https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/8/13/all-or-nothing/

While I was pretty lukewarm on the new Daisy, this new Skids is something else. Start with his new ability: we've lost our 2-resource action, so what did we gain in its place? Just a possible 6 resources as a free action every turn! Sure, capitalizing on this requires you to build a deck with plenty of agility and wild icons, but you're a rogue; you were going to do that anyway! Even if you play it safer and only go for 2 or 4 free resources every turn, that puts you in the lofty region of Rich Boy himself, Preston Fairmont. His elder sign effect is interesting as well; graveyard recursion is always good, even when it's unreliable.

Moving to the back, the first thing I see is the deck size: 25. New Skids is more consistent than most investigators, and I think that's cool. It also prevents his last ability from bloating the deck too much: if we skip down to his "Additional Options," he's got this super unique addendum to how he upgrades cards. Basically, it lets you have 4 Hot Streak in your deck. That's insane. Same with Lucky; 2 level 0 and 2 level 2. How's that for consistency? Especially since those four extra cards bring you up to 29 total.

Since I mentioned Lucky, let's go back up to his deckbuilding. He's lost access to Guardian, but the modern Rogue doesn't lack for firepower, meaning this a pretty soft loss. Instead he gains access to all gambit and fortune cards up to level 3. While most and perhaps the best of these are already rogue cards, standouts like Lucky and Practice Makes Perfect are now at your disposal. PMP doesn't have to many targets, but it does hit Daredevil, making some combos more reliable. Very interesting.

His Advanced cards are straight upgrades; On the Lam is insane, and Hospital Debts still goes away in three turns. Sure it's more expensive, but you're making money hand over fist; what do you care?

Overall, I think Matt and Jeremy might have listened a little too well to the critiques that parallel Daisy wasn't that interesting: parallel Skids is extremely interesting. This may have something to do with original Skids being pretty ho-hum, but this version is far and away the more compelling choice for advanced users. Well done devs.

And we're back with another revamped core set character! Download The Cards & The Scenario here or on the main page under Parallel Investigators down below.

After Parallel Daisy released, I remember hearing an outcry for updating the less played "Skids" over Daisy. Well, here he is!

Try him out in our 3rd visit to The House Always Wins scenario. The pdf has 12 cards (with backs) this time.

55 minutes ago, SGPrometheus said:

Just a possible 6 resources as a free action every turn!

Well, you have to spend the resources upfront, so it's "only" a net gain of up to 3 resources per round.

Hrm. I'm not sure his ability actually works. While it says you can commit Agility or Wild icons, the type of test isn't specified so I'm not sure they actually add to the test.

Not the worst thing in the world, the intent is pretty clear. But annoying.

7 minutes ago, Astrophil84 said:

Well, you have to spend the resources upfront, so it's "only" a net gain of up to 3 resources per round.

Oh yeah; can't believe I didn't think of that. Still, an extra 1-3 resources every turn is great economy. Throw Watch This at it!

Soooo I had no issues printing read or die, but for some reason, Skids pnp seems to only print one card per page. I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong or how to scale them to be regular card size. Anyone have a clue?

12 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Soooo I had no issues printing read or die, but for some reason, Skids pnp seems to only print one card per page. I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong or how to scale them to be regular card size. Anyone have a clue?

I was able to print them 9 to a page and, without printing the generic backs, was able to get them on 2 sheets.

It is a strange format. I also had to fight with the Read or Die stuff to get it to print to the right size. I haven't printed Skids yet, but I am excited to try parallel Skids.

That said I already really liked original Skids. New On The Lam is pretty crazy. That's a pretty powerful get out of jail card. New Hospital Debts is bad, but with new Skids generating resources rather than soaking them it's actually probably easier to clear Hospital debts now.

I love that his ability now is to literally gamble every turn. That's incredibly thematic and his deck building rules including Fortune and Gambit cards is very different. I like that this really forces some new build ideas for Skids, and it does feel more thematic for Skids. Though putting the Guardian cop themed cards in the ex-con's deck did give Skids a 48 Hours feel to him, which was alot of fun. Unlikely Daisy the different Deckbuilding rules does open alot of interesting options for new Skids builds (hopefully we get more tomes for new Daisy to include).

