50 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

😂😂 It’s maddening! Thanks for the tip.

Part of it is my new phone. Put it down wrong with an app open and it submits or sends random texts or whatever else it desires!!
I do wonder if there is any way to delete one of your own posts?

There's not. But, you can edit your old posts. So if you see the blank post, you can always write your original idea in the existing one.

So, A Thousand Shapes of Horror should now be out, at least in the US - it doesn't seem to be out over here in the UK until after Christmas (according to my LGS, anyway), so can anyone fill us in on the unrevealed player cards?

All up on reddit:

Edit: there we go.

https://www.reddit.com/r/arkhamhorrorlcg/comments/e9gdus/a_thousand_shapes_of_horror_player_cards/

First Impressions!:

Tetsuo Mori: a 3 cost ally for soak with a built-in Prepared for the Worst. He can soak for your teammates, which sort of makes him feel like a Brother Xavier light. He seems moderately reasonable. Everything he provides is nice, but he does cost you 3 resource when guardians are often strapped for cash, and occupies a very valuable ally slot. In general, I think I'll keep the cheaper, slotless prepared for the worst.. even if it doesnt have the soak. I keep noticing them build up the Police trait though, maybe that will eventually do something.

Fool Me Once...: Shame on... shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again. So its more guardian mythos control. It's delicate though, because it's pay now, benefit later. Or maybe not at all. Tactic means you can hold this under Stick to the Plan. After Fool me Once is attached, you can choose when you want to use it, so if the treachery hits an investigator who can handle it you can keep for later. Can combat the ever cursed Ancient Evils. 1 xp isn't too bad. It's not a bad card at all, but deck space can be tight, and I might prefer On the Hunt instead. Or First Watch.

Self-Sacrifice: Seems more like a survivor card... but ok. Personally I don't love the play-to-fail mechanic, but some people do. It's deck-thinning, which is a plus. It doesn't do much else.

Otherworld Codex 2: Wow. This.. hm. This is really interesting. My immediate thought it to try to use it to murder cultists with doom tokens on them. If you get lucky you can target pretty much any non-elite enemies and take them out for the price of 1 secret. Or you can get rid of persistent treacheries, lots of options with this one. Mandy can use this with her +3 search depth to help guarantee some hits. I like this a lot.

Dream Enhancing Serum: Well, you could use this to have a positively massive hand size, especially if you were using Bonded cards. I'm not sure that really gets you anything though. Card draw is ultimately good, and the slot is only Arcane, which isn't in high demand for most seekers. But you may not want to pay the 3 resource cost, or use the deck space. Maybe in a larger deck I could have room for it. Seems ok, not amazing. A niche card.

Let God Sort them Out: It's sort of funny that even though this is a rogue card, almost all guardians have access to it (except for Carolyn and Roland). Which is good because probably guardians like this a lot more than rogues do. You have to deal the killing blow on 6hp worth of enemies, and still have an action remaining to play the card. If you can do that, +1xp for you. I do LOVE extra xp, especially on combat characters. But jeepers, this seems tough to pull off with any consistency.

Swift Reload 2: Lets see. Leo Anderson can drop this on the BAR for a potential +8 ammo. Fast keyword is great here. I'm trying to think of some sort of ammo hog build... maybe with Leo and Eat Lead. Could be lots of fun, but I dont know if we're quite at the point of viability yet. Other than that, yeah, it's good. If you have copious amounts of cash you could play this and then follow it up with a Contraband for even more ammo. Nice combo piece, will be interested to see where this goes.

Gregory Gry: Please just give me Dario instead.

Healing Words: Nice counterpart to Clarity of Mind. Clarity of Mind was never a card was super exciting and sexy, but it gets the job done, and I've used it several times. I imagine Healing Words will be the same. Not flashy, but you just might need the healing.

Ethereal Form: Oh..... kay.

Scrounge for Supplies: what a bomb. There are a lot of really good level 0 cards. Lucky, Look what I found..., baseball bat, Fortuitous Discovery, Resourceful... That's not even leaving Survivor. There's dynamite blast, vicious blow, venturer, beat cop, emergency cache, sleight of hand, double-or-nothing, I've Got a Plan, Ward of Protection... there is a LOT that this could fetch for you. This card deserves serious consideration for anyone who has access to it.

Brute Force: Silas probably likes this. Otherwise I doubt it.

I was wondering how amusing Brute Force might be with Patrice, especially if she has Cornered to discard it to on turns where she isn't attacking.

