in combat, but I guess it makes sense for Rita , who can turn evasion into damage.

Five of Pentacles : This is by far the most situational of the tarot cards. Yorick, for instance, has basically no use for it as he has fantastic tanking options without it and can't easily afford it. Wendy is already really durable so she doesn't need it. Rita and Ashcan might want it to protect against (direct) horror/damage, but they're still probably just fine with Cherished Keepsake/Leather Coat and won't easily afford it if they don't start with it - if they suffer multiple trauma it might be an option? I guess Agnes might like the extra point of sanity to get a bit more mileage out of her ability but it really isn't worth the (opportunity) cost. The obvious person who wants it is poor Calvin Wright . I'm not sure it'll be enough to bring him up to par (really I think he should have had 7/7 health/sanity to begin with) but the theoretical possibility of being 6/6/6/6 before boosts has a lot of potential and it also gives him more of a margin against direct damage/horror. Interesting to see if this gives him enough boost to make him more popular.

In terms of art this is definitely my favourite tarot card, just an awesome visual, the subtitle text reinforces the art strongly, and the flavour text isn't bad either.

Rogue :

Cunning : I think this is the skill I hate least in this pack. If you're doing a lots-of-money Preston build (or maybe Jenny ) you're likely to have it online just as a matter of course, and anyone who uses Dario El-Amin will be fulfilling the criterion for better-than- Unexpected-Courage anyway. The problem is that it does exactly as much as putting two resources into Streetwise , which isn't a great outlook as the best-case use for a card - I guess it's rougly as efficient as Emergency Cache in terms of action economy if so, but then Emergency Cache gives a lot more flexibility into the bargain? I don't think I'll be using this card, but it's the only one of these skills for which I'm not giving a blanket statement of "don't ever bother using it" - I can see it being vaguely useful for some builds, particularly for people who don't have the entire card pool and therefore can't use Rise to the Occasion for Preston (for instance).

The art is pretty cool, is that maybe meant to be Trish Scarborough ? Silenced pistol and maybe the right hair colour, though the length is a little off. Flavour text is pretty uninspiring though.

Money Talks : Obviously, only a certain kind of investigator wants to be using this - primarily a lots-of-money Preston , though a wealthy and flexible Jenny could use it and a high-resource Finn could even use it for Willpower tests. But for Preston (or whoever) it's potentially a great card. This could easily end up being the equivalent of a +4 or +5 wild skill for Preston and there's no upper limit. I don't know if you'd keep it throughout a campaign but it seems to be a great tool. I also really like the possibility of other cards creating "resource skill tests" in future. It has weaknesses of course - firstly it only works for a handful of specific builds, so you have to know you want it before you use it. Second, it isn't always a great emergency option as you might get caught off-guard when you're not done setting up and then it won't give you much of a bonus at all. Third, since it changes the skill test type to "resource", only generic boosts such as High Roller or wild icons will work, so you might get caught short if you or your allies have skills or talents that boost specific skills (such as, say, most of the skills released in this box). Finally, it sets your base value to half your resources, so it doesn't interact well with Rise to the Occasion or Against All Odds , which otherwise are decent options for Preston . I won't be able to say whether this card actually works well until I see it in action but I really like the design idea.

The mechanical flavour is fantastic, and the art and flavour text both sell it completely. Flavour-wise this card is a triumph.

Well Connected : I'm astonished that this card doesn't cost any exp, to be honest. If you have lots of resources anyway, for using Money Talks , Dario El-Amin , etc., this is at least as good as High Roller without the risk, and can get better (I've seen Finn have upwards of 25 resources with ease - +5 to one test each round is just absurd). Like with Dario and Money Talks and so forth, this card is about investment. You get up to the point where it makes a strong contribution (I think 10 resources is the sweet spot, which coincidentally is exactly what you get from Hot Streak ), you sit there on your pile of money for most of the game, letting it work for you without spending it, then near the end of the game you burn through your resources for some huge plays. The limit 1 in play is completely necessary to make this card remotely reasonable. It has poor icons for making use of that second copy, but at least Intellect is a test that most people will be taking at some point, and for someone like Wendy , or anyone running Cornered , it is barely a problem since the spare copy is discard fodder once drawn. Like with Money Talks , only certain people want to be running this but for those people it's a ridiculously strong card. Possibly my favourite card of the entire box (investigators notwithstanding).

