For those who didn't knew, almost all the Player Cards of Weaver of Cosmos are already spoiled on arkhamdb .

Most interessting are upgrades for Scavenging (2) and Joey "The Rat" (3)

But hands down, best Card seems like Abigail Foreman.

So, Where the Gods Dwell seems to be out now, so here's some initial thoughts on the new cards. Before I get to that, though - how come pack 6 seems to be spoiled on ArkhamDB, but pack 5 isn't on there yet? Seems weird.

Guardian - Empty Vessel (& Wish Eater)

A new pair of Bonded cards for Guardians, using the Accessory slot. Build up charges on Empty Vessel by defeating enemies, then transmute the item into Wish Eater with that number of charges. Wish Eater, in turn, provides you some protection against dangerous tokens from the Chaos Bag, and offers some healing as part of the same reaction.

At 4XP, there's a significant cost, but it is cheap to get into play during a game. Building up charges incidentally seems handy, and gaining some control over the Chaos Bag seems useful. Whether it is a better choice than Haunted Mirror is the question I'm unsure about at present - both give you healing, both use the same slot, but they have different strengths and weaknesses. Definitely one to test, I reckon.

Seeker - Surprising Find

A 1XP Myriad card, Surprising Find allows you to hold some extra ? icons in your play area, though with less control over when you'll use them. In addition, a successful use of the icon nets you card draw, something Seekers are sorely lacking in... (/s)

I'm not keen on this one - there's a bit of action economy in play here, as you're getting Surprising Find while searching your deck for something else, and getting card draw if you can complete the skill check you use them on, but you also have little control over which checks you'll employ the card on.

Seeker - Old Book of Lore

An XP version of an old classic. Costs 3XP to upgrade to, but becomes cheaper to play, and gains a book icon. In addition, if the investigator you choose to have look at their deck draws something they need to play immediately, you can use one of your two secrets to allow them to do so at a discount.

I've not played a Tome-based Seeker build yet, but this seems like a solid upgrade if you were going to pack the 0XP Old Book anyway. Improving resource and action efficiency is always useful for a group. Whether the upgrades are worth 3XP is an interesting question, but I don't think it is massively over-costed, if at all.

Rogue - Garrote Wire

I really like the flavour for this card, in that you're hiding an assassination weapon as an accessory, rather than as a primary weapon, and you can only use it to finish off targets. I'm looking forwards to the tales of various Big Bads being polished off by it - especially if someone manages to kill the Blob with it!

This is another card in this pack promoting action efficiency, as the attack you get from the Garrote is a Free action, with a decent accuracy bonus as well. I'm not sure what the competition for Rogue Accessory slots is like, or whether the cost/XP side of things is fair, but the card amuses me enough to try out at some point, at the very least.

Rogue - Delilah O'Rourke

The "buy your way to victory" archetype continues to be strong here with Delilah, the combat Rogue's equivalent to Lola Santiago - spend resources to do damage, while also getting two stat boosts out of playing her. She also has a solid pool of Health and Sanity, just in case you need someone to be... expendable.

Her damage action being a Free action is really handy, as is the fact it doesn't rely on targetting someone you're engaged with - exhausting her to eliminate Whipporwills before you need to do anything involving skills, for example, is pretty handy. Being a finisher for exhausted enemies on 2 health is pretty handy too.

Hmm - being able to kill a 3 health enemy you've exhausted by using Delilah and the Garrote Wire as back-to-back Free actions could be entertaining, too.

Mystic - Summoned Hound (& Unbound Beast)

Skeletal amped-up Duke with an unpleasant Weakness-shaped downside. A 3 Health meat-shield is handy, as are Free actions to fight or investigate with a skill of 5. On the other hand, I imagine most Mystics who want to play the Hound won't be keen on the Beast showing up to renegotiate the contract. I'm not keen, especially as the Beast could show up as the next card you draw, but I'm open to hearing about potential decks which could make use of the card.

Survivor - Nothing Left to Lose

Shame Patrice is on the artwork, as she's one of the Survivors I imagine who wouldn't want to run this. It's a situational card, with a high XP cost (for a Survivor card, anyway). It can be a big swing - gaining up to 5 resources and cards for one action seems really efficient, depending on your position when you played the card. I think I like it, just not for the Survivor I'm planning on playing next.

Neutral - The Black Cat

Another Unique Ally, and another card in this pack which helps defuse the Chaos Bag. 5XP is a lot, don't get me wrong, but shielding you against Tablet or Elder Thing draws from the Chaos Bag - which tend to have the harshest modifiers and effects - is really handy. Coming with a built-in healing option if you see the Elder Sign (and don't need to use the effect from your character) is big as well.

Is the XP cost too high to make The Black Cat worth running? I'm not sure. However, I like the options it presents, and would love to see an Ashcan Pete deck with Duke and The Black Cat working in harmony

7 hours ago, dysartes said:

Another Unique Ally, and another card in this pack which helps defuse the Chaos Bag. 5XP is a lot, don't get me wrong, but shielding you against Tablet or Elder Thing draws from the Chaos Bag - which tend to have the harshest modifiers and effects - is really handy. Coming with a built-in healing option if you see the Elder Sign (and don't need to use the effect from your character) is big as well.

Is the XP cost too high to make The Black Cat worth running? I'm not sure. However, I like the options it presents, and would love to see an Ashcan Pete deck with Duke and The Black Cat working in harmony

She won’t be able to come out in Barkham! 😿

I finally opened by pack to play yesterday and I paused at Black Cat for a long time thinking about what it means. Yeah it's an expensive card, but that's crazy powerful. In a Jim or Mateo deck that is trying to control the chaos bag it seems like such a nice utility piece. Mateo bag control decks like to roll the dice on Olive though so it's a competing slot. Gonna have to budget for Charisma in that build. Black Cat with some Ritual Candles make for a pretty forgiving chaos bag. Seal the -4 in most standard difficulty bags and you've almost trivialize the bag. I think I like the Cat better for Jim since he already has an answer for the Skulls.

I like Wish Eater for Mateo. He can include it in a starting deck which is nice. So you can plan around it in the deck build from the beginning. Of course the issue with this plan is that Mateo isn't all that great at defeating enemies. Especially at low levels.

30 minutes ago, phillos said:

I finally opened by pack to play yesterday and I paused at Black Cat for a long time thinking about what it means. Yeah it's an expensive card, but that's crazy powerful. In a Jim or Mateo deck that is trying to control the chaos bag it seems like such a nice utility piece. Mateo bag control decks like to roll the dice on Olive though so it's a competing slot. Gonna have to budget for Charisma in that build. Black Cat with some Ritual Candles make for a pretty forgiving chaos bag. Seal the -4 in most standard difficulty bags and you've almost trivialize the bag. I think I like the Cat better for Jim since he already has an answer for the Skulls.

I like Wish Eater for Mateo. He can include it in a starting deck which is nice. So you can plan around it in the deck build from the beginning. Of course the issue with this plan is that Mateo isn't all that great at defeating enemies. Especially at low levels.

We got our Where the Gods Dwell delivered last Saturday. We are currently playing through Return to Dunwich again as we wait for Dream Eaters to finish releasing, but I looked at her seriously today too. She also seems great for the spell asset loving mystic. Since the card language doesn’t specify that using her ability only changes the effect shown on the scenario reference card, it should also negate the penalty for spells like Rite of Seeking or Shriveling etc. I was sorely tempted to try her, until I realized we have no broken tablets or elder thingys in the Chaos bag!!
She is expensive, but more interesting in my opinion than Red Gloved Man. And how about the Guardians who can slap a couple Trusted on her? Meow!

That's one of the interesting things about the Black Cat — she can make you think about campaign choices in a new way because she cares which tokens are in the bag. There is a path through TFA, for example, where she only ever covers one negative token, and other paths through the same campaign where she covers three or four negative tokens by the end.

There may also be cases where it's worth taking Black Cat as an answer to hard/expert Elder Things in late scenarios because they can be very, very bad.

12 hours ago, Mimi61 said:

We got our Where the Gods Dwell delivered last Saturday. We are currently playing through Return to Dunwich again as we wait for Dream Eaters to finish releasing, but I looked at her seriously today too. She also seems great for the spell asset loving mystic. Since the card language doesn’t specify that using her ability only changes the effect shown on the scenario reference card, it should also negate the penalty for spells like Rite of Seeking or Shriveling etc. I was sorely tempted to try her, until I realized we have no broken tablets or elder thingys in the Chaos bag!!
She is expensive, but more interesting in my opinion than Red Gloved Man. And how about the Guardians who can slap a couple Trusted on her? Meow!

Cat doesn't cancel the draw. Mystic card abilities react to the token draw, so they won't change.

I hope I’m not misunderstanding this card. The draw isn’t canceled, but the effects of the draw can be changed. Black Cat says “Anytime you reveal [these 3 symbols] during a skill test, you may choose the following effects instead of that symbol’s normal effects. (Plural, with no stipulation that it is only the effects stated on the scenario reference card that can be changed). So if you were to initiate a skill test with Rite of Seeking and draw a broken tablet, there would be two “normal effects” from that draw. The one on the scenario reference card and the one on Rite of Seeking. That token triggers both simultaneously. But if I choose to change the effect of the draw by using Black Cat, to change the “normal effect” on the scenario reference card, then the “normal effect” on Rite of Seeking would have to be changed simultaneously as well.

15 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

Maybe I’m understanding it wrong, but Black Cat says “Anytime you reveal [these 3 symbols] during a skill test, you may choose the following effects instead of that symbol’s normal effects. So with Rite of Seeking, for example, even if I draw a broken tablet and my test is successful, I still get the clues. But the “normal effect” of drawing that symbol during a skill test on Rite of Seeking is to lose the rest of my actions and end my turn. So wouldn’t I have the option of choosing to use the effects on Black Cat instead?

No. The "normal effect" of drawing a broken tablet is what it says on the scenario reference card.

Rite of Seeking has a special effect that triggers if a broken tablet token is drawn, but it doesn't care what the symbol does ; it just needs to have been drawn. Triggering that clause isn't the "normal effect" of the broken tablet token, any more than triggering Aquinnah is the normal effect of an enemy attack. Or to put it another way, the Rite of Seeking end-your-turn effect is an effect of Rite of Seeking , not an effect of the chaos token itself.

