This almost slipped under the radar unnoticed but the new FAQ is up along with an update to the taboo cards.

RM

Rookquiescat in pace. We all knew it was coming.

But in other news, how about those mutation buffs? I actually really like new Winchester, since the non-taboo version is not only hot garbage but also weirdly out-of-theme for Guardians (since Guardians are usually reliable). Giving it bless synergy brings it in line with the new Guardian cards in Innsmouth, and its potential with Sure Gamble and Jim is icing on the cake. Granted, I suspect it's still not great, but at least it's interesting now.

As for Scroll of Secrets... it's basically a really slow Preposterous Sketches that takes up a hand slot. The level 0 version might be good if you have secret generation, and targeting the encounter deck might be strong at low player counts. The real beneficiary is the level 3 Mystic version, which can now properly exploit its scrying synergy (and is much better with Alyssa Graham).

Man, Knowledge is Power (+2xp) and the overused but amazing Mr. Rook (+4XP!!)...that's a big hit for my Norman Withers decks.

So, I’m playing the Dunwich campaign for the first time (don’t ask, it’s a long story... 😫 ). I just bought Higher Education 2 missions ago, now it’s 2 XP cheaper and one of the other players added Scrapper. Guess, we’ll add it to out next mission’s rewards...

I do like that they’re trying to keep the choices balanced so that deck building doesn’t settle on one or two key cards.

What were the combos or situations that made Double or Nothing get banned?

4 hours ago, sarumanthewhite said:

What were the combos or situations that made Double or Nothing get banned?

Double or Nothing combos with everything... at the same time. Your whole team could commit a ton of effects to one test and deal massive damage, draw most of their deck, and/or among other degenerate shinangens. Also, it really limits future design space.

Got, thanks. I never thought of the team throwing in a bunch of cards to kill the monster at the end of the game...

Some examples for double or nothing combos (or exploits):

- Commit Watch this, quick thinking, All in, Eureka, Perception, deduction 2, sharp vision...

- Draw 10 cards (all in), gain 2 actions (quick thinking), 9 ressources (watch this), gain 8 clues (deduction 2, sharp vision),...

- If your deck is small you could do this again right now or next turn. In this case All In is the main problem and it had it's own mutation (remove after using i think)

- To guarantee success, initiate an easy test or difficulty 0 (flashlight on shroud 1-2 or player cards like alchemic transmutation 2). Or use seal of the elder sign, will to survive, pnakotc manuscript. Or seal autofail.

- Archaic Glyphs (guiding stones) + higher education + double or nothing: take ridicuous amount of clues from one location in 1 action. 1 clue basically costs 0,5 ressources (Higher Education gives +2 INT per 1 ressources, guiding stones means you get another clue for every 2 points you succeed by and double or nothing doubles the total).

15 hours ago, OC Architect said:

This almost slipped under the radar unnoticed but the new FAQ is up along with an update to the taboo cards.

RM

By “unnoticed” you mean having a massive article where the designers to into great depth about their rational for the changes.

We admire your sarcasm 😁 😁

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2020/10/15/peer-beyond-the-veil/

Quote

Quick Thinking ( Undimensioned and Unseen , 229) (Mutated card ability now reads, “max once per round”): This mutation is primarily meant to prevent Quick Thinking from being used over and over again by Amanda Sharpe to potentially gain an infinite number of actions...

Holy crap! I was thinking that Dream Diary would be nuts with Amanda, but a potentially infinite combo with Quick Thinking, wow! Good change.

I don't use the Taboo list, but I think I'll enforce this one.

I do for the most part follow the taboo list since it does foster deck diversity. In the early days of the taboo list I felt it too greatly restricted Rogues, but they've since gotten more stuff in their card pool to make them more interesting so I'm less offended by the Rogue hate :). As someone who usually doesn't look for broken interactions stuff like DoN getting banned usually is less impactful for me. For stuff like that I might bend the list since it's still fun to play with those cards and others like them (Drawing Thin for example). Though it does at least signal me to where the card breaks down so I know to probably steer clear of it if I wanna not fall into a potentially OP deck build.

Simplifying the "As If" ruling makes me happy. Not sure yet if it makes Luke better or worse, but I was certainly avoiding playing with him because I didn't feel like parsing the "As If" rule. Now I might actually give him a chance. The situation they describe was exactly me. I'd read the ruling, look at cards, get confused, read the ruling again, google a specific card interaction, repeat a couple times then say to myself I'll just play someone else.

I just put Pathfinder in my Trish deck. I agree that movement effects tend to be extremely powerful and Pathfinder's almost universal value makes it hard to argue with when looking to spend experience. So it probably should be on the list.

I think the bumping of Scroll Of Secrets interesting. I have never included it in a deck.