Just like Money Talks , I love the mechanical flavour and it's reinforced marvellously by the art and flavour text. Everything about this card is amazing. Just looking at it makes me want to start deckbuilding.

The Moon - XVIII : If you're a rogue who does a lot of evading ( Finn , obviously, though Skids , Wendy and certain approaches to Jenny , Preston and Sefina too), this card is great. I'd say that all in all this is the best of the tarot options, partly because it can be hard to get good static boosts to evade (Combat, for instance, has static boosts on assets but also has boosts on the weapons you use for it, whereas with Evade you're mostly just using static boosts and one-time boosters unless you use something like Suggestion ), but you want as much as you can to reliably evade enemies, particularly if you want to hit succeed-by-two thresholds for Pickpocketing (2) and Lucky Cigarette Case . Also, since rogues tend to be flush with cash, they can afford the price to play this if they don't get it in their opening hand. Sefina might prefer Four of Cups if she goes more heavily into spells but otherwise most people who can use this (apart from Leo obviously) should consider it.

I like the art here, second only to Five of Pentacles , and it has nice spooky flavour text and subtitle text.

Mystic :

Deny Existence : This card is amazing. It cancels many threatening mythos effects (e.g. Rotting Remains , Grasping Hands , Ants! , anything that hits your resources, cards, health, actions or sanity), works on Weakness cards (completely counters Amnesia , Paranoia and Terrible Secret , prevents the horror and therefore the unavoidable doom from To Fight The Black Wind , many other things), is a pseudo- Dodge (blocking horror or damage but not both - many enemies just do one or the other, and in many cases you're only really worried about one or the other), works retroactively (so you can see if you pass the Rotting Remains test before using your cancel, and you can use it to block the damage from Beyond the Veil once it has entered play), costs nothing to play ( Ward of Protection is 1 resource and 1 horror, for comparison) and has the Spell keyword so you can tutor it out with Arcane Initiate . Plainly this is a card that Diana includes in her deck and never removes, but realistically I think I would be tempted to use two copies on every single investigator who can run it. It is an inexpensive answer to so, so many problems. Most powerful card in the box by a long way.

The art is a sort of miscellaneous arcane barrier with maybe something disintegrating off to the right, pretty certainly but nothing particularly interesting (compare the art on Until The End Of Time , which is a far more interesting version of the same core idea). It's fine. I know the text-box is cramped but I would have loved a snarky little bit of flavour text, like on Counterspell or Defiance .

Eldritch Inspiration : This card is OK, I guess. I'd say run it on Diana and hope for a Rite of Seeking or Shrivelling effect to cancel. In most respects, it's like a mini- Counterspell - you still have to deal with the modifiers of the token, but at least you aren't taking the horror, or ending your turn early, or whatever. The ability to repeat instead of cancel is really interesting - obviously Diana probably doesn't care because she can't use her ability then, but it has a few interesting combos - Song of the Dead can become a very occasional 5-damage attack, Hypnotic Gaze can reflect damage twice, and so forth. Like Counterspell it works well with Dark Prophecy , allowing you to search for a skull token or whatever with relative impunity. I will need to try this card out in play before deciding fully, but I think it comes down to: Decent on Diana because it's fodder for her ability, fun with gimmick decks like Jim looking for skulls, not really worth it on anyone else. It's a shame it specifically names just the symbol tokens, meaning that it doesn't work with Shards of the Void . Also helps protect a Seal of the Seventh Sign , so should be used in decks that take that card.

The art threatens to take the crazy evil arcane lady crown from Olive McBride ! I don't know if I actually like it but it's certainly very striking. Looks a bit too World of Darkness and not enough Cthulhu Mythos for me. Still, I love me some good background details and this card has those.