Think of The Black Cat as like a special scenario reference card (and Elder Sign section on your character sheet) that only you are allowed to use.

I see what you are saying, I have been seeing the draw of those tokens as effects on spell cards instead of inherent to the spell itself.

For more explanation, see the FAQ under Defiance . Defiance says to "ignore the effects" of one or more symbols, meaning the scenario card effects. This does not prevent the token from triggering abilities, such as Mystic cards, Baseball Bat, etc.

On the other hand, when you ignore a token completely, as with Grotesque Statue, Dark Augury, or Wendy's ability, it's as if you never drew those tokens and nothing triggers from them.

Hi gang, I'm back from my island excursion, which included a successful TCU run with my latest stupid jank (Well Connected Zoey), so I'm here for some at least somewhat hot takes for Where the Gods Dwell.

Empty Vessel/Wish Eater

This is an interesting card, and one that's quite hard to properly evaluate. In a way, it seems almost like an upgrade from Hallowed Mirror/Soothing Melody, insofar as it's a limit one per deck Guardian accessory asset that provides healing. However, it's also got something in common with the Hungering Blade, namely that it gets stronger the more enemies you kill. Plus, of course, a repeatable counterspell effect. It has a lot to offer.

If you're playing a typical kill-the-enemy Guardian, the effect of Wish Eater has a lot to offer. Some of the symbol tokens can really mess up your day, and healing synergises well with Guardian tanking effects. It's obviously far better in scenarios with lots of enemies (particularly so in The Dream Eaters, since Swarming enemies will charge it up for each member of the swarm slain). It therefore also scales very strongly by player count, insofar as if you are a dedicated monster-hunter, more cards will be drawn from the encounter deck and therefore more enemies will spawn for you to kill as the player count increases. "Pure" Guardians also don't have much competition for the slot - Leo Anderson might want a Lucky Cigarette Case and Tommy Muldoon has an array of potent Survivor talismans, but in Guardian itself there's the Hallowed Mirror and Police Badge (I guess). You can slot a copy of this card into your deck without worrying too much - assuming you can afford it in terms of exp.

So its actual cost-effectiveness is up for debate. It only does something if you can get it into play and then kill some enemies, so in that regard it has a similar problem to the Hawk-Eye Folding Camera, in that you need to draw it as early as possible in order to benefit from its effects, but just like a Seeker or Mystic with the HEFC, you have other priorities for mulligan (in the case of a Guardian, that would be a weapon, some soak and probably some static boosts or parts of an engine). This is exacerbated by the limit 1 per deck and the fact that there's not much in the way of in-class means of searching it out of your deck (Tommy can do dredge, Roland can pack some seeker draw and search, and there's always Backpack and Tetsuo Mori), unless a friendly seeker is willing to give you No Stone Unturned (5), so there's a good chance that it will end up buried deep in your deck and won't be available for much of the scenario. There's an interesting bit of gameplay that goes into whether you choose to transform it - transforming the Empty Vessel is a free trigger, so you can wait until you have more than 3 charges built up so as to keep it online for longer. Guardians also have a lot of things to spend their exp on, so it might be very hard to justify dropping 4 exp on Empty Vessel. I think its power is ultimately hugely variable, influenced by everything from your need for healing, the number and effects of symbol tokens in a given campaign/scenario, your economy, the number of enemies drawn, and the extent to which you concentrate fully on combat.

In terms of who might want it, it does synergise with effects like Solemn Vow and Self-Sacrifice, allowing you to take damage and horror for allies and then passively heal it up without needing to spend actions to do so, but in that way it competes with every source of soak in the game. It also synergises well with effects that draw multiple chaos tokens, by allowing you to pick a symbol token in order to cancel it and pass the test while having a heal, as well as any of the effects that allow you to take enemies for other players (e.g. Taunt or "Let Me Handle This!"). For specific investigators, Mark Harrigan might really like it - he's definitely enough of a combat monster to be able to charge it up, his inherent card draw helps you get it into play earlier, and a constant trickle of healing helps him use Sophie and attenuate his low Sanity; however, he also really likes Hallowed Mirror already, and is it worth the 3 additional exp for Relic Hunter? Zoey has major card draw problems and her high Health/Sanity total means that she's less in need of the healing, so I don't see it being great for her, though she is also very likely to want to kill as many enemies as possible. Carolyn Fern apparently can't take the Empty Vessel at all, since it doesn't heal Sanity (absent a ruling that her "heals horror" deckbuilding option considers Bonded cards as well). A more combat-focused Roland build might like it, as the ability to cancel symbol tokens also helps improve your odds of succeeding at investigation tests and he needs help with sanity, but I don't think it has much synergy for him. Tommy and Leo have better things to do with their accessory slots, frankly, and they already have far more soak so the healing is less necessary. Father Mateo can't take it at all, since it's level 4 and his Blessed cards deckbuilding option is limited to level 0-3, but Akachi Onyele can take it with her "uses (charges) level 0-4" and I think she might be the best suited to it alongside Mark Harrigan - canceling symbol tokens can protect her against backlash from Shrivelling and Rite of Seeking, and she's a combat monster, especially with the Mystic Enchanted Blade, plus she crucially would start with one charge on Empty Vessel, both making it generally better and helping attenuate the problem of having it come into play later in the scenario; it suffers a lot from slot comflict with her (since she presumably wants to consider Holy Rosary for the static boost), but later on, her base 5 Willpower and other boost assets and upgraded spells can make the Holy Rosary less mandatory, and there's always Relic Hunter if she can afford the exp.

The art for the Empty Vessel is quite nice actually, but I find the Wish Eater too bright and actually slightly unpleasant to look at. The mechanical flavour is OK I guess, but the idea of charging up a relic by feeding it souls so it can alter your fortune doesn't seem very Blessed to me.

Surprising Find

A very interesting card; if you find it while searching, it sits in your play area and commits itself with one wild icon to the next test you perform, and lets you draw a card if you succeed - sort of like giving you half a Perception/Guts/Overpower/Manual Dexterity.

This overall feels substantially worse than Astounding Revelation, and costs exp (a single exp for 3 copies, but still). Let me explain: In terms of action economy, 2 resources from Astounding Revelation is better than 1 card drawn from Surprising Find, though you could argue that card draw could be more valuable than resources (e.g. Studious gives you 1 card but Another Day, Another Dollar gives you 2 resources; Drawing Thin gives you 2 resources or 1 card) - obviously the specific value of each is highly dependent on your deck and the current situation, but if you're searching your deck you're already going to be adding one or more cards to your hand so there's a good chance that the card draw isn't going to be the more beneficial of the two. Astounding Revelation gives you the choice between 2 resources or 1 Secret, and Secrets are extremely important for the search-your-deck archetype since they power Mr Rook, whereas Surprising Find gives you no choice. Surprising Find gives you delayed payoff, since you don't get the draw until you've completed a skill test to which Surprising Find is committed - and additionally, the skill test in question is by no means guaranteed to succeed, so Surprising Find could end up not doing anything, particularly if the next eligible test is one you have no control over in the Mythos phase.

It does have some benefits, however: It performs double duty as a skill boost and economy card, and if you happen to draw it normally rather than triggering its effect, the single Wild icon is better than Astounding Revelation's single Intellect icon (though you don't get the draw effect if you commit it from hand). Outside of something very specific that doesn't get much from Astounding Revelation, like a Dark Horse Minh deck that somehow still concentrates on deck searching but doesn't use Mr Rook, or a Daisy deck that uses Old Book of Lore for searching rather than Mr Rook and doesn't need resources thanks to Dr Milan Christopher, or a deck that wants every possible ounce of card draw like a Minh Cornered/cards-in-hand deck, I would take Astounding Revelation over Surprising Find consistently.

However, there are decks that have space (and use) for both. Mandy decks, obviously, especially if you've opted for a 50 card deck (you brave individual) might be searching their deck so much that they'll already get through all copies of Astounding Revelation and Occult Research, and it's also good to have options - if you find both Surprising Find and Astounding Revelation, you can choose to trigger whichever is more beneficial for your current situation, and if you only found Surprising Find, it's an added benefit, but I think most 30 card decks aren't likely to want 3 copies of each, and including too many Research events increases the likelihood of drawing them directly and being very disappointed. There's not much to say regarding who wants it, really - anyone who searches their deck enough to use Research events and prefers draw over resources/secrets, or high deck size Mandy decks. Ultimately, it's a relatively low-impact card that might be an extra boon for certain decks at a very reasonable 1 exp, but I would be surprised to see it be the cornerstone of any builds.

I really like the mechanics, though - the delayed effect and benefit for passing makes for interesting gameplay decisions (you might go in harder on a test than you otherwise would in order to definitely pass and get the draw, for example) and it feels quite neat.

The art is rather cool, but the mechanical flavour is starting to get a bit stale, especially since "surprising find" and "astounding revelation" are rather close to synonymous - stay tuned for the next Research events "unanticipated observation" and "remarkable development"...

Old Book of Lore (3)

Talking of remarkable developments, upgraded Old Book of Lore wasn't expected. The level 0 version is pretty bad for most people - it's still good for Daisy, and Mandy builds might use it if she doesn't run better search options, and Norman might have it to have a target for Knowledge is Power before he buys Shrivelling etc. if he doesn't take the level 0 spells.

The upgraded version adds 2 Secrets which can be spent to allow whoever the search targets to play the chosen card, for no additional actions, with a 2-resource discount, and the actual card itself gets a 1-resource cost reduction. In a vacuum, this is a good enough effect to be worth considering for anyone. Part of the problem with Old Book of Lore (0) is that, while it basically allows you to take an upgraded "draw" action once per turn, it has an initial cost of 3 resources, 1 card, 1 action, so unless you're getting something big (such as Daisy's free use of it), you're taking a huge economic hit for no actual economic benefit, but Old Book of Lore (3), if used to its full potential without extra Secrets added, will provide 2 actions and 4 resources' "worth" of economy, so the initial cost of 2 resources, 1 card, 1 action is compensated for, leaving you with the repeatable search action once the uses are spent.