Of course, at the minute any Survivor card is getting looked at through a Patrice-shaped lens

Brute Force is plainly excellent for Tony Morgan and makes Survivor a substantially better choice for his off-class. I'll definitely take it on Patrice, it would be an excellent option for certain Minh builds, great for a fighty Calvin or William Yorick build, and potentially worth considering for Tommy.

4 hours ago, awp832 said:

Self-Sacrifice: Seems more like a survivor card... but ok. Personally I don't love the play-to-fail mechanic, but some people do. It's deck-thinning, which is a plus. It doesn't do much else.

When I read this card, I thought you would get the two cards whether the test is passed or not. That fits in with the guardian "let me protect you" vibe.

But, now I think it's ambiguous. Thoughts?

44 minutes ago, Skeptical Gamer said:

When I read this card, I thought you would get the two cards whether the test is passed or not. That fits in with the guardian "let me protect you" vibe.

But, now I think it's ambiguous. Thoughts?

Funny. When I read the card I thought you would only get the cards if the test failed. But now I think it's ambiguous.


I studied a lot of logic in college. I don't mean logic as in "that seems logical" I mean formal logic. It's more to do with sentence structure and... it's like a mix of programming, math and grammar. Anyway, in formal logic any time you see "if.../ ... then" it means the second part only follows if the first part is fulfilled. I'm used to looking at sentences that way. From my perspective, it was clear that no failure meant no cards.

However I realize that the designers at FFG aren't formal logicians. That might not have been their intent. As they started a new sentence, they may have been trying to indicate that this was supposed to be an order of steps sort of thing, rather than setting up a condition/effect. If I had been them and I wanted it this way, I would have just phrased the sentence "Draw 2 cards, or the performing investigator draws 2 cards." It would have been shorter, and clearer in my opinion. So my instinct is to still say that they added the word "Then.." because they were trying to set up a condition/effect.

But maybe I'm overthinking it. It could go either way. Man I hate to ask for a ruling on a card almost as soon as it was released. Might come to that though.

You don't need to have studied formal logic to determine the correct resolution of the card effect, because the word "then" as applicable to Arkham Horror card text has a specific and defined meaning: " If the effect of an ability includes the word "then," the text preceding the word "then" must be successfully resolved in full before the remainder of the effect described after the word "then" can be resolved. [...] If the pre-then aspect of an effect does not successfully resolve in full, the post-then aspect does not resolve."

In this case, if the "If this test fails..." portion of the card ability doesn't resolve (because the triggering condition of the test failing does not arise), you don't get the draw.

5 hours ago, awp832 said:

Brute Force: Silas probably likes this. Otherwise I doubt it.

It's a skill, so you can give it to anyone. A 3-damage attack with +1 combat is pretty **** solid. Obviously it's better if you can lend it to a Rogue (or take it as Tony), since they can then start adding in other "succeed by X" effects. And, in a pinch, you can still use it yourself with Survivor base stat tricks (like Rise to the Occasion or Against All Odds).

5 hours ago, awp832 said:

Self-Sacrifice: Seems more like a survivor card... but ok. Personally I don't love the play-to-fail mechanic, but some people do. It's deck-thinning, which is a plus. It doesn't do much else.

Take it as Diana. Commit it to, say, Finn's Rotting Remains, or Leo's Grasping Hands. Play Deny Existence (5) or I've Had Worse (2) or what have you.

You can also take it on either of the red-blue investigators, thanks to their incredible tankiness and expendable meat shields.

Sure, if you have an eye toward committing brute force to someone else's skill check, it changes the dynamic a little. The point is that you have to commit it to someone who is planning on punching them. So it should be someone with a reasonably high combat check in the first place. I mean, Wendy isn't probably taking this. Or if she is, she's not taking it for herself. This card is 1 xp, so it's not something you just throw in there, you need to plan to use it, and probably once it is in your deck you don't want to take it out- as with any xp card.

Tony is a reasonable choice for Brute Force if he is taking Survivor as his secondary. And it does make survivor a little more interesting for him, but currently I still feel guardian is the better pick if additional combat options is what you want. But sure, Tony could be reasonable to use this.

Regarding Self-sacrifice Diana might want another option to pull encounter cards to herself.. but from what little of Diana I have played, she is very, very tight for deck space. Might be hard to fit this one in.

Dream Enhancing Serum! Now, as a payoff for drawing lots of cards, we can draw even more cards! I love it, I want to build around it -- probably a Rogue Mandy with Easy Mark and Segment of Onyx who'll draw enough to invoke Minh's envy -- and I suspect that it isn't optimal even in it's own deck!