Prophesy : This gives you wild icons, so it can be more directly compared to Unexpected Courage (and bear in mind, I haven't included Unexpected Courage in a deck for about 2 years now, aside from a failed attempt at Silas Marsh ). If there's 6 doom in play it can be three wild - so scenarios with lots of extra doom like Echoes of the Past will easily hit that threshold, and if you have a huge agenda like say Doom of Eztli 2a it can be superior to Unexpected Courage for a significant amount of the game, and you can afford to use player card doom generation to hit the threshold with a lot of time to get rid of the doom before it advances. But imagine if you're playing on Essex County Express, Depths of Yoth or Extracurricular Activity 3a, for example - where agendas have doom thresholds of 2 or 3. Now the card is almost always 1 wild. Certainly, if you have a lot of personal doom generation you could push up to the 2 wild threshold and theoretically the 3 wild threshold, but then you can only do that the turn that the agenda will advance anyway, or otherwise you're wasting at least one entire round for an extra wild icon. So its utility varies wildly from scenario to scenario, which is not a good look for an already marginal effect - if you have Adaptable you could maybe swap it in for the scenarios where it will be more useful, but so far that's basically only Sefina and she doesn't want many skills since she wants so many events (and has access to skills that actually do things). Consistency is one of the most important things in how effective a card is and by that metric this might actually be the worst skill in the box. Certainly, no-one should ever take this over Unexpected Courage or Defiance .

The art is different, at least, and very creepy (anything with eyes really gets me, hence why the art for Dim Carcosa was awesome to me). The flavour text is pretty eh.

Four of Cups : On the one hand, Mystics prize Willpower boosts more than any other class prizes any kind of boost, since so much of their kit is "make everything a willpower test" - plus it's the primary stat to defend against treachery cards. On the other hand, Mystics have huge problems with economy and so will have a tough time paying for this if they don't get the kicker off (I'd say Spirit Athame and Recall the Future would be higher priority to get into play), and they more than almost anyone already have cards they need to prioritise when mulliganing. It's a hard sell. Single-class mystics like Akachi and Mateo might want it more than others since they have fewer cards vying for deck space, and I think Sefina wants this over The Moon - XVIII because she can boost agility with Streetwise and both Agility and Willpower boost Suggestion , and as said above she definitely has more use for the Tarot cards than most. Overall...I might take it in place of Recall the Future on Akachi to try it out, but I'm not sold.

The art is pretty, and the implied setting is interesting (seems to be the devotional candle section of a church - is that the edge of a nun's habit?), and seems to be referenced a bit by the subtitle text as well. Flavour text...eh. It's fine.

Neutral :

Ace of Cups : I'm not sold on this. A single extra action with built-in Unexpected Courage is not bad, but it's not really worth the investment. If you're concentrating on getting it into play for free at the start, you're hard mulliganing for a one-off card that is a slight tempo boost or emergency action - it's not like people hard mulligan for Working a Hunch , and that also gives you a tempo boost of an action's worth of investigation with a bonus (automatic rather than +2, indeed). If you're drawing it after opening hands it's even sadder - you get to bank an action I guess, using one now for one later, for the price of 3 resources, which is not worthless but is very situational, and otherwise you're paying 3 resources for Unexpected Courage . I can't see myself buying this except for maybe a Wendy deck concentrating on having huge combo turns of 10+ actions together with Will to Survive (as she can discard it for her ability if she draws it after setup), but even then it would be a hard sell.

I quite like the understated art here, much like Well Prepared : The implication that a normal, ordinarily dressed person with a normal, boring house has this mystical card as part of his morning routine has that frisson of arcana under the surface of mundane life. No flavour text, sadly, and the subtitle is nondescript at best.

Weaknesses :

The Thirteenth Vision : I know this was designed in a player event so I guess they kind of have to include it, but really? This card is almost identical to Haunted , except for a few edge cases (fail difficulty 0 tests so it screws Flashlight , Anatomical Diagrams , etc, doesn't affect tests that care about how much you failed by ( Rotting Remains is still effectively a pass if you draw, since you take 0 horror), doesn't affect tests that care about how much you passed by (so it doesn't interfere with hitting the threshold for Vicious Blow (2) , Quick Thinking , etc.)). And it affects everyone at your location, not just you! And it has the exact same way to get rid of it as Haunted ! If it had a different method of getting rid of it I wouldn't be so annoyed, but as it stands I might remove this from the pool of weaknesses, not because it's super horrible but because it's redundant and therefore boring .

Art is pretty cool, but seems to have no real relation to the effect. Which is particularly baffling, because the design process started with the card council having just the art and going from there...