There's a few different synergies here - obviously Daisy can work wonders with OBoL (3) and achieve a big economic advantage, card that add Secrets to cards can become economic benefits, and Mandy can work absolute wonders with the effect - I believe that you could use her ability to choose 2 targets, spend 1 secret and play both cards with the discount for each, but the wording is a bit ambiguous; even if you need to spend a Secret for each discount and play or only choose one target for the "Then" clause, it's really strong for her, and she could also get a big benefit from increasing the number of cards searched instead to find the right card to play and increase the chances of finding Astounding Revelation in order to get another use of Old Book of Lore. There's justified rumours of a change to Mr Rook in the next Taboo iteration, which I wholeheartedly support (he's arguably the strongest card in the game), and OBoL (3) might become a cornerstone for a Mandy deck if and when that happens.

There's two ways to use OBoL (3), really - the first is as a card that you want to keep in play all game for the search effect and/or to add extra Secrets and keep using the discount kicker turn after turn, which would be Daisy as the primary or only use of her ability, or Mandy as her main means of getting search effects for all her synergies, with the discount effect as a way to essentially "pay" for the card, which I think would be both a valid use and quite fun, but does retain the issue of having to take up a hand slot (a slot with lots of competition in Seeker) - naturally Daisy has her Tote Bag, if she can find it. The second is as a card that you play, use up for its charge effect, and then get rid of once it's run out, which isn't likely to be worth the 3 exp but could overall improve your deck; if you're playing a heavy support Minh who doesn't need resource boosts for herself, for example, you could use OBoL (3) to help other investigators pay for important cards and then throw it away (either replace it with Magnifying Glass (1) or Fingerprinting Kit, or literally throw it with Act of Desperation).

I actually really like this card, it feels like it's in a good place in terms of power and synergies without being overpowered, and I can already see a Daisy deck that uses her Tote Bag for OBoL (3) and Dream Diary (3).

The art for Old Book of Lore is a beat up old book. Not sure what else one could expect really, but it does join the ranks of dozens of other similar cards - I feel a little sorry for the artists who have to try to do something unique and interesting with depicting yet another book.

Garotte Wire

What an interesting card - along with the release of Tony Morgan, this feels like a proper tool for a rogue as monster-hunter, rather than having to rely on worse weapons than Guardians and generic rogue tricks and boosts. A Fight test as a free triggered ability is always worth a look, and with an inbuilt +2 to the test, it's relatively likely to succeed. Normally, attacking for 1 point of damage is a terrible idea, but if it doesn't cost an action, it's free real estate. The restriction that it can only be used on enemies with 1 health remaining is interesting, and gives it roughly four use cases. The first is to deal with those pesky 1-health enemies - Acolyte (and replacements like Lodge Neophyte), Swarm of Rats, and even Whippoorwill can pose a bit of a conundrum for many monster-hunters, because you kind of don't want to waste a point of ammo to deal 1 damage, but simply swinging with the base Fight action might not be accurate enough and runs the risk of wasting actions, but you can Garotte them and deal with them for 0 actions, with an inbuilt bonus to hit. The second is to finish enemies off - lacking tools like Beat Cop and (potentially) Vicious Blow, fighty rogues can find it hard to deal with occasional 3-health enemies, wasting actions and potentially even more ammo, but the Garotte Wire can be used as a sort of damage boost by essentially allowing you to not worry about dealing the last point of damage. The third is to deal with Swarming enemies, letting you take out a member of the Swarm lets you stack more damage on, since the individual Swarm cards are considered to be separate enemies with their own health totals. The final use is to deal with enemies without using a "proper" weapon at all, stacking testless damage onto enemies with cards like Beat Cop in order to finish the enemy off with your Garotte Wire and not need to use up actions at all - potentially even freeing up your hand slots for other purposes (since the Garotte Wire takes up the accessory slot instead).

That does lead to the first major problem with Garotte Wire - slot pressure. Rogues already have one of the best accessories in the entire game in the form of Lucky Cigarette Case, so using the Garotte Wire means either giving up that tool or spending the extra 3 exp for Relic Hunter. Another issue is that it can be a bit awkward to prioritise - if you have it in your opening hand but you don't have a "real" weapon, it could still help you kill certain enemies, but is it worth mulliganing away for a proper gun? Rogues lack for static Combat boosters, with the only option up to now being the terrible Hired Muscle (but see below!), and +2 to hit isn't that big a bonus on hard or expert, so it's not necessarily a fully consistent weapon, especially since Tony is the only Rogue to have a base Combat score above 3.

Really, though, any fighter who can use the Garotte Wire should consider it - it's excellent for Tony Morgan, good for Leo Anderson, and potentially good for Jenny, Skids or Finn if going a more combat-heavy route (especially in view of Delilah, up next). Being able to initiate a skill test without using an action also makes for some potentially interesting interactions aside from just the benefit of killing an enemy - it could be an opportunity to get skill test boosts (such as Lucky Cigarette Case, Watch This!, All In, Gregory Gry, etc.) without using an action, or conversely to (ab)use Survivor benefit-by-failing cards such as Take Heart and Drawing Thin on a test without using an action - think Wendy or Preston making 4 free resources every time they happen to be in a location with a 1-health-left enemy; this latter application is firmly in the "jank" category rather than a synergy to build around, due to the unreliable nature and cost in setup, especially since Track Shoes does the same job far more reliably and for 0 exp and no slots, but worth mentioning all the same.

Garotte Wire also takes the wind out of Coup de Grace's sails, by offering a more efficient and reusable way to finish off 1-health enemies, though Coup de Grace still has the benefit of working against Aloof enemies and being testless; Garotte Wire also makes it easier to play "Let God sort them out...", if that's your bag.

I quite like the art for this card, it's understated but still threatening. It's weird that it doesn't have the Illicit keyword; you could argue that it's not illegal to just be carrying piano maintenance parts, but then it's not necessarily illegal to own a .45 Thompson either...

Delilah O'Rourke

And here is another piece of the combat rogue puzzle. Delilah is to combat as Lola Santiago is to investigation - a way to purchase testless, actionless damage that also gives you a bonus to combat and agility, as a reasonably priced 3-exp card. It's plainly excellent for any combat rogue; Tony Morgan might as well propose marriage to her, and she's extremely useful for other combat rogues to make up for their low base Combat - the stat boost might even be useful for a poor-man Preston build with Fire Axe. She is potentially useful even for characters who don't care about their Combat stat; Sefina Rousseau still appreciates the Agility boost and is likely to have the resources for the ability - especially if packing lots of Fight events or an Enchanted Bow, and the 3 health is good for her, while Preston can contribute to enemy management without needing to fight by paying for assassinations with his Inheritance. The ally slot competition is extremely fierce in Rogue, which is the main issue with Delilah, but taken by herself, I'd say she's worth including even if you aren't able to take full advantage of all the boosts she offers. She also has a pretty good amount of soak (3/2), which is welcome. Bring both Delilah and Lola Santiago along for +2 agility and two ways to throw money at your problems...

The benefit of testless damage is a pretty well-trodden path by now, and anyone who's used Beat Cop (2) appreciates being able to kill a 1-health enemy offhandedly, but there are some additional nuances with Delilah. The fact that the cost scales by enemy Evade value is interesting, as it makes certain enemies tougher to assassinate than others - it can be easy to punch or garotte a Swarm of Rats, but they have 3 Evade, so Delilah still wants a pretty sizeable chunk of resources to take them out. Dealing 2 damage if enemies are exhausted is interesting - obviously, you could evade an enemy then get twice as much damage, and that synergises with automatic evasion as well, but it's also worth noting that enemies attacking in the enemy phase exhaust, and don't ready until the Upkeep phase - there's a player window (two, actually) between those two steps, so if you're willing to let an enemy attack go through in the enemy phase, you can then use Delilah on the enemy for 2 free damage.

Delilah and Garotte Wire are a really potent 1-2 punch - you could take out a 2/3 health enemy via the damage from Delilah and finishing it off with the Garotte Wire. A Combat Finn could be a really excellent character at this point, evading an enemy with his extra action, dealing it 2 damage with Delilah and then the final point with Garotte Wire, killing a 3-health enemy without using a single "real" action. Since Finn can take 0-5 Illicit and a few level 0 Survivor cards, a build I want to try out soon is Guardian .45 Thompson Finn, with Delilah and Garotte Wire, making huge bank as a fighter with good investigation as well.

The flavour is pretty good, combat rogue and a hired killer is a natural fit. The art is pretty noir as well, I like it.

Summoned Hound/Unbound Beast

Another card that allows you to damage enemies without using an action, and also provides investigation. Hot take: It's terrible for almost everyone. Let's consider just the Summoned Hound, first. It lets you attack (for 1 damage) with a base Combat skill of 5, or investigate (for 1 clue) with a base Intellect of 5, as a free triggered ability once per turn (well, it exhausts, so if you have Inspiring Presence on Diana or whatever, you could use it more than once). For most Mystics, the Attack portion is really terrible - outside of Gunslinger Diana, mystics rarely have any Combat boosts aside from maybe Blood Pact, so that 5 skill is likely to stay 5 unless you commit a card or something, making it only really good for taking out a Swarm of Rats or taking a crack at an Acolyte (it's like Garotte Wire on Jenny or Finn with no other boosts and no synergies), unless you're going for a heavy combat build. The Investigation is potentially more interesting, as cards like St Hubert's Key and Hawk-Eye Folding Camera give Intellect bonuses and investigating for one clue is pretty decent; it's the baseline, after all. For the mystics, however, the slot pressure is more or less a deal-breaker by itself - one Ally slot and one Arcane slot, meaning that outside of intellect investigation Marie or Norman Withers, it stops you having both an attack and an investigation option, and Mystics have some excellent allies that help them do their job more readily, like Arcane Initiate and Twila Katherine Price. The 3 health soak is pretty good, especially since most Mystics and Mystic secondary characters have lower health than sanity.

However, as said, there are people for whom Summoned Hound could put in good work - an investigation-focused Marie might not need a combat spell at all if essentially filling the role of a Seeker, or could rely on her intellect for clues and not need to run Rite of Seeking/Sixth Sense - but then, she probably wants an ally she can put doom on in order to use her ability, and she'd also be better off just taking Sixth Sense and using her ability for an extra use of it rather than using the Summoned Hound for a free investigation. Norman might have use for it, guardian Diana builds don't care about willpower and might rock both Intellect and Combat boosts, and it might be very beneficial for Carolyn Fern or Daisy Walker as extra investigation, or for Patrice Hathaway who could use her constantly refreshing hand to boost up its tests. It could even be OK for Jim Culver if using a fire axe or HEFC or something and relying on his ability to improve his chances of success. For unusual builds that can spare the ally and arcane slot and have access to the boosts needed to keep the tests competitive, it could generate some real tempo advantage. But bear in mind that just like Ashcan Pete using Duke to investigate/fight with base 4 skill, it gets much worse as the difficulty increases, going from a near-guaranteed success against average enemies/locations on easy, to a downright liability without further investment on hard/expert.

