I feel like we are running out of things to discuss and as we wait for April to sloooowly, and grindingly come to a close and we learn more about Innsmouth.
So I propose a new(ish) topic:
What cards which you don’t usually include in deck builds, have you maybe recently given a whirl and been surprised by?
Since we don’t all have the same cards that would fall into this category, I thought this discussion could be fun as we reminisce about awesome card coups and also give us more scope in our deck builds. Maybe there are those who feel like their deck builds are all starting to look a little samey-samey and could use an infusion of new strategies and ideas.

For example, I started out playing a ton of Seekers, so when I first branched out to Survivors, I relied heavily on cards like Look What I Found and Lucky. Anything to help me get clues. I didn’t realize I was trying to build a Seeker deck with Survivor cards. It wasn’t until I tried different deck builds, that I discovered what all the fuss was about with Survivors. Among other things...their discard pile! By the time I played Patrice, her discard pile was a force to be reckoned with!
So what experiences have you had with cards old, that have become new again?
Or new cards that have brought old ones out of retirement?

I may have mentioned herein that I favor the traditional Guardian with multiple weapons build. 🙂

So, then I read the Silas Marsh novella and was really intrigued with him. I have played Survivors before (mostly William Yorick, though), so I am somewhat familiar with survival, if you will. But I had never built a deck so loaded with skill cards before that. Using his ability to commit a skill card, then pull it back if not needed was slick.

And I had never really relied on events to fight. Man, was that a blast! Brute Force and Flare are particularly great with his combat ability, and Tennessee Sour Mash, smashing the bottle on the counter and using the jagged glass as a weapon, is pretty cool, too.

It kinda surprised me, but Silas is now one of my favorite investigators.

I've found Stunning Blow to do a surprising amount of work, at least on Patrice and Yorick. It's a decent effect to tack onto an attack - against boss enemies, evading can be vital if you can't take it down in one hit, and it also lets you more quickly pull a friend out of the fire if you're looking to peel an enemy off a friend, since you can attack enemies engaged with other players but not evade them. I also like Gravedigger's Shovel and Lantern, especially the upgraded versions - they do a surprising amount of work, and Lantern (as well as the Improvised events) synergises well with Mind's Eye, since they reduce difficulty rather than adding to your skill, so changing the test to willpower doesn't cost you the inherent bonus to the test.

Smoking Pipe has gotten a new lease on life thanks to Jessica Hyde - if you're a combat monster, Smoking Pipe lets you turn her regenerating damage soak into horror soak, without the cost associated with also including Peter Sylvestre.

An obvious pick is that Luke Robinson makes Barricade much more usable, taking it from niche and fiddly to potentially overpowered. The same is true of Vantage Point - Luke can do really well with it.

Oops! gets a bit of a bad rap - it's not great but it's worth including if you have space going spare in a deck that does a lot of fighting, and on 4-player there's often a lot of situations where it comes up - it's particularly good against the new Swarming keyword, and it synergises well with Premonition to let you pull off some ridiculous plays. The upgraded version is very solid but even the level 0 version was often a good card to draw. Plus it's about the main thing redeeming the Old Hunting Rifle (together with Live and Learn).

I am yet to get Dumb Luck to work, but I feel like you could do something with it for Minh with Anatomical Diagrams (or if we ever get a Survivor 0-5/Seeker 0-2). Dumb Luck, Oops! and "Look What I Found!" are all going to become much stronger once my girl Stella releases, since they synergise really well with Quick Learner.

Moment of Respite has become a lot stronger since the release of Solemn Vow and other tanking tools like First Watch, since it's now much easier to group together all the horror on one investigator and heal it all off at once. It's also a very solid pick for Carolyn Fern if using her replacement signature cards, since it heals Foolishness in one go.

I also found Keen Eye really useful on my recent Carolyn build, since I had a decent resource income but didn't always have the boosts to Intellect I might want - and the Combat boost came in handy when it came time to use the Meat Cleaver.

I absolutely agree with stunning blow; Guardians are typically horrible at evading, so any who can take it are able to perform outside their role, by doing their role. Terrific.

I'm not sure how up people are on Haste, but I just played it in possibly the best deck for it (any deck that can take 4 actions per turn easily, really) and it was a monster. I frequently had turns of 6 actions without doing much specifically to proc it. Obviously it gets easier to trigger the more actions you have, which is Rogue's whole thing. Terrific card.

42 minutes ago, SGPrometheus said:

I absolutely agree with stunning blow; Guardians are typically horrible at evading, so any who can take it are able to perform outside their role, by doing their role. Terrific.

I'm not sure how up people are on Haste, but I just played it in possibly the best deck for it (any deck that can take 4 actions per turn easily, really) and it was a monster. I frequently had turns of 6 actions without doing much specifically to proc it. Obviously it gets easier to trigger the more actions you have, which is Rogue's whole thing. Terrific card.

I used Haste and Double Double with Sefina and it was almost laughable how much she got done! Since she is built for events, the spell slot for Haste wasn’t an issue and those two cards played off each other really well. Having a 13 card opening draw also gets them out a lot more consistently, but with other builds like Dexter, who have only so many spell slots and very asset heavy, I haven’t been able to justify Haste. Which is too bad, since he is on the card! Although this is my first go round with Dexter, so I haven’t had a chance to experiment with him yet.

2 hours ago, Allonym said:

ment of Respite has become a lot stronger since the release of Solemn Vow and other tanking tools like First Watch, since it's now much easier to group together all the horror on one investigator and heal it all off at once. It's also a very solid pick for Carolyn Fern if using her replacement signature cards, since it heals Foolishness in one go.

I hadn’t thought of Moment of Respite and it’s synergy to Solemn Vow and First Watch. Hmmm...

I’ve never tried Stunning Blow with Patrice. It looked too situational, but I think I may have to branch out with some of those cards for her. True Vision has worked surprisingly well for her, as has Fortuitous Discovery.

I love the Smoking Pipe/Jessica Hyde combo. I remember how important Smoking Pipe and Pain Killers were for certain investigators back in the day, but with new cards they eventually got pushed to the back of the closet. That’s a perfect example of dusting off some older cards, because newer ones breathe life (or smoke) back into them.