Also I'm glad to see the boost on Winchester. Now it makes some sense as a weapon in a Bless or Bag control Guardian/Mystic deck. Particularly Jim makes it make more sense with his Skull effect and some bag control. Though if he's wielding a two handed weapon I don't know how he get's Blessed tokens in the bag as well to up it's reliability. I guess his partner could help out. Also it means Jim is out of hands for his Trumpet or other useful things like Ritual Candles and Grotesque Statues. I don't know. Having unreliable damage on a weapon is such a liability.

As a 1 XP include it feels like Machete is possibly alive again in a post taboo world, which is interesting. While I didn't miss Machete it was also kinda sad to see a weapon taboo-ed into non-existence.

Anyone else feel like we're getting to the point where they need to make Taboos mandatory for major events? I get the whole "It's voluntary" stuff, but we're getting into a large number of pretty degenerate designs and sitting down with one of these at a GenCon or Arkham Nights event sounds like zero fun at all.

50 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

Anyone else feel like we're getting to the point where they need to make Taboos mandatory for major events? I get the whole "It's voluntary" stuff, but we're getting into a large number of pretty degenerate designs and sitting down with one of these at a GenCon or Arkham Nights event sounds like zero fun at all.

I've never even heard of someone breaking the game (or being particularly OP (without spending 39XP+)) at Arkham Nights.

Just now, Duciris said:

I've never even heard of someone breaking the game (or being particularly OP (without spending 39XP+)) at Arkham Nights.

At our local invocation event I was stuck in a game with someone running a pre-Taboo Key deck. Those people definitely do exist

If nobody abuses it anyway the restriction is irrelevant, so why not put it in place just in case?

54 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

Anyone else feel like we're getting to the point where they need to make Taboos mandatory for major events? I get the whole "It's voluntary" stuff, but we're getting into a large number of pretty degenerate designs and sitting down with one of these at a GenCon or Arkham Nights event sounds like zero fun at all.

Agreed. Maybe not 3 years ago, when the options for how to abuse a card were more limited, but these days, there are so many other ways to accomplish things.

I have always liked DoN, but have never been in a situation that could really exploit it. I can see Double Double and DoN do some serious harm too. But even with the ways DoN can be abused, a lot of stars wild have to align, for all of those cards to be available at the same time and everyone being at the same location to use them. I would think those experiences would be more the exception than the rule. I think something more along the line of, “No other cards may be committed to a skill test while using DoN” would have bought it back closer to its original inception I will miss it. 😢

Machete’s change is appropriate and Thank you Matt for making Higher Education feasible again.

I’be been waiting for a Mr Rook change for a while, although I anticipated it would be +3.

I agree on DoN. I don't think it needed to be forbidden...there were restrictions that could have been imposed to avoid abuse. I don't think that banning all other cards in the test is needed (that might make it unworkable) but they could have banned other investigators from contributing cards to the skill test and reduced the number of other events or skills associated with the test to, say, one or two...or blanked the text of all but one other card commited to the test. I have never being able to manufacture a game-breaking combo with DoN, or been interested in creating a deck to exploit it.

I tend not to use the taboos but I think there are some sensible balances here...particularly Quick Thinking and Sleight of Hand.

I agree Sleight of Hand and Knowledge is Power (which are similar cards) both needed tweaking, especially with the old Taboo for SoH which needed to be brought down a notch and all the new Tomes and Spells making KiP too powerful. The idea of getting other cards into decks is a good one.
Quick Thinking and Amanda was a good catch.

14 hours ago, Dr Dee said:

I agree on DoN. I don't think it needed to be forbidden...there were restrictions that could have been imposed to avoid abuse.

I think they threw in the towel on DoN because any fix they made to the text would be longer than the current text itself. They lay out their conditions for altering text and keeping card modifications simple is a prime requirement. IMHO that's a good one.

Remove from game doesn't help as you rarely need to recur it (I threw a 16 damage Shotgun blast at GenCon thanks to DoN). Limiting other skill cards is weird timing, or lots of text modifications - and would honestly make the card almost useless anyway.

It was a crazy fun idea, but one that just couldn't find a good middle ground to function. RIP (twice).

you'll have to pry DoN out of my cold dead hands. i love that card! XD

First of all, I'm not a taboo player. Nobody will convince me to be either because if I want deck diversification, I'll just build it in and restrict myself from taking certain cards etc.

As for Arkham Nights/official events though, that is an interesting question about whether taboo is enforced there or not. Everywhere it's been explained, it has been reinforced as 'optional'. I don't disagree with any of their suggestions. These are all powerful cards that see a lot of play. But 9 times out of 10, they also make the game more fun for the player. And if they get stale, again, my group will just opt not to use them. And while Mr. Rook seekers are surely powerful, I won't ever tell my players they can't use cards or have to abide by taboo etc.