But shuffling a copy of Unbound Beast into your deck is utterly ruinous. Unbound Beast both gets rid of your Summoned Hound (which costs 3 resources, a card and an action to put into play) and replaces it with a substantial 3 health/3 fight/3 evade, 1 damage/1 horror enemy. The fact that it shuffles into your deck is really the killer - you could kill the Summoned Hound off via damage, or with Sacrifice, or by replacing it with another spell or ally, before Unbound Beast comes up, but whereas other mystic cards with a downside (primarily doom, such as on Arcane Initiate) let you know ahead of time when they will be a problem, with some variation with other sources of doom and encounter sets like Ancient Evils, allowing you to plan ahead of how to get rid of them before they cost you a round or two, Unbound Beast lurks in your deck and could be any card you draw, so the actual value of Summoned Hound is hugely variable. If you play a deck that doesn't draw many cards and you get Summoned Hound into play early, it might never come up, giving you potentially a dozen or more free Investigation or Combat tests and essentially giving you huge action advantage. But it could also be one of the very next cards you draw, and cost you 3 resources, a card and an action to get one or two free investigations before you have to scramble to deal with a 3 health enemy on your face in addition to whatever you drew in the Mythos phase. Unbound Beast is a serious threat - certainly you could take it out with a single Shrivelling (5) blast, but that's the ideal situation that still costs you an extra action, a charge and potentially 2 horror. A weakness that costs you an asset and spawns a big enemy is probably substantially worse than most basic weaknesses, being essentially the equivalent of Ravenous Ghoul plus a guaranteed failure with Crypt Chill . There's certainly ways to attenuate this, like having Scrying (3) to be aware of your own deck composition and kill it off beforehand, but then you're putting even more resources (cards, actions, resource tokens, slots, exp) into dealing with the downside of the card, meaning that it has even more ground to make up for to even justify its existence compared to not playing anything at all. It's a card that most mystics don't have a good use for, that doesn't synergise with Mystic cards very well, that takes up two extremely valuable slots, that doesn't stick around forever, and that could summon a powerful enemy to murder you. Even if you do kill off the Summoned Hound ahead of time, Unbound Beast isn't automatically removed from your deck - while the enemy won't come into play if there's no Hound for it to replace, it will still waste a draw and cost you even more tempo.

So...who wants it? Or rather, what builds could make it work? Most people should stay far away, especially Patrice since she'll get the weakness very consistently. I'm considering trying it out on a Carolyn Fern build that uses Foolishness, and uses Alyssa Graham to keep an eye out for To Fight The Black Wind - with a Smoking Pipe or maybe Blood Eclipse ready to kill off the Hound when Alyssa spies Unbound Beast. I guess it might work for Gunslinger Diana, especially if she had some way to deal with the weakness such as Scrying (3). Luke Robinson might be a surprise beneficiary of the Summoned Hound, especially if he's taking on more of a Seeker role with some intellect boosts and his secondary Seeker role, since he can enter his Dream-Gate if he knows when the Unbound Beast will come up, and it will fail to spawn since he's in his gate (but he'll still lose the Hound so it's still a gamble on getting value even if he can work out when the Beast will appear). The upcoming Dexter Drake can play and discard it with his ability, likewise giving him a way to dispose of it before it can become Unbound. If Norman Withers has the capacity to work out when to kill off the Summoned Hound, he at least won't lose the card draw as a result of Unbound Beast, but by the same token, he can't benefit from Alyssa Graham to scout it out. That's pretty much it, and those are all really niche applications that might not be worth the investment of resources and actions, let alone slots, and might still not work at all. Bear in mind that adding more cards to your deck (e.g. Scrying), playing them and paying for them, all to attenuate the downside of Summoned Hound essentially makes Summoned Hound far more costly, and therefore less efficient.

There is another angle to consider - if you can get Summoned Hound into play without "playing" it (using "put into play" effects like A Chance Encounter (2) or Flare), you won't have to shuffle Unbound Beast into your deck at all, since the Bonded instruction specifies that it is activated when you "play" Summoned Hound. I think this is most likely unintended, pretty cheesy and likely to be addressed in errata (not to mention, it's perhaps still not worth the extra hassle), but it definitely bears mentioning. Could be a way for Patrice to have her own Summoned Hound.

The art is pretty good, though Unbound Beast seems less like "hound of Tindalos" and more like "lizard of Tindalos". The mechanical flavour is also top-notch - summoning monsters is one of the main kinds of magic shown in original Mythos works and the Call of Cthulhu RPG, rather than the wide array of magic fireballs and psychic visions seen in Arkham Files, and the idea of losing control of that which you call up is a classic.

Nothing Left To Lose

Onto something a little more straightforward. It basically resets you to your starting economy state of 5 resources and 5 cards. Plainly, if Nothing Left to Lose is used to its full effect (it's the only card in your hand and you have 0 resources), the swing is enormous - 5 cards in hand and +5 resources for one action and one card is better than any other economy event in the game. But equally obvious is the fact that the card will rarely give you that much, so it's by no means an auto-include. If your build is consistently at 1 or 0 resources and could use a 5-resource event , or frequently empties its hand and could use a 3-4 card draw , it's definitely worth taking.

Dark Horse builds probably don't want Nothing Left to Lose unless they really empty their hands (particularly if running Cornered) and have a consistent means of spending the resources to get Dark Horse back online (such as Scrapper). Skill-heavy builds like Desperate/Yaotl could have a strong reason to use Nothing Left to Lose to refill their hands. Wendy Adams and "Ashcan" Pete could get a huge benefit from Nothing Left to Lose since their inherent abilities allow them to empty their hands - especially for Wendy builds that don't build up loads of resources. Yorick could also benefit strongly from it since he is often starved for resources, I don't have enough of a handle on Calvin to assess it properly but I believe he can also have major economy problems due to his highly restricted deckbuilding, and I don't have any input on whether it might be worth it for Lola Hayes. Rita Young might want it if her economy is suffering, which is often the case due to her likewise restricted deckbuilding, and similar thoughts apply for Silas Marsh.

Builds that can discard cards and spend resources for benefits can also afford to go extra hard once they draw Nothing Left To Lose, throwing their money and cards at tests because they're all about to be replenished anyway...though there is the ever-present risk of drawing a weakness among those 5 new cards.

For my beloved Patrice, the draw element is rarely that good - at best, a slight boon if you make a test in the Mythos phase or action 1, then need the resources action 2, and use the new cards action 3, but you'll be throwing away all excess cards you draw and you might not be able to play everything you want to. Patrice can often run out of resources, but just like Emergency Cache, it's rarely going to be worthwhile for her simply because she has no control over when she can use it - if she can't spare the action or doesn't have need for resources on the turn it's drawn, it's a single wild icon or Cornered fodder, which isn't a great place for a 3-exp card - for Patrice I'd honestly be most likely to stick with Emergency Cache (0), Take Heart, Drawing Thin or simply designing a leaner deck. The reason Patrice gets a separate paragraph is that she's right there as the focus of the art, on a card that really doesn't do much for her. I might try it out next time I play Patrice, but even if it does turn out not to be quite so inconsistent for her, it's going to be a very low-priority upgrade for her.

The aforementioned art is pretty cool, very trippy, though it doesn't really evoke the idea of having "nothing left to lose"; compare to the similar concept evoked effectively in the art for Drawing Thin.

The Black Cat

Even more dream kitties! I'm very excited. First, let's look at The Black Cat as a piece of soak rather than anything more - for a big chunk of exp (Neutral cards are rightly a little overcosted for exp), you get 3 sanity and 3 health soak for the low price of 2 resources, and your ally slot. This might well be worth it just by itself - especially if you've taken a lot of trauma, having cheap soak is a great option; Tommy Muldoon could make a 4-resource profit from The Black Cat. Two wild icons are also pretty great - obviously nice to commit to tests, but also makes for great synergy with Well Prepared. Then the ability itself - instead of taking the Tablet or Elder Thing effect on the reference card, you can take -1 (which is probably a pass) and take 1 damage/horror respectively. Additionally, instead of your Elder Sign effect, you can take +5 and heal all damage and horror from The Black Cat. Unprecedented.

The Tablet/Elder Thing effect is pretty incredible, and gets far better at higher difficulties as the token effects get nastier, but it is also near impossible to properly analyse without going through every scenario in the game - there's so much variability there. It also varies hugely from campaign to campaign - TCU will only ever have two of the relevant token, Carcosa might or might not have the tokens in each scenario depending on various factors, TDL and TFA have different chaos bag compositions depending on campaign choices, and so on. However, there's enough terrible elder thing and tablet effects that I would find it very worthwhile - particularly the hated "draw another token...", or tokens that have effects regardless of success/failure, or are conditional auto-fails. The "cost" in terms of damage/horror is certainly present, though there are situations where it might be beneficial - the aforementioned Tommy Muldoon, Mark Harrigan getting card draw, Carolyn Fern getting resources from healing the horror with Ancient Stone (or Elder Sign), and I'm sure other edge cases. The Elder Sign effect is a big numerical modifier (+5 is strong), though that rarely ever matters (not often do I want to take tests that I fail on a 0) unless you have a means of manufacturing them (more on that in a bit), and healing all the damage and horror not only triggers Carolyn Fern's resource gain (though her base Elder Sign also does so) but also potentially gives you even more soak and/or uses of the Tablet/Elder Thing effect modifier.