Add: Also his additional options text is kinda nuts and exciting. He can basically have an army of Emergency Cache cards in his deck. If that's good I don't know. It seems kinda bad if your deck is just flooded with resource card. Also he can put both versions of the Thompson in his deck if you want. Both copies of Sneak Attack, Pickpocket, Decorated Skull... Very interesting. Both copies of Lucky! Skids is truly the luckiest investigator.

23 minutes ago, phillos said:

He can basically have an army of Emergency Cache cards in his deck.

The only cards he can upgrade without removing are Fortune or Gambit traited cards, so he can still only run 2 Emergency Cache. In fact, aside from the two cards I talked about, I'm not sure there are any other gambit/fortune cards with multiple levels that he can take. Hopefully that changes with Wini's cards, just to give it some variety.

I agree that this version is way more in-line for its theme; the ability and the deckbuilding come across strongly as "gambler."

1 hour ago, SGPrometheus said:

The only cards he can upgrade without removing are Fortune or Gambit traited cards, so he can still only run 2 Emergency Cache. In fact, aside from the two cards I talked about, I'm not sure there are any other gambit/fortune cards with multiple levels that he can take. Hopefully that changes with Wini's cards, just to give it some variety.

There's also Oops, though he probably doesn't care about that one. Is there a way to do spoilers on this forum? Because some people got the starter decks early, so it is possible to know what else he'll get access to (and it's actually quite exciting).

7 hours ago, Duciris said:

I was able to print them 9 to a page and, without printing the generic backs, was able to get them on 2 sheets.

With Daisy we had the issue that the top of the image on the cards were cut off when we printed them. So I ended up taking screen shots of the images, cropping them and put them in an email folder. My husband then used a word doc to size them exactly, back to back. We have a card stock printer, so we printed them on heavy card stock, 9 cards per sheet. We noticed that the quality was markedly better doing it that way, than straight from the file they provided. So we just did it that way this time too. Maybe we are too nerdy for words, but they look great!

I am hoping that Winnie and Stella have some new gambit and fortune cards and their upgrades coming in their decks. It would make Skid’s new deck build option and the timing of releasing it, make sense. I have never been a huge Skids fan, but I am excited to play this version. (Not to mention his Barkham parallel of a parallel version!)

11 hours ago, SGPrometheus said:

The only cards he can upgrade without removing are Fortune or Gambit traited cards, so he can still only run 2 Emergency Cache. In fact, aside from the two cards I talked about, I'm not sure there are any other gambit/fortune cards with multiple levels that he can take. Hopefully that changes with Wini's cards, just to give it some variety.

I agree that this version is way more in-line for its theme; the ability and the deckbuilding come across strongly as "gambler."

Okay. That's probably for the best. That was sounding really crazy when I misread it. Still just having 4 Lucky! and 4 Hot Streaks in his deck is probably crazy enough.

There is also Chance Encounter, which is interesting. That's a significant amount of ally recursion.

19 hours ago, Buhallin said:

Hrm. I'm not sure his ability actually works. While it says you can commit Agility or Wild icons, the type of test isn't specified so I'm not sure they actually add to the test.

Not the worst thing in the world, the intent is pretty clear. But annoying.

It's just missing that it's an agility test. Is there any other card that has a type-less test like this? That feels like a very weird way to write it. I guess they always want him coming in at base skill 0 for the test so they had to write it this way. The nice thing is they can just errata the card image if they want without impacting a physical product. So it's not that big a deal. As is this Skids is gonna want alot of card draw and alot of 2+ agility icon cards.

Hi all, long time no post (we should probably get a Return to the Forgotten Age thread going, huh?)

This is really interesting. The change to Daisy was overall less powerful, aside from the upgraded signature asset - her Parallel front-of-card was more interesting and encouraged a proper librarian deckbuilding feel but wasn't as straightforwardly effective as the normal version, and her Parallel deckbuilding was so limited as to be essentially pointless.