DoN being the first forbidden card does not surprise me at all. But it is a shame. Seekers and Guardian both inarguably get clues and fight better than any other faction. Survivors/Mystics/Rogues are more all-round types but the real distinction between them is playstyle. DoN was exactly the kind of card that played into Rogue risk vs reward mechanics, and often helped put them on par with seekers or guardians. The problem is that the card is very exploitable because you can commit things that generate further damage and/or clues and there is no limit to this. And it is very situational. Unless you can recur it and throw it at multiple tests, one massive success usually won't break a scenario (the exception being a boss enemy). Even if you get all of the clues from a single location and pull like 6 clues at once, that usually won't break a scenario. It only becomes problematic when a scenario has a a single card that is the crux of the scenario and relies on a test (like a combat test).

Anyway, just spinning my thoughts. I like the Winchester changes, but I'm not likely to use those and ignore all the other taboos. Even at my table, people have been selecting the Winchester as it is. But we often play on easy or normal where 0s, and +1s, are still in the bag.

27 minutes ago, Soakman said:

First of all, I'm not a taboo player. Nobody will convince me to be either because if I want deck diversification, I'll just build it in and restrict myself from taking certain cards etc.

But we often play on easy or normal where 0s, and +1s, are still in the bag.

yeah, i have made these kinds of modifications to my own tastes as well. if i don't like a rule, i bend it (consistently, though, not circumstantially). and i've tinkered with the chaos bag to be not quite so brutal ~ i want to enjoy playing instead of getting killed two locations into a scenario. even so, i've had plenty of challenging moments (and have fled every Carcosa scenario so far). and when i play with Wini, i throw a couple of extra negative modifiers in because she definitely was kinda outta control in NotZ, so she needs more heat.

4 hours ago, Soakman said:

As for Arkham Nights/official events though, that is an interesting question about whether taboo is enforced there or not. Everywhere it's been explained, it has been reinforced as 'optional'. I don't disagree with any of their suggestions. These are all powerful cards that see a lot of play. But 9 times out of 10, they also make the game more fun for the player. And if they get stale, again, my group will just opt not to use them. And while Mr. Rook seekers are surely powerful, I won't ever tell my players they can't use cards or have to abide by taboo etc.

Using them or not for your own group is up to you. As it always was, honestly. Even in games where the errata is not explicitly optional (like LOTR) there are many people who choose to ignore it.

The distinction matters more for larger events. I have no doubt that people who use degenerate cards find them fun. The problem is that they're rarely fun for everyone else at a table. Whether it's just trivializing content or sitting there doing nothing while someone takes half an hour to do their infinite action turn, it's just a miserable experience. Especially when you end up in a mixed group of random players (which is a big part of the fun of large events) taking the fun out of everyone else's play in the name of your own isn't cool. It's no different than one player demanding to play on Expert when the rest of the group just wants to do Standard, except that officially that one person can override everyone else at the table in the name of their version of fun.

Does anyone know who was the man featured in the page 3 of the new FAQ?

16 hours ago, Buhallin said:

Using them or not for your own group is up to you. As it always was, honestly. Even in games where the errata is not explicitly optional (like LOTR) there are many people who choose to ignore it.

The distinction matters more for larger events. I have no doubt that people who use degenerate cards find them fun. The problem is that they're rarely fun for everyone else at a table. Whether it's just trivializing content or sitting there doing nothing while someone takes half an hour to do their infinite action turn, it's just a miserable experience. Especially when you end up in a mixed group of random players (which is a big part of the fun of large events) taking the fun out of everyone else's play in the name of your own isn't cool. It's no different than one player demanding to play on Expert when the rest of the group just wants to do Standard, except that officially that one person can override everyone else at the table in the name of their version of fun.

Exactly why it's an interesting question. The central issue to me is that these cards are generally taboo'd (in most cases) because of particular builds that create nearly broken combos. But the cards themselves can be used outside of those combos as a pretty normal function of the game. You never know what personalities you're going to get in a big event, so some may decide to run infinite combos or whatever, which is lame of them, but technically possible.

I just don't like this idea that you can't trust players to play nice with each other in a coop, so we have to change the balancing on cards to correct for bad player behavior.

12 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Exactly why it's an interesting question. The central issue to me is that these cards are generally taboo'd (in most cases) because of particular builds that create nearly broken combos. But the cards themselves can be used outside of those combos as a pretty normal function of the game. You never know what personalities you're going to get in a big event, so some may decide to run infinite combos or whatever, which is lame of them, but technically possible.

I just don't like this idea that you can't trust players to play nice with each other in a coop, so we have to change the balancing on cards to correct for bad player behavior.

I'm more concerned that I'll end up with Dr. Milan Christopher and end up being told I can't gain a second resource in a turn, or that I can't afford the extra XP cost of certain cards.

7 hours ago, Navycator said:

Does anyone know who was the man featured in the page 3 of the new FAQ?

He's an NPC involved in the story of the Innsmouth Conspiracy.