So who wants it? Anyone could benefit from The Black Cat since the token changes are sometimes very helpful and it's a lot of soak for cheap, but as mentioned, Carolyn Fern, Tommy Muldoon and Mark Harrigan have special synergies, as does Leo Anderson (dropping 6 points of soak into play for 1 resource and no actions could be a lifesaver); anyone with access to Eucatastrophe or Seal of the Elder Sign can activate the big heal on their own terms; it could be great for any Mystic making use of the Symbol Token synergies - Sixth Sense (4), Eldritch Inspiration, Dark Prophecy - to help get the tablet/elder thing draws and turn them into mild -1 effects while still benefiting from the additional benefits triggered by symbol draws; anyone with Guardian access can combine it with Well Prepared; and anyone with a disappointing Elder Sign effect can have access to a better one (for example, Agnes' elder sign is +1 per horror on her, which 95% of the time might as well be a +0, and makes Seal of the Elder Sign less interesting for her than Akachi who also gets a free recharge of one of her assets).

I haven't played through enough of The Dream Eaters to truly get the significance of The Black Cat, but the art is quite nice and very creepy, and there's a lot of other flavour hints, such as the Avatar trait and that subtitle...

47 minutes ago, Allonym said:

First, let's look at The Black Cat as a piece of soak rather than anything more - for a big chunk of exp (Neutral cards are rightly a little overcosted for exp), you get 3 sanity and 3 health soak for the low price of 2 resources, and your ally slot. This might well be worth it just by itself - especially if you've taken a lot of trauma, having cheap soak is a great option; Tommy Muldoon could make a 4-resource profit from The Black Cat.

So it's my turn to see if I've been playing something wrong: can't he get all six as resources? Defeat happens first, which means the damage/horror has been applied.

1 minute ago, CSerpent said:

So it's my turn to see if I've been playing something wrong: can't he get all six as resources? Defeat happens first, which means the damage/horror has been applied.

Yes, but the Cat costs 2 to begin with so the profit is 4.

Just now, Allonym said:

Yes, but the Cat costs 2 to begin with so the profit is 4.

Gotcha. I tend to make it all Becky food anyway.

One interesting thing on the "Who wants the Black Cat" side is I think it's highly variable for investigators depending on their Elder Sign ability. The "+Lots based on X" investigators see it as a big upgrade, but ones with stronger or more useful Elder Signs won't want to give that up.

I find The Black Cat quite great in "fail to win" archetype. I had play a Wendy deck with Drawing Thin, Rabbit Foot and Take Heart, and the only fear I had when making a test was symbol that had effect on fail (or just effect on draw...).

It's quite good with Jim Culver too, I always wanted to test a "average token draw" deck but there is still so much negative token and few way to get away with it...

On 3/9/2020 at 4:53 PM, Allonym said:

i gang, I'm back from my island excursion, which included a successful TCU run with my latest stupid jank (Well Connected Zoey), so I'm here for some at least somewhat hot takes for Where the Gods Dw

Yay!!! Hope it was a wonderful island excursion!

On 3/9/2020 at 4:53 PM, Allonym said:

at.

The art is rather cool, but the mechanical flavour is starting to get a bit stale, especially since "surprising find" and "astounding revelation" are rather close to synonymous - stay tuned for the next Research events "unanticipated observation" and "remarkable development".

Ich hab’ mich fast tot gelacht! Mandy started it with Shocking Discovery. You could add Eye-Popping Epiphany and round out the set.

As always, so thorough and helpful. I see a lot of cards in this expansion that play really well to the investigators released with it. Especially Mandy, Tommy and Patrice.
I agree that Mr Rook is very powerful, but I think he is out of control powerful for Mandy. Maybe she should also get an errata. That she can only initiate searches from event cards and her Elder Sign ability, or something along those lines. Especially with all the ways now to add secrets to assets, which she can also pull from her searches, he becomes available almost indefinitely.
Thank you again for the Spell/ Black Cat clarification and keeping me from inadvertently cheating my way to victory!

Does anyone have scans for the rule inserts for Dark Side of the Moon and Point of No Return? I historically just trash them because I use the PDFs, but since FFG has stopped updating them it's becoming an issue.

The campaign guide has been updated up to Where The Gods Dwell, so at least Dark Side of the Moon is available.

linky link

8 minutes ago, Allonym said:

The campaign guide has been updated up to Where The Gods Dwell, so at least Dark Side of the Moon is available.

linky link

LOL. They literally did that this morning - I checked last night and it was still the old version. Thanks for pointing it out!

I think I'll start hanging on to the inserts going forward, just in case...

OK so, Weaver of the Cosmos player cards, here come the hot takes to help you kill a little time while locked down.

Spiritual Resolve

This is the soak card. It takes up the arcane slot, which is not currently a big priority for anyone who can take Spiritual Resolve (with the possible exceptions of spellcaster Zoey and Carolyn Fern builds), so it might as well be slotless as far as your average Guardian is concerned. A cost of 3 resources is pretty substantial, the same as the level 0 True Grit and Something Worth Fighting For, but it provides the soak of both in a single card, albeit without the ability to assign damage/horror taken by other people at your location. An exp cost of 5 is likewise substantial, though the Myriad keyword does help out there. Myriad is actually one of the best things about Spiritual Resolve - with a soak asset, you probably want to get it into play pretty early on to avoid stacking up damage and horror on your investigator card, so having three copies in your deck increases your chances of drawing it - but often with soak assets, additional copies don't do as much since either you don't need a second copy at all (like drawing a second Peter Sylvestre) or you aren't taking so much damage that you want to spend the action and resources to play a replacement Bulletproof Vest, and the free triggered ability helps out there by turning duplicate copies into a full heal of the original copy. Without that ability, this card would be a very hard sell, since it has a measly single willpower icon, which is pretty pathetic for a level 5 card, and does mean that it doesn't do much with Well Prepared (unlike, for example, Armour of Ardennes).

However, since Spiritual Resolve pretty much only provides damage and horror soak, it has a lot of competition. First of all, basically every Ally asset in the game provides soak. Secondly, as mentioned above, True Grit and Something Worth Fighting For provide one half of its soak for 0 exp with a nice extra ability to take damage/horror for allies - often, for a Guardian, you only really worry about one of Damage or Horror, since most Guardians have a huge amount of Health and Carolyn Fern has a ton of Sanity. Thirdly, there's Bulletproof Vest and Elder Sign Amulet, which provide more soak for fewer resources and similarly don't have much in the way of slot pressure for Guardians (with the main competitors being the Hallowed Mirror and Empty Vessel for the Elder Sign Amulet). Fourthly, many Guardians can get by just fine on healing as required, especially Carolyn Fern but also cards such as the cheap and quick Second Wind or the Guardian Enchanted Blade (3). And finally, many Guardians can use their deckbuilding for other soak options, such as Tommy Muldoon picking up Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake, or Roland Banks taking the disposable Seeker allies such as Art Student and Laboratory Assistant. This means that Spiritual Resolve needs to pull a lot of weight in order to stack up. And honestly, I think it really does.

So, obviously Spiritual Resolve isn't for every build, and isn't going to offer much to certain investigators. If you need plenty of soak, either because of trauma stacking up or because you're taking on lots of heat for the party, this card delivers; it's extremely good with the new tanking cards, particularly Solemn Vow, which helps reduce the need for cards like True Grit to allow you to take hits for other players. Certain Carolyn Fern builds really want this, because the healing will give you a resource refund and reduce your reliance on Peter Sylvestre, and she tends towards tanking anyway with her health/sanity total - my current campaign sees me playing a Carolyn build with Foolishness so I really want to protect my allies. Mark Harrigan gets a huge amount of benefit, since he has the draw power to easily find the additional copies, has a measly 5 sanity, and can't really afford to take much damage to his health because it turns Sophie from a benefit to a drawback - I think he's probably the investigator who benefits the most of all. Certain Roland Banks builds will like it, if he isn't using sacrificial allies, again because of his low sanity and weakness that causes trauma. Zoey Samaras probably doesn't need it all that much unless she's going full into tanking for the team, since she has top-notch survivability with her 4 willpower and health/sanity total, but at least the resource cost isn't much of a concern for her. I'm not sure how it would work out for Tommy Muldoon, since on the one hand, he could make a decent profit from each copy (3 resources' worth maximum), but the healing portion is anti-synergistic with his ability - I'd say he probably doesn't like it unless he's going for allies he really doesn't want to see killed. Leo Anderson is the one who needs it the least, since he can amass an army of allies to take hits for him and can simply use his reaction to drop a fresh sacrificial ally into play.

All in all, I think it's a pretty well-balanced card, won't be a staple by any means but will do good work at a reasonable cost. I hope to see more Guardian (and indeed Survivor) Arcane-slot cards, since we now have several Rogue and Seeker cards on top of the obvious Mystic use of the slot - it might presage our next Guardian, and this feels kind of...Lily Chen-y, especially with the art. Weird that it's called Spiritual Resolve and Father Mateo can't take it. I like the mechanical design and flavour a lot, and the art is pretty good and shows some variety in theme.

Abigail Foreman

Please, stop printing fantastic Seeker allies, they already have some of the best in the game! Abigail Foreman seems designed to make action-triggered Tome cards usable by people other than Daisy, since you can give Abigail a Tome to hold without using up your own hand slots and she has an incredible Response ability that allows you to get a free second use of an action-triggered Tome ability. It certainly succeeds in making such Tomes attractive to anyone, but also (perhaps unsurprisingly) makes Daisy Walker utterly incredible. There's a lot of Tomes in the game by now, but the ones that are eligible for Abigail's ability and are actually worth using are: De Vermis Mysteriis, allowing you to play two events from your discard pile for a single action and a single doom; Encyclopedia, for truly incredible boosts every turn, either spreading the love around investigators at your location, or boosting two different skills, or boosting one skill by +4; Old Book of Lore (either version), for simple and effective card search and effectively draw; Otherworld Codex, for two bites at the apple of finding a matching card, or potentially dealing with two threats in a single action; Scroll of Prophecies, for just ridiculous card advantage; and the Necronomicon story asset from Dunwich. I should note that there are other good Tome cards (most notably Pnakotic Manuscripts), but no other Tomes that both work well with Abigail and that I'd consider worth playing.