The Parallel Skids, however, is nuts . His front-of-card ability is inconsistent and risky on higher difficulties, but is substantially more flavourful and fitting for Skids, and synergises very pleasingly with all the big money/gambling cards like Well Connected, High Roller, Double or Nothing, Gregory Gry, etc - you could gamble 3 resources, put in Double or Nothing, gamble 3 Gregory Gry resources, commit "Watch This!" for 3 resources, and make (6 + 3 + 3) x2 = 24 resources! If you can succeed at a test with a base skill of 3 plus at least 2 committed icons, and a base difficulty of 6... Beyond crazy shenanigans, it's a less consistent version of Jenny's ability - if you're conservative with your gambling, and you are playing on Easy or Standard difficulty, you should be able to come out just slightly less wealthy than Jenny over time - but with no consistency. However, being able to trigger a skill test as a free trigger is inherently valuable - trigger it after enemy movement but before attacks in the Enemy phase and commit Quick Thinking to evade an enemy that just engaged you, trigger it and use 2x Drawing Thin (from Versatile) for guaranteed money, and so on. Which leads me to my first big problem with the design - the ability is worded such that you could activate it for 0 resources and trigger a difficulty 0 skill test, for no benefit other than getting huge benefits from committed skill cards for no action. I feel like the ability needed a second pass for balance, changing to "spend between 1 and 3 resources" and "during your turn" to prevent the majority of shenanigans (the other issues are better dealt with by targeting the problem cards themselves, like Double or Nothing).

The coolness, and the problems, persist in his Parallel deckbuilding. Access to Gambit and Fortune cards 0-3 mostly unlocks Survivor cards, plus a couple of seeker cards - see here for the current list on ArkhamDB . First of all, this feels far more right for Skids - the ex-convict should have been a secondary Survivor, not secondary Guardian, right from the beginning, since it makes far more sense for him to be relying on his wits and tenacity than to somehow make friends with police and openly carry legal firearms, and the Survivor options that he can now use work really well thematically, like "Look What I Found!" and Lucky! Additionally, his deck size limitations are very unique - a base deck size of just 25 cards, but when upgrading a Gambit or Fortune card, he can pay the full upgrade price to include both the original and the new card, with the original no longer taking up a slot in his deck - 4 copies of Hot Streak, 4 copies of Lucky! makes for never-before-seen deck possibilities. But by allowing access to Gambit and Fortune 0-3, Skids unfortunately now has access to Eucatastrophe. The combination of Eucatastrophe, Rogue tricks, economy and card draw, and a 25 card deck make for potentially the most broken investigator in the game, even without considering that the combination of his Elder Sign and 2 copies of Resourceful (via Versatile) would allow him to recycle Eucatastrophe forever, just like Silas albeit with slightly more setup - though again this is mainly a problem with Eucatastrophe, another card that perhaps shouldn't have been printed. I really dislike a lot of the power creep we're seeing, but the combo potential here is really problematic. It's a shame because, if you don't lean into it at all, you can make some really cool decks - how about Clue-Gatherer/evade tank Skids with "Look What I Found!", Fortuitous Discovery, Belly of the Beast and Eavesdrop? How about REALLY big money Skids, using his ability and 4 copies of Hot Streak to achieve wealth that Preston can only dream of? Combat Skids with Oops (0) and Oops (2) to guarantee damage even with his average base Combat, and Act of Desperation to keep a strong economy? Or even a Practice Makes Perfect/Daredevil Skids, with 4 copies of Daredevil and no other Rogue skills, finding and committing all 4 copies to a test (and then returning 1 of those to hand thanks to Practice Makes Perfect, to do it all over again next turn)?