The Tower - XVI : Now this is a brutal weakness. It interferes with your mulligans. It prevents you committing cards. To get rid of it you have to play it for 4(!) resources and an action. In theory it interacts with the other Tarot cards in a really interesting way - if you have The Tower - XVI as your weakness, and you draw another tarot in your opening hand, and especially if you start with The Tower - XVI in your hand as well, you have an interesting decision - do you put the other tarot into play for free to get the economy and tempo boost, knowing that you'll have to get rid of it to get rid of your weakness? Or do you choose not to, so you can play your weakness and then in future play your own tarot card to discard your weakness? However, because this interferes so strongly with tarot cards in this way, and because tarot cards aren't these super overpowered staple cards, I think sadly that all it will mean is that if you draw The Tower - XVI as your basic weakness, you'll just never buy tarot cards at all, because it's not worth the hassle. As for the effect of the weakness itself, it clearly penalises skill cards more than anything else (you can't commit any cards at all, but at least events and assets can still be played for their normal effects), and as such is particularly brutal for certain investigators - Silas Marsh, "Ashcan" Pete if going Dark Horse , Minh Thi Phan , and anyone going for a Yaotl build. Thankfully you don't need to actually discard it from play to get rid of it, merely putting it into play will stop its effect. Many of the basic weaknesses have an effect of "get rid of this by spending 2 actions"; this is "get rid of this by spending 1 action and 4 resources" which is generally far harsher - and the fact that it isn't discarded during opening hands and cannot be mulliganed makes it even harsher! There are some investigators who don't care too much - rogues who throw money at every problem mostly have events and assets they want to play and get boosts from talents, not committing cards - and they can also easily afford the resource cost. Mark Harrigan often eschews skills almost entirely in favour of using Sophie for boosts. Carolyn Fern and certain Seeker and Mystic builds are all about getting a really strong board state rather than committing cards to pass tests. But more than any other basic weakness in the game with the possible exception of Doomed , this will distort your campaign, and will strongly effect how you build and upgrade your deck (and unlike Doomed , which in most cases just happens to you and no amount of smart play can counter it, this is something that demands you play around it and compensate for it). I kind of love the design because it's really interesting and forces a huge amount of play strategy and decision-making, but I think this is probably the most brutal basic weakness in the game, bar none. Even if it didn't stay in your opening hand it would be the harshest, the fact that it does elevates it to eye-wateringly nasty.

I love the art and the subtitle text, too - and it's very evocative of the theme of fate and prophecy in this cycle.

16 hours ago, Jobu said:

Five of Pentacles (1) - While still a very good card, I think I would prefer the skill bonus to the bonus health and sanity. As a purely personal comment, I find cards that modify the printed value of your health/sanity score annoying/easy to forget.

In general I agree with you, but I wanted to make two points: while I feel similar about the increase to your sanity/health, the card has to be worded like this for Calvin. For him, this tarot is extremely good, but it would be much worse if it just had 1 health and sanity. Even so, that's only one investigator, but I'm glad they worded it this way.

In regards to the skills, I think they're some of the best skills in the game. The problem is, like @Allonym mentioned, they're being compared against every other existing card. When the game launched, I would make decks packed with the core skill cards (once I realized they were good), but now the only ones that survive the extremely brutal deck-paring-down phase of deckbuilding are home runs like vicious blow and deduction. Skills simply don't feel as useful as assets and events with icons, since those cards are pulling double duty, unless they save me some clicks.

Given Tarot got a new slot, I'm a little surprised Track Shoes didn't generate a new Footwear slot. The likes of Combat Boots, Elegant Shoes and Hidden Blade all immediately spring to mind as ideas for the same slot.

14 minutes ago, dysartes said:

Given Tarot got a new slot, I'm a little surprised Track Shoes didn't generate a new Footwear slot. The likes of Combat Boots, Elegant Shoes and Hidden Blade all immediately spring to mind as ideas for the same slot.

As I alluded to above, there's major differences between a slot and "Limit x in play".

An asset in a slot can be replaced by another asset taking up the same slot, whereas "Limit x in play" means that you can't play another while you already have x in play. This is important for Tarot cards because there's a Tarot weakness; if tarot cards were simply "limit 1 Tarot in play" it would make The Tower XVI significantly more punishing as a weakness. Since we don't have a footwear weakness as yet (who knows, maybe "Concrete Shoes"), there's no reason to make a slot to cover that issue.