If you want to use any of these cards, taking Abigail Foreman is an obviously useful choice. She's a complete no-brainer for Daisy Walker, and can even help you clear her weakness version of The Necronomicon more rapidly - how would you like to use Encyclopedia for +4 to any skill and then take your 3 actions? For other seekers, she is a bit of a riskier proposition - until you get both a Tome and Abigail Foreman into play, you aren't doing so well (since most action-triggered Tomes are not all that useful by themselves if you aren't Daisy), so you need to assemble both parts of the combo before you see enough benefit - but then again, Seeker has access to the best card draw and card search in the game, so I wouldn't be all that worried about it if that's the route you're going down - just don't go for Abigail straight away, wait until the rest of your deck is in place, unless of course you are playing Daisy and have a number of Tome assets in deck. I think she isn't all that good for Joe Diamond, who has a tough time finding any deck space, likes having allies to help investigate and fight, and already wants to be using his hand slots for both Weapons and Tools so is extra vulnerable to the issue of finding a Tome before finding Abigail, but most other Seekers will be able to make good use of her if they so choose - Mandy is the obvious choice aside from Daisy, since she likes the consistent search from Old Book of Lore and has excellent search abilities to quickly assemble an Abigail+ Tome board state.

I like the design of the card just fine by itself, but I am concerned that Seeker continues to see so many excellent cards - it's already hands-down the best class in the game, and it looked like Dream-Eaters was going to break the trend of printing overpowered Seeker cards, but here we are again! The art is perfectly fine, and the mechanical flavour works quite well. It's nice to see Abigail Foreman make it into the LCG - she appears in the Dream Gate (the Silas Marsh novella), where she was a particularly likeable character, as well as in the King in Yellow expansion to Arkham Horror 2e. Bit of a shame she is not useable by, and has zero synergy with, Silas Marsh, but it's pretty inevitable.

The Eye of Truth

This card kind of feels like a luxury option. Four wild icons with no restrictions is huge - people create entire decks around using the Desperate suite of cards, which provide 4 matching icons with huge restrictions - and the additional ability can allow you to essentially permanently hobble a treachery, by putting one copy in the victory display (similar to how "Fool Me Once..." lets you capture a treachery) and giving everyone +4 to tests involving that treachery from that point on. This could really make scenarios easier - for instance, if you use it early on to pass Rotting Remains, subsequent copies go from quite scary for your Guardian to not much concern at all. However, 5 exp is a huge amount for a skill card - other 5 exp skill cards are Seal of the Elder Sign (guaranteed Elder Sign for the test) and All In (up to 5 card draw on top of Unexpected Courage), and even those incredible power cards are rarely a priority for experience. That said, Seeker builds often don't need much in the way of higher-level cards, with Seeker level 0 having some of the finest cards in the game, so it's quite common to see Seeker builds that are essentially fully online after just a couple of scenarios, at which point the 5 exp cost seems far less onerous.

So that sort of segues into who might want it - any build that's cheap in exp really likes it, and Mandy builds with secondary Rogue that use "succeed by x" cards such as Quick Thinking or "Watch This!" might synergise well with it, but I think the big winner is clearly Minh Thi Phan. Not only have I seen incredible, near game-breaking Minh builds that are in full working order with as little as 17 exp, but her signature asset allows her to commit a single card to investigator tests at other locations - both making it far easier to use The Eye of Truth to target a specific treachery, and allowing her to simply give an enormous bonus to another investigator even if not for a Treachery test. I can see this doing a lot of work for Minh, not that she needed the help to become absurdly strong. It's also worth a pick for specific campaigns or team compositions - if you're playing alongside investigators who have trouble with certain test-based treacheries (e.g. Leo in TFA, or Skids against willpower treacheries) or you're having difficulties as a team with specific treacheries (like all the willpower treacheries in TCU), an early Eye of Truth pick could really smooth out the game. I feel like this card is a bit of a sleeper - you might not immediately notice the contribution it makes.

The mechanical flavour is pretty cool, if a little esoteric - it has a really nice feeling of turning the tables against the encounter deck. The art isn't bad but again is quite unconventional. I like the creepy flavour text. It's weird that this art appears in this pack, but is the cover art for the previous pack.

Joey "The Rat" Vigil (3)

Of all the Ally cards I wasn't expecting to see get a redemption arc, Joey "The Rat" Vigil was high up there. I'd written him off as an interesting niche idea that was simply outclassed by other options even for that niche, most notably the ubiquitous Leo De Luca. However, this upgrade is really interesting. Boring part out of the way first, he's now only 2 resources and has soak of 3 health, 2 sanity - which isn't bad purely in terms of survivability. But beyond that, the ability to discard an Item from play for 2 resources, as a free trigger, is really excellent. Combined with his ability to play Item cards as a free trigger for one resource, this means that any Item that you will eventually no longer need (like a gun that runs out of ammo, or a Flashlight that runs out of supplies) effectively gains Fast and costs 1 fewer resources, though the resource discount is delayed.

This clearly has value for any combat build that uses guns, since it lets you play new guns without taking attacks of opportunity and also ends up reducing your costs and increasing your action efficiency. It's useful to note that Joey "The Rat" Vigil's ability is better than the Fast keyword, since he can be used in any player action window - you can drop a soak asset into play during a Rotting Remains test or in the middle of the Enemy phase, or play a sacrificial asset to soak up a Crypt Chill that would otherwise take out something far more valuable. Tony Morgan can use Joey "The Rat" Vigil as his fence, play a Lupara for no actions, fire twice with the extra bonus for the turn it enters play, reload with Swift Reload and fire another two times (with his extra action from a bounty) for up to 12 damage, and then discard it for a refund. However, there's additional fun tricks you can pull with him. If you have situationally useful cards, you can use Joey Vigil to play and then discard those cards, functioning a little bit like Sleight of Hand. He enables a build where Finn Edwards uses the Guardian .45 Thompson (3) for lots of resources, and then discards it for even more resources (though he can also use Act of Desperation with his off-class slots). If you're playing a build that wants all the resources it can muster, you can discard anything you happen to have lying around for the resource profit - someone like Preston or Finn could play a Leather Coat, use it to soak up a point of damage, and then discard it for 2 resources - an Emergency Cache gives you 3 resources for a card and an action, so this is sort of like if you trade one point of resources from Emergency Cache for a point of health soak - you could even play a Switchblade and then immediately discard it, getting a profit of 1 resource for a card and no actions, which is not exactly amazing but theoretically useful if you have more card draw than you need, and it at least means that drawing the second copy of Switchblade (2) isn't a complete waste. Someone like Sefina Rousseau or Skids O'Toole using an Ornate Bow can get a benefit if they happen to draw their second copy of the Bow - shoot with the bow, discard it as a free trigger for 2 resources, then replay it as a free trigger for 5 resources - which is hardly a good deal economically but if you're engaged with a tough enemy you might well do anything to get a reload without taking an attack of opportunity. If using Scavenging, or simply cycling through your deck so quickly that you end up reshuffling, Joey "The Rat" Vigil lets you discard slotless cards like Painkillers and Smoking Pipe (or even something like Acidic Ichor, taken from a friend with "You Owe Me One!") so they can be replayed.

Leo Anderson is desperately sad that this card is level 3, but it's probably for the best. If playing Skids as a primary fighter, firstly, I'm sorry to hear that, and secondly, Joey would be an excellent addition - he's more useful for Finn Edwards, who is locked out of taking Hot Streak (4) and is all-round a better character. Joey "The Rat" Vigil isn't going to be much use to most Preston or Sefina builds, since they're unlikely to run enough Item cards, but he's great for Tony as outlined above, and Jenny builds often tend towards being asset-heavy.

The mechanical flavour is pretty cool, since you essentially have a fence (making far more sense than the Fence talent), and the art is quite appealingly unscrupulous; the flavour text is pretty uninteresting but it's fine.

Sawed-Off Shotgun

This is a terrible card, which is not the same as saying it's a useless card. Outside of like, Tony Morgan on Easy difficulty, this is not really a weapon in the same way as like, Switchblade (2) or .45 Automatic or Lupara - by itself, it is not a combat solution, since it offers no bonuses to hit at all, requires a high degree of success to get a worthwhile payoff, has very limited ammo for a substantial cost, and is very high in exp. It's a combo piece, end of story - if you have lots of bonuses you can throw into a test (Money Talks, or Mind over Matter + Streetwise, or loads of skills, or Well Connected + High Rollerx2, etc.) or some other kind of setup (something like Momentum to reduce difficulty to 0 or Three Aces), you can get up to 6 damage in a single action. With Double or Nothing, you could get 12 damage in a single attack. That's huge.

But why would you care ? Most enemies have 1-4 health, and the majority of those are in the 2-3 range. So something like Switchblade or Lupara will deal with those enemies. So Sawed-Off Shotgun's huge damage potential is mostly only useful for the really beefy enemies - Conglomeration of Spheres, Beast of Aldeberan, that sort of thing, plus of course "boss" enemies with high, scaling health. But again, you also need to invest a lot of other things into making Sawed-Off Shotgun work. Let's say you put loads of combo pieces into your deck for this purpose - big money Tony Morgan saves up all his money 'til the very end of the game, Sleight of Hand out Sawed-Off Shotgun, Money Talks + High Roller + Momentum for the first shot, then Double or Nothing for the second shot - an incredible 18 damage in 2 attacks. But you've needed to assemble all those combo pieces, keep your powder dry the entire game by not spending resources, not use your Money Talks for that tough Treachery a few turns ago, invest multiple scenarios' worth of exp into the combo, and then, finally, you can mulch the boss - but a "normal" monster-hunter, who's instead been cycling through Luparas or using a Switchblade (2) with Reliable, or Chicago Typewriter + Quick Reload, or whatever, has instead been able to contribute at full throttle for the entire game, hasn't needed to assemble all their combo pieces then not use them for several turns, has spent exp on cards that consistently help, and is still perfectly able to beat high-health boss enemies . It's not like boss enemies with loads of health have been insurmountable obstacles until now; the Ghoul Priest is the final challenge of the very first scenario, after all. This is part of why I think it's a terrible card - it's a trap for things other than combo-kills on tough enemies, and potentially trivialising boss enemies isn't good design, any more than allowing you to secure 8 clues in a single action is good design.