Tetsuo Mori seems made for Tommy: he's a super expendable ally with four total soak who helps you find Becky. But I'm thinking about teaming him up with Diana to help find that dagger. One of the ways in which he's normally less useful than Prepared for the Worst is that you don't get the weapon RIGHT NOW, you need to wait for Mori to die. But Diana can afford to wait a moment for the dagger because she's not really using as a weapon, she's using it to access reactive events that are just as useful a few turns later as they are now. One of the ways in which he's more useful than Prepared is that you get more from your action and your card: Prepared exchanges a card, an action and a resource for... one card; it's woefully inefficient. And Diana appreciates some horror soak even with all her cancels.

Scrounge for Supplies opens up new possibilities for recurring cards from discard to hand. Formerly, I believe, it was only possible to recur Items (Scavenging) or Survivor cards (Resourceful). Notably, taboo'd Double or Nothing it still a level 0 card. I don't know if the next game-breaking Rogue combo will involve Double, Double and Scrounge but I wouldn't rule it out. In ordinary use it's a bit inefficient: unlike Resourceful it costs an action, which is a big deal, but it does offer a lot of flexibility late game with a big discard pile.

Scrounge for Supplies seems crazy considering how much recursion Survivors already had in faction and how many amazing level 0 cards they have in faction. the Survivor card pool is ridiculous. Brute Force is just a fantastic damage event along the lines of Backstab. Dream Enhancing Serum broke my mind a bit when looking at it. I need to play that to see how good it is, but on paper that seems really good. Having a giant hand of cards is never bad.... well that's not true. This is Arkham Horror and cards like Amnesia exist.

I'm more annoyed how weirdly out of flavour Scrounging is. It should be items. Not... you know, scrounging for events and skills and allies in a garbage can.

21 hours ago, Allonym said:

You don't need to have studied formal logic to determine the correct resolution of the card effect, because the word "then" as applicable to Arkham Horror card text has a specific and defined meaning: " If the effect of an ability includes the word "then," the text preceding the word "then" must be successfully resolved in full before the remainder of the effect described after the word "then" can be resolved. [...] If the pre-then aspect of an effect does not successfully resolve in full, the post-then aspect does not resolve."

In this case, if the "If this test fails..." portion of the card ability doesn't resolve (because the triggering condition of the test failing does not arise), you don't get the

I think either interpretation could be correct. We have seen questionable phrasing before...

"Then" is defined in the rules, but "if...then" is not. By the rules, the statement before the "then" must be fulfilled before you get the effect after "then".

Here's the problem. Every other "then" card I could find included a simple effect/action (e.g., "heal one horror", "successfully evade", etc.). You either did the thing or you didn't.

The "if" statement on Self Sacrifice is different. It implies that, unlike every other "then" card, suffering consequences is not necessary unless the test fails.

Usually the pre-"then" statement is not conditional. You do x, then you get y. Self Sacrifice's pre-"then" statement is conditional. You check to see if something happens and "if" it does you do x, then you get y.

Checking to see if the test failed and taking the consequences if it did fulfills the pre-"then" statement. You get the "then" effect whether the test failed or not.

I'd like to hear what the designers intended...

(By the way, I never expect card text to follow formal logic. Though it would be nice if it did...)

3 hours ago, Skeptical Gamer said:

Here's the problem. Every other "then" card I could find included a simple effect/action (e.g., "heal one horror", "successfully evade", etc.). You either did the thing or you didn't.

Consider Recall the Future. "When a skill test you are performing begins, if Recall the Future is ready, name a chaos token: If the named chaos token is revealed during this skill test, exhaust Recall the Future. Then, you get +2 skill value for this skill test."

The obvious and unambiguous intent of this card is that you name a token, and if that token arises, you exhaust RtF and get a +2 bonus, and you only get the +2 to your skill test if the named chaos token arises. The "Then" clause only triggers if the "if" clause resolves.

I would hope that is an uncontroversial statement. So, given that "If the named chaos token is revealed [...]. Then, you get +2 [...]" works just fine, "If this test fails [...]. Then, either you draw 2 cards [...]" should work in the exact same way.

It may be a bit convoluted and unintuitive, but I don't think there's any room to doubt how the card functions in the framework.

On 12/14/2019 at 6:55 PM, awp832 said:

Sure, if you have an eye toward committing brute force to someone else's skill check, it changes the dynamic a little. The point is that you have to commit it to someone who is planning on punching them. So it should be someone with a reasonably high combat check in the first place. I mean, Wendy isn't probably taking this. Or if she is, she's not taking it for herself. This card is 1 xp, so it's not something you just throw in there, you need to plan to use it, and probably once it is in your deck you don't want to take it out- as with any xp card.