The Parallel signature cards are pretty neat too - at least the signature event. Parallel Hospital Debts is just slightly worse in a very uninteresting way, but Parallel On The Lam redeems a really mediocre signature card and allows it to do a lot of work - you could round up lots of enemies (perhaps using his normal Guardian deckbuilding for Taunt?), move to a dead end, then deposit them there as he gets a free Elusive at the end of the round, neutralising a number of non-Hunter enemies at a stroke. A clue-gatherer skids can investigate from under the noses of enemies and then leave. And, since you don't need to be engaged with enemies to play it, at worst you can use it for a free double move at the end of the round - you can do far worse than a double Shortcut (0). The ridiculous deckbuilding and ability kind of overshadow just how much of an improvement this is - Skids has always lacked for ways to differentiate himself and be interesting, especially once Finn was released, and Parallel On The Lam is a strong step in the right direction.

I really like Parallel Daisy - she's fun to play alongside and with and enables some new approaches to an effective but relatively consistent investigator. Parallel Skids is also really interesting - I'm curious about playing Skids for the first time since I played him back in the core set days - but drags his power level up rather than down. Some of the imbalancing aspects of the design are disappointing and I feel like the designers went too far in making him different - if he'd just had 0-2 Fortune and Gambit, a standard 30 card deck and no ability to take extra copies of cards when upgrading, I feel like I still would have been satisfied with the redesign - sometimes, less is more. But it is what it is.

The new scenario has understandably not been the focus of attention, but I am actually really enthusiastic about it. The Parallel Daisy scenario, Read or Die, was actually quite a satisfying scenario that played to the strengths of Daisy and the Seeker class in general while not quite being as strong as a "proper" scenario (understandably so). All or Nothing looks much the same (spoilers ahead)

All in all, some downs, a lot of ups, an investigator who I have completely ignored now made interesting and viable, and more content, all for free. I love it, long may it continue.

12 hours ago, SGPrometheus said:

The only cards he can upgrade without removing are Fortune or Gambit traited cards, so he can still only run 2 Emergency Cache. In fact, aside from the two cards I talked about, I'm not sure there are any other gambit/fortune cards with multiple levels that he can take. Hopefully that changes with Wini's cards, just to give it some variety.

A Chance Encounter (0/2) and Oops! (0/2) are also options. And given the class breakdown of Gambit and Fortune cards, you're more likely to find more options in Stella's deck than Wini's...

2 hours ago, phillos said:

It's just missing that it's an agility test. Is there any other card that has a type-less test like this? That feels like a very weird way to write it. I guess they always want him coming in at base skill 0 for the test so they had to write it this way. The nice thing is they can just errata the card image if they want without impacting a physical product. So it's not that big a deal. As is this Skids is gonna want alot of card draw and alot of 2+ agility icon cards.

The best way to change it so that it doesn't have this issue is to change "Only [agility] and [wild] skill icons may be committed to this test." to "[Agility] and [Wild] skill icons are considered to be matching icons for this test." There have been other sort-of typeless tests in the past - e.g. the Resource Skill Test from Money Talks, and typed skill tests with a set base amount like Duke, Summoned Hound, Strange Solution or Augur/Hope/Zeal, but the Resource Skill Test is its own thing and the set base amount tests would still allow passive bonuses to apply, which Parallel!Skids' ability does not.

Huh. I looked at his deckbuilding changes.

Quote

(Old) Deckbuilding Options: Rogue cards level 0-5, Guardian cards level 0-2, Neutral cards level 0-5.

Quote

(New) Deckbuilding Options: Rogue cards level 0-5, Fortune cards level 0-3, Gambit cards level 0-3, Neutral cards level 0-5.

Currently, there isn't a Fortune or Gambit card in the game he can't take.

2 hours ago, Allonym said:

Hi all, long time no post (we should probably get a Return to the Forgotten Age thread going, huh?)

Yes please.
It’s so funny, because when RttFA released last week, I noticed a hole which “Allonym’s hot takes” usually filled and which has become one of my joys of newly released cards. I’ve noticed that you’d been absent for a while and hoped you were ok.
So, I’m glad (and relieved) that you are back!
And if you have any hot takes, please share! It was such a satisfying experience reading a thorough Allonym post on Skids’ new parallel card. 🙂

Maybe we can turn the boss from his personal adventure into an alternative weakness card? I did the same for daisy cause i found the the necronimicon to be rather boring and potentially weaker than the old one, as she might succeed on a test if her bonus is high enough.