The comparison with the Guardian card Shotgun is obvious - Shotgun is two-handed rather than one-handed (significant because it means you can use SOS alongside something like a Switchblade (2)), Shotgun is more expensive, Shotgun caps out at 5 damage rather than 6, and Shotgun gives you a +3 bonus to the skill test (and therefore is actually usable as a weapon by itself), but they both have the "damage per point of success" mechanic and are both shotguns. An argument I've seen is that Sawed-Off Shotgun is usable because rogues can achieve better boosts and have more combo potential, but that doesn't really make much sense - most of the combo cards are level 2 or less, and it's not like Leo Anderson Shotgun Combo builds are particularly good (or even played at all); Shotgun works well with Well Prepared, for instance, so it's not like SOS has unique combo potential. Additionally, Shotgun works better with certain Guardian cards (Extra Ammunition, Custom Ammunition) than Sawed-Off Shotgun does with equivalent Rogue cards (Swift Reload, Contraband). If you have a Shotgun in play as Mark and you're jumped by a medium enemy - say, a Ravenous Ghoul - you would be testing 8 vs 3 and would therefore get a 1-hit kill if you draw a -2 or better - and still get some damage even with a -4. With a Sawed-Off Shotgun as Tony Morgan against the same Ravenous Ghoul, you would be testing 5 vs 3 and would therefore need to draw a +1 or Elder Sign for the one-hit kill, and would miss entirely if you got a -3.

Basically, I don't like this card. If you like the idea of one-hit killing huge enemies with big combos, more power to you, but if you like to contribute consistently and feel like your experience points give you substantial increases in effectiveness, don't use it - I certainly don't intend to.

Flavour-wise, it's very weird because the idea of a sawn-off shotgun already exists in the form of Lupara. Not the first time we've seen this - the .45 Thompson compared to Chicago Typewriter - but there, it felt more like they were making a more interesting and useful card to represent a truly iconic weapon, whereas here, it feels like Lupara is far more Rogue-y in how it interacts with rogue cards and playstyle and was already a very solid card, whereas Sawed-Off Shotgun is generally a far worse card. The mechanical flavour is at least more consistent with the core set Shotgun, but I also much prefer the art for Lupara.

Mind's Eye

This card is very interesting to examine, because it seems to have one of the most straightforward designs possible, but it's actually quite complex in the context of the game. There's almost no reason to take it for an actual Mystic under most circumstances because of the double arcane slot - if you're buffing up willpower to solve problems, you're better off with cards like Rite of Seeking, Shrivelling or Sixth Sense so you can get extra benefit out of fighting/investigating - punching for a single point of damage is still pretty rubbish even if you use willpower, and Mind's Eye doesn't have enough charges to gather all the clues you might want compared to using Sixth Sense. Mind's Eye helps with any test, so it has flexibility (grab a clue from a location, punch a Swarm of Rats to death, or evade an enemy), and it works for encounter tests (e.g. Grasping Hands) or special scenario tests (Intellect parley tests, or unique tests on locations, etc.), but being able to get a big boost for those tests isn't worth giving up your arcane slots and not being able to fight or investigate properly, and Sign Magick/Book of Shadows (3) simply isn't worth it in most circumstances - if you use Sign Magick to play Mind's Eye, you might as well consider Mind's Eye as costing 6 resources and 2 cards to play, which is far too much.

The exception to that is certain solo builds - if you pack a few combat events and Forbidden Knowledge to trigger your passive as Agnes, for example, you could handle many enemies without Shrivelling, and the limitation in clue-gathering could be worth the ability to handle all the weird stuff that scenarios ask of you, but you're still putting all your eggs in one basket and you're pretty useless for the first scenario - I'd far rather stick to Shrivelling/Sixth Sense and use those event slots to provide one-time boosts for the tests that you otherwise want Mind's Eye for; if nothing else, Mystics have pretty good generic boosts with cards like Recall the Future and Premonition, and there's Seal of the Elder Sign for those true do-or-die tests. Instead, I think that Mind's Eye is for off-class Mystics. Having Mystic 0-2 is OK at the beginning, since you have access to all the same cards as a main-class mystic, and Daisy with Shrivelling is only a little less accurate than, say, Luke with Shrivelling. But since Shrivelling upgrades are level 3/5, and Sixth Sense upgrade is level 4, if you rely on them as your combat/investigation tools throughout the campaign, you'll end up little better than when you started out. This is why it's almost always a mistake to rely on Shrivelling throughout a campaign as an off-class mystic - sure you could stack all the passive buffs to willpower, but that's slow and expensive and unreliable, especially as a real mystic would get a +2/3 to hit as an inherent part of Shrivelling (3)/(5) alongside better access to passive and one-time boosts. So for Carolyn, Daisy, Patrice and Sefina, starting out with Shrivelling/Sixth Sense is fine, but you really want to pivot away from that within a couple of scenarios to take better advantage of your main class - and Mind's Eye is a perfect use for your arcane slots when you do so.

Daisy doesn't really want Mind's Eye unless she's really concentrating on willpower, since her base willpower is only 3 and many boosts (most notably Dream Diary and Encyclopedia) work for any skill, and obviously Carolyn can't take it at all, but certain Sefina builds (e.g. those wanting to combo with something intellect/combat-based, or using an Ornate Bow) could make use of Mind's Eye - again I think she'd be better off just concentrating on Rogue boosts and using her Arcane slots for Suggestion/Double, Double/Haste but it's an option. So that really just leaves Patrice - for whom I think this card could end up being low-key incredible. The cost of 3 is reasonable, and the ability to discard additional copies to recharge is far better for her given how rapidly she draws her deck and the relatively low cost associated with a single card for her, and she has access to lots of Willpower boosts - and her statline means that she gets a huge benefit from Mind's Eye. I've found that even with her huge card draw and cards to turn those cards into boosts, Patrice can quickly run out of fuel in a given turn (hence why A Glimmer of Hope has turned out to be quite effective for her) - and if she has her signature weakness or hasn't drawn cards with the right icons, she can also easily end up without what she needs, so Mind's Eye can be great for that. The other possibility is for that rare minority of Mystic decks that genuinely don't need either Shrivelling or an investigation spell - like a pure-investigation Marie Lambeau deck that boosts and uses intellect for clue-gathering, is paired with a pure combat Guardian, and for whatever reason doesn't use her ability, or only uses it to play events; or a pure-investigation Norman Withers build that uses his intellect - and even then, I'd probably just take Shrivelling rather than Mind's Eye, because why not have a decent combat option for boss fights or if you get separated or your guardian runs out of ammo or whatever?

So the ultimate conclusion is that this is a Patrice card, that a small minority of Sefina or weird solo builds might want to consider. In future, there might be a mystic with a 4 in Combat or whatever who wants it (but even then you probably want your Arcane slots for Enchanted Blade), or another off-class Mystic who can afford to give up their Arcane slots and has stat weaknesses to cover for (say, if Lily Chen is 5 Combat, 4 Willpower, 2 Agility, 1 Intellect, Guardian 0-5/Mystic 0-2). But so far, that's all speculation

I have to say that I really like the design - again, that Myriad effect where you can discard duplicate copies for a benefit, as seen in Spiritual Resolve, which is a really neat piece of design. Definitely needed to be double-arcane otherwise it would be too good, and makes for an interesting but very niche card. The art is very beautiful and quite eerie.

Shining Trapezohedron

I think this card is extremely bad, but there's a chance it might instead end up being overpowered. So in general, cards that require you to make unnecessary tests tend to be really bad (call this the Alchemical Transmutation problem). However, Shining Trapezohedron could singlehandedly solve the Mystic resource issue - certainly, there's the disadvantage that if you fail the test, you can't play the card for the rest of the round, and you run the risk of hitting bad chaos token effects. But then again, if you play Shining Trapezohedron early, it could provide an overwhelming amount of economic advantage - if you end up using it to play 2 copies of Shrivelling and 2 copies of Rite of Seeking, you've saved 14 resources - which is better than any other economy card in the entire game. By baking the test into the "play" action, it potentially ends up being more efficient and wasting fewer actions than Alchemical Transmutation - but then again, if you fail, the action is wasted . You could use skill commits or other one-time boosts to increase your chance of success, but then you're essentially reducing the gain by investing more finite resources into making it work. You could stack lots of static bonuses to willpower (say, Four of Cups + Holy Rosary + David Renfield), but then you need to assemble a powerful board state beforehand. This leads on to three further issues: First, that it massively slows down your ability to get moving. If you're running a normal deck, you want to get either Shrivelling or Sixth Sense or whatever out asap, maybe play a static boost, and then you're ready to contribute, but with Shining Trapezohedron, you absolutely want to use the Shining Trapezohedron to play as many Spell cards as possible so you're getting the most bang for your buck (and your 4, realistically 8, exp), so you want to delay playing key spells until you have the Trapezohedron in play, and then if you fail the Trapezohedron test you're spending another round without your key spell. The second issue that it really messes up mulligan priority - ideally, you want the Trapezohedron and your key spells and a static boost in hand at the start of the game (the perfect hand would be something like Four of Cups, Holy Rosary, Shining Trapezohedron, Shrivelling, Sixth Sense), but if you draw the Trapezohedron and no spells, do you mulligan it away to try and get a spell or your Arcane Initiate, or run the risk of spending several rounds without being able to meaningfully contribute, or do you make sure to pack your deck full of redundant spells and thus overall bloat your deck? Third is that Shining Trapezohedron absolutely wants you to have as high a willpower as possible, but the most reliable Mystic willpower boosts (and indeed staple Mystic cards) are all accessory slots - do you not run Rosary/St Hubert's Key at all, or run Relic Hunter and cost even more exp? Deckbuilding around this card is a nightmare in general - do you still include other resource cards (ECache, Uncage the Soul, etc.) in case you don't draw the Shining Trapezohedron, making them redundant if you do have it in play (at least Uncage the Soul has good icons)? Or do you rely entirely on Shining Trapezohedron and thus exacerbate the aforementioned consistency and mulligan problems? Finally, you only want this card if your deck is expensive enough to need it, so you need to build around it - meaning that you're going to be really disadvantaged with an overpriced deck until you spend the 8 exp to pick up two copies.