I love Brute Force. I tried it first in finishing out TCU last week with Agnes. I actually did throw it to another investigator, who ended up making the very most out of it. It also ended up working pretty well with Flare.
I just put it it in my “Allonym inspired” Patrice deck. I am very interested in seeing how it works with her.

14 hours ago, Mimi61 said:

I love Brute Force. I tried it first in finishing out TCU last week with Agnes. I actually did throw it to another investigator, who ended up making the very most out of it. It also ended up working pretty well with Flare.
I just put it it in my “Allonym inspired” Patrice deck. I am very interested in seeing how it works with her.

Aww you're gonna make me blush! It's also next on my list for my Patrice run alongside 2 copies of Hemispheric Map.

On 12/19/2019 at 8:02 AM, Allonym said:

Aww you're gonna make me blush! It's also next on my list for my Patrice run alongside 2 copies of Hemispheric

Hemispheric Map is up next for me too.

The last Mythos pack is announced!

I'm honestly not sure what to make of the Sawn-Off Shotgun (SOS), especially compared to the Guardian's Shotgun (SG):

SOS costs 1 more XP, but 2 less resources.
SOS is a one-handed item, while the SG is 2-handed.
SOS has split Skill icons (1 Fight, 1 Speed), while the SG just has 2 Fight.
SOS has the Illicit keyword in addition to the keywords on the SG.

Both weapons have the same mechanical effects in terms of damage, though the SOS has a slightly higher bonus damage cap (6 instead of 5).

The SOS has no accuracy bonus when attacking, while the SG gives you +3 to your Fight value - this seems to be the major miss for the weapon, though it reflects the reduction in accuracy shortening the barrel would provide.

5 hours ago, dysartes said:

I'm honestly not sure what to make of the Sawn-Off Shotgun (SOS), especially compared to the Guardian's Shotgun (SG):

SOS costs 1 more XP, but 2 less resources.
SOS is a one-handed item, while the SG is 2-handed.
SOS has split Skill icons (1 Fight, 1 Speed), while the SG just has 2 Fight.
SOS has the Illicit keyword in addition to the keywords on the SG.

Both weapons have the same mechanical effects in terms of damage, though the SOS has a slightly higher bonus damage cap (6 instead of 5).

The SOS has no accuracy bonus when attacking, while the SG gives you +3 to your Fight value - this seems to be the major miss for the weapon, though it reflects the reduction in accuracy shortening the barrel would provide.

Yes, if you compare SOS directly to SG I think that the SG is better and should be better. But it's not supposed to be an apples to apples comparison. The SOS can be taken by many investigators who couldn't previously take a shotgun at all. And in a class that seems to be all about big turns and going wildly over the test value. This seems pretty much perfect.

Might be interesting trying to build a fence deck soon. Not enough parts for my liking prior to this. Not sold that Finn would want the SoS though.

Yeah, the Sawnoff looks truly terrible. Certainly you can use skills and pay boosts to boost your chances and the maximum possible payoff is theoretically very high, but the baseline is awful. For 5 exp and 3 resources, you want a weapon that can actually do something by itself, not simply a combo piece that needs lots of support to do anything.

Attacking at +0 and needing to oversucceed to do any extra damage is why the Switchblade (0) is so terrible. The Shotgun is already the worst of the high-level Guardian weapons (at least at higher difficulties), ignoring the meritless Springfield.

Also (just like with the Chicago Typewriter/.45 Thompson), we already have a card for a sawnoff shotgun in the Lupara, so it seems kind of thematically redundant and uncreative. And in addition, Lupara is a card that works better both with the Rogue mechanical themes and as a weapon in general. About the only thing rogue-y about the new Sawnoff is the "succeed by x" thing, which is a mechanic also seen in Guardian, Seeker and Survivor.

All in all, a very disappointing card.

On 1/4/2020 at 1:27 PM, Allonym said:

Yeah, the Sawnoff looks truly terrible. Certainly you can use skills and pay boosts to boost your chances and the maximum possible payoff is theoretically very high, but the baseline is awful. For 5 exp and 3 resources, you want a weapon that can actually do something by itself, not simply a combo piece that needs lots of support to do anything.

All in all, a very disappointing card.

Agreed. I was underwhelmed for sure. Rogues don’t have tons of great weapons, so it was a bummer to get a new one that costs so much and still requires scads of help to be effective.