Slots can interact with other game elements creating extra slots, taking up multiple slots and otherwise checking the contents of slots - Charisma and Relic Hunter give you extra Ally and Accessory slots, Bandolier and Book of Shadows (3) let you convert Body and Hand slots into extra Hand and Arcane slots respectively, some items take up multiple hand slots (and the rules create the possibility for spells taking up multiple arcane slots), and On Your Own only works if your ally slots are empty. It seems probable that we'll see other cards that interact with the tarot slot, whether assets that take up Tarot and other slots, or cards that give you multiple Tarot slots. This again seems unlikely with Footwear, as it would require a huge stretch of logic to create the ability to wear multiple pairs of footwear (I guess you could have a body-and-footwear card but that would be doable by having it be body slot and also Footwear traited).

You could make other Footwear cards without needing to create a footwear slot, and indeed the "limit 1 Footwear in play" stipulation implies that they will do so. Creating an entirely new element of the framework rules is something they should only do if they need to (e.g. with The Tower XVI ), and since there's no reason to make a footwear slot, I'm far happier with restricting it to card text within the existing rules framework.

17 hours ago, Allonym said:

As I alluded to above, there's major differences between a slot and "Limit x in play".

This does create the mechanical distinction, but it's very weird to me that the two landed how they did. It's basically impossible to change your shoes, but the tarot - which presumably represents something relating to fate, destiny, or even just spirit - you can swap at will? Feels backwards.

It's definitely better for what they did mechanically - The Tower would be a much different weakness if the Tarot weren't a slot - but it feels weird to me thematically.

5 hours ago, Buhallin said:

It's  basically impossible to change your shoes, but the tarot - which presumably represents something relating to fate, destiny, or even just spirit - you can swap at  will  ? 

Remember, the cards do not dictate the future. They can only guide and advise.

Shoes, on the other hand, do dictate the future. It's a little-known fact, but before the invention of Velcro, shoes had to be sewn directly onto the feet.

On 2/3/2019 at 12:40 AM, SGPrometheus said:

In general I agree with you, but I wanted to make two points: while I feel similar about the increase to your sanity/health, the card has to be worded  like this for Calvin. For him, this tarot is extremely good, but it would be much worse if it just had 1 health and sanity. Even so, that's only one  investigator, but I'm glad they worded it this way

I am not saying that there isn't a reason to word it that way. There is a reason to use that exact verbiage and stat modification.

I am just saying I find it cumbersome to use with no request to have it modified to make it easier for me.

On 2/3/2019 at 12:14 PM, dysartes said:

Given Tarot got a new slot, I'm a little surprised Track Shoes didn't generate a new Footwear slot. The likes of Combat Boots, Elegant Shoes and Hidden Blade all immediately spring to mind as ideas for the same slot.

yeah i was surprised by that too. maybe they will do that in the next cycle of cards.

On 2/3/2019 at 12:09 AM, Allonym said:

Act of Desperation : This card is awesome. I don't recommend using Old Hunting Rifle but if you do, you should pack this card.

Little awesome detail: The weapon the woman is holding in Act of desperatio n IS actually Old Hunting Rifle .

So I thought I'd add a little here having used some of these cards now for 3 scenarios of Carcosa in my Joe Diamond deck... I took some that I felt would work well with him/seemed included for him...

Steadfast - I know the skills have fallen flat for a lot of people, but I gave this a go... it worked out well in the first 2 scenarios and always added 3 icons for me.... helping keep me at the high end of health/san.... feeling like I may upgrade out of it, but it survives in the deck for now...

Delay the Inevitable - in the hunch deck... incredible... saved Zoey in scenario 1 and me in scenario 2.... when it cost 0 and is fast its a no brainer to use (for me at least)… in another deck you may have to think more

Fingerprint Kit - With Milan Christopher in the deck this is a 'must', only actually managed to get it out in scenario 3 due to draws/situational usefulness, but it really helped clean up... kinda wish I had included those Venturers now.... it makes lvl 3 Emergency Cache seem attractive too...

I've just spent an XP on Ace of Swords ready for scenario 4, as the secondary Monster killer in the group I figured this would be better than Death XIII and with Milan in the deck I should be able to easily afford it if not drawn in my starting hand....

And a final word on Joe.... fantastic!!! Great investigator, well rounded, the hunch deck is incredible (so far the weakness has not proven troublesome) and I imagine he will do well in solo (although agility is a concern), and one seeker who I will not be getting Higher Education for, no matter how useful a card it is....