So, working on the assumption that Shining Trapezohedron isn't unplayably bad, who might want it? Most Mystics want to play loads of Spell cards and most of them have substantial resource concerns, so in principle most Mystics could find a use for it - it's not like Marie's Spell trait synergy is going to make her uniquely suited to it or anything because mystics are basically all spellcasters. That said, it could work in tandem with Dark Horse for Agnes Baker, Jim Culver or Marie Lambeau, allowing them to run extremely low-resource decks and pay for everything with the Trapezohedron instead; this is probably more interesting for Marie and Jim since they benefit more from boosts to multiple stats, though Agnes' higher willpower makes her a better fit for the Trapezohedron itself. It might be less interesting for Akachi Onyele, since she doesn't need to play as many Spell cards as she can make each individual spell last longer with her ability, has an inherent resource gain effect in her signature asset, and the Trapezohedron won't help her play Enchanted Blade, but having said that she does also have the 5 willpower. Luke Robinson can use Crack the Case extremely well so has better resource gain than your average Mystic, but can also run a deck with loads of Spell events to use with his ability. Shining Trapezohedron might be really excellent for Dexter Drake, since he has the 5 base willpower, wants to play loads of cards with his ability, and could run a Big Money deck thanks to his secondary Rogue access so there's really no such thing as too much resource gain when doing so - once he's gotten enough benefit from the Trapezohedron, he can discard it with his ability anyway; that said, if not going Big Money, it might be redundant with the discount from his ability and access to more consistent and less risky resource gain from Rogue. I think this card is definitely not going to be very good for Diana Stanley - she does not necessarily want to play many expensive Spell cards since she can make great use of her other stats, she starts with very low willpower (and therefore can't use the Trapezohedron to help set up in the first few turns) and she gets inherent economy from her ability.

Ultimately, I don't think this is worth the exp at all; it suffers massive slot pressure, is inconsistent and hard to play around, and if you want to use it you want it in your deck as soon as possible, delaying other core upgrades. I'm kind of curious to try it out with Dark Horse, however.

Spoilers below for Lovecraft's writing, the Call of Cthulhu RPG and Eldritch Horror:

Nightmare Bauble/Dream Parasite

I'm substantially more confident in calling this card bad. It allows you to cancel the auto-fail, which sounds good, but the requirement to shuffle a really substantial weakness (a skill card that must be committed to your next test, for -2 to that test and 1 damage + 1 horror if that test fails) into your deck makes it untenable - unless you have a firm plan to deal with the Dream Parasite, there's a good chance it will cause you to fail a test you otherwise would have passed, merely delaying (rather than preventing) failure - you can play around it by taking a sacrificial test you don't care about (maybe with Take Heart thrown into the mix) but even then you've lost a draw to the weakness and it deals a damage and a horror. You could pass the test despite Dream Parasite, of course, but unless you happen to draw it on the turn you were going to play Will to Survive anyway or something, it will cost you in some way to guarantee that, whether in the form of resource boosts, card commits or deliberately taking easier tests when it would be suboptimal to do so. Additionally, Nightmare Bauble takes up the accessory slot (a slot with a lot of competition for Survivors) and costs a lot of exp.

It's particularly baffling since Survivors already have a superlative tool for dealing with the auto-fail in the form of Eucatastrophe. For the same amount of exp, 1 additional resource and no need to spend an action to play ahead of time (overall cheaper, in other words) you can cancel auto-fail and replace it with Elder Sign , and it also works on other tokens that would reduce you down to 0. Granted, each copy of Eucatastrophe only works once whereas Nightmare Bauble can be used at least 3 times, but come on - Eucatastrophe also doesn't shuffle a killer weakness into your deck. Eucatastrophe is crying out for a nerf in the next taboo list, certainly, but unless the taboo prevents it working on auto-fail (similar to the errata to Lucky Dice, I guess), it's still going to come out miles ahead of Nightmare Bauble. But don't get me wrong - even if Eucatastrophe didn't exist in the first place, I don't recommend taking Nightmare Bauble.

That all said, there are some synergies to consider - notably, with the upcoming Stella Clark and the cards revealed with her. Stella doesn't mind - probably even actively wants - to fail her first skill test in a round, since she can get an extra action for doing so, and whether or not you play her, if you're using Take Heart + recursion with Grisly Totem (3), and/or Drawing Thin, and/or Quick Learner, you probably don't care too much about Dream Parasite. Since Dream Parasite reduces your skill, it could even help you trigger Eucatastrophe, or guarantee failure of a difficulty 2 test to trigger "Look What I Found!" etc. As it stands now, no-one wants Nightmare Bauble, but Stella might really change that - however, with it being "limit 1 per deck", you can't rely on it enough to build a strategy around it, so it is likely that even Stella doesn't want this card. On the other side of the coin, Wendy Adams with her inherent ability to redraw if she draws auto-fail, or William Yorick and Silas Marsh with their ability to indefinitely recur Eucatastrophe, have absolutely no need for Nightmare Bauble.

It's also worth pointing out that Nightmare Bauble gets substantially worse on higher difficulties - on Normal or Easy difficulty, it can be relatively straightforward to get to the point where the only token in the bag that will fail you is Auto-Fail, making Nightmare Bauble absolute insurance. Unlike Eucatastrophe, however, Nightmare Bauble doesn't help you if you draw a -8 or a symbol token worth -10, which in most cases might as well be Auto-Fail - while it's certainly possible to buff up enough to pass on every token other than Auto-Fail even on Expert difficulty, it's far harder to do so consistently.

The art is certainly creepy - Nightmare Bauble definitely earns its Cursed trait - but I don't find it that appealing; perhaps it's the colour scheme. Despite being called "Nightmare Bauble", it doesn't really have anything dreamy about it, not even featuring the Dreamlands trait as seen in Moonstone. Dream Parasite, on the other end, has great art, and it's nice to see cards from the Call of Cthulhu LCG return for Arkham.

Scavenging (2)

From Joey "The Rat" Vigil above and Burglary (2) and Old Book of Lore (3) in other packs to another new version of a very old card. Scavenging (2) is potentially very strong - you can essentially do the William Yorick thing of playing cards from discard as a consequence of doing your job, avoiding the usual action inefficiency of recursion and potentially even gaining action advantage by discarding or committing a card so you can subsequently play it without an action, though obviously there's an initial cost of 1 card, 1 action, 1 resource to offset. This is important, because Scavenging (0) is often way too slow to be good - playing Grotesque Statue over and over again on Jim is an entire build, but it does end up being far slower in terms of actions than is really worth it, meaning that Scavenging (0) mostly ends up just being used to recur cards with icons to commit to tests.

It's also possible to create a "dredge" deck that aggressively gets cards into the discard pile in order to access them with recursion like Scavenging and Resourceful - this is obviously possible by simply discarding cards from hand (e.g. with Wendy's ability or Cornered) or by using Yaotl to mill cards from the top of your deck. That said, while Scavenging (2) could really make for some powerful engines, this is a card in search of an investigator to use it. You need to succeed at investigating by 2 or more, and there is no survivor in the game with a base intellect above 3 (aside from "Ashcan" Pete using Duke, and Calvin Wright with 4+ horror), so investigating is not a focus for anyone. There's five investigators who could use Scavenging (2) consistently enough to be worth considering - Wendy Adams with Lockpicks, "Ashcan" Pete stacking intellect bonuses, Minh Thi Phan, and Agnes Baker or Patrice Hathaway using Sixth Sense. For any investigator, this could make you substantially tankier by allowing you to replay Leather Coat/Cherished Keepsake over and over again for 0 resources and 0 actions, provide unlimited investigation boosts (helping trigger Scavenging as well) with the upcoming Old Keyring, reuse Tennessee Sour Mash over and over, recur Baseball Bat or Old Hunting Rifle if discarded (e.g. with Act of Desperation) and provide unlimited testless damage/clues by recurring Gravedigger's Shovel/Lantern; Wendy Adams could replay used-up lockpicks and recur her signature asset to use to commit to tests (though this works well enough with Scavenging (0)); "Ashcan" Pete doesn't really get much additional benefit; Patrice could access any Item assets she wasn't able to play the first time they entered her hand and substantially reduce the issue of needing to spend lots of actions to play cards when she draws them; Minh could recur Fingerprint Kit or Ancient Stone (particularly with Act of Desperation or Magnifying Glass (1) to allow you to easily discard hand-slot assets), as well as Disc of Itzamna; and Agnes could recur Grotesque Statue.

However, while you could use Scavenging (2) on any of these investigators, it's not likely to be the basis for a particularly effective deck - Minh and Agnes can be far more effective using their cards, exp and resources to focus on their strengths; Agnes and Patrice need to get both Sixth Sense and Scavenging in play before using the combo, and Patrice is stuck relying on Sixth Sense (0) for the entire campaign and needs to play both combo assets the turn they're drawn; "Ashcan" Pete isn't likely to have enough worthwhile targets for Scavenging (2) unless doing something very unusual like recurring soak and tanking for a fragile team using his off-class slots for 3x Solemn Vow; and Wendy gets at best minor benefits since there's better and more efficient ways to avoid running out of Lockpicks charges, such as Emergency Cache (3) or simply drawing through her deck at lightning speed. That's not to say this card is worthless, merely that it's extremely niche. If we finally get an investigative Survivor (one of the last niches left unexplored - there's no Survivor with above 3 base intellect, no Guardian with above 3 base Agility, and no Mystic with above 3 base Combat), this card could really shine, and there's so many Survivor clue-gathering tools that it's high time we got one.

The art is (still) not bad, quite evocative of the mechanical theme, though not particularly exciting. The mechanical flavour is very survivor-y, as well.

2 hours ago, Allonym said:

some other kind of setup (something like Momentum to reduce difficulty to 0 or Three Aces)

Three Aces doesn't work with the Shotguns, does it? Automatic Success you succeed by zero, so there's no excess to become damage and you'll just deal the 1.

Also, link to the cards? Can't seem to find them in the usual places.

If you fail on the shining trapezohedron check, you get refunded the action cost as well so there is really no downside to it other than any effects on a failed check.

5 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

Three Aces doesn't work with the Shotguns, does it? Automatic Success you succeed by zero, so there's no excess to become damage and you'll just deal the 1.

Also, link to the cards? Can't seem to find them in the usual places.

No, if the test automatically succeeds, the difficulty is reduced to zero. Your test result will be calculated as normal (for Three Aces, since you do not draw a chaos token at all, this means you compare your skill value against a difficulty of 0). Also bear in mind that each of the Three Aces has a wild icon so you're looking at a minimum of +3 on top of your base skill.

The card text has been uploaded to ArkhamDB here . Pictures of the cards (including the art) was also posted on Reddit.

2 minutes ago, DarkFate said:

If you fail on the shining trapezohedron, you get refunded the action cost as well so there is really no downside to it.

You're correct that you are refunded the action cost, mea culpa. But that absolutely does not mean it has no downside.