Starter deck discussion:

2 hours ago, Duciris said:

Huh. I looked at his deckbuilding changes.

Currently, there isn't a Fortune or Gambit card in the game he can't take.

Yeah there was nothing above level 3 that I saw in my search filters. That is mainly due to many Fortune and Gambit cards being in the survivor card pool. His Additional deckbuilding rules are particularly nice since it gives Fortune and Gambit even in the Rogue card pool some more meaning in his decks. I liked that.

Oh, and his deck size is 25!?

yeah but he can inflate that with his additional rules. That said maybe leaving it at 25 is a tactic. Does his additional deckbuilding rules work in standalone. You don't really upgrade in standalone. That's interesting. His weakness doesn't work either so maybe that's fair.

So I decided to get the Skids and Daisy parallel cards printed out and was wondering if there were printable scans of Skids and Daisy’s original cards available to make the alternate versions (original front, parallel back and parallel front, original back) of these investigators.

Thanks,

RM

On 8/14/2020 at 11:54 AM, phillos said:

yeah but he can inflate that with his additional rules. That said maybe leaving it at 25 is a tactic. Does his additional deckbuilding rules work in standalone. You don't really upgrade in standalone. That's interesting. His weakness doesn't work either so maybe that's fair.

I hadn’t really considered a the standalone aspect, which his new scenario kind of is, unless it’s inserted into a campaign. Good insight.
I have also looked at some of the cards Winnie and Stella are getting that we know about and that secondary deck building option is going to be pretty powerful. He has no upper limit either, so could easily pass 30, though not in one go. Allonym’s Point about Eucastrophe is interesting. I am interacted to see if it does cause him to be almost broken while playing him.

3 hours ago, OC Architect said:

So I decided to get the Skids and Daisy parallel cards printed out and was wondering if there were printable scans of Skids and Daisy’s original cards available to make the alternate versions (original front, parallel back and parallel front, original back) of these investigators.

Thanks,

RM

Yes. Ours may not be the only way though. The best resolution we have gotten is from a screen shots of the cards off the website. I crop them and put them in an email, which keeps the resolution high. My husband is the wizard and puts them in a Word doc, sizes them to the correct specs and then arranges them to print back to back. He’s got this down to a science, because they line up perfectly. I guess it’s all about paying attention to the margins. We have a card stock printer and bought Paper that is the same weight FFG uses. They really turn out amazingly good.
So if you have all 4 sides of the two cards, you can print them in any configuration you want.

18 hours ago, Mimi61 said:

Yes. Ours may not be the only way though. The best resolution we have gotten is from a screen shots of the cards off the website. I crop them and put them in an email, which keeps the resolution high. My husband is the wizard and puts them in a Word doc, sizes them to the correct specs and then arranges them to print back to back. He’s got this down to a science, because they line up perfectly. I guess it’s all about paying attention to the margins. We have a card stock printer and bought Paper that is the same weight FFG uses. They really turn out amazingly good.
So if you have all 4 sides of the two cards, you can print them in any configuration you want.

I will give that a try. The print quality remains pretty good? My printer at home is not great but I do have some other options to print and play at home. The cards for All or Nothing and Read or Die (sensing a theme here in these titles) I sent out to a 'professional' card printing place but it is worth experimenting at home.

Thanks,

RM

On 8/15/2020 at 2:06 PM, OC Architect said:

So I decided to get the Skids and Daisy parallel cards printed out and was wondering if there were printable scans of Skids and Daisy’s original cards available to make the alternate versions (original front, parallel back and parallel front, original back) of these investigators...

Go to cardgamedb.com or arkhamdb.com. They'll both have the back side of investigators (and other cards) there in the same quality as the fronts.

That said, some of the original posts ( https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/9/23/talents-and-talismans/ ) have better quality images.