Hy there, just a quick question because I'm already ingame at the moment 
Can Marie's "Witch Blood" ability be used during the final battle or only beforehand? Thanks for an answer in advance.
Marie Lambeau's Witch Blood ability
I never thought about this opportunity (I usually use Witch blood to prevent the AO to awaken) but... I'd say you can. In the rules (pag. 22), under the Paragraph 1 - Investigator refresh, it's written that investigators are allowed to "use any character abilities". So even Witch blood, I'd say. Not so sure about this, anyway.
I thought about it, because otherwise there would be no reason not to use the ability on the very first opportunity, at least I can't imagine one. It shouldn't matter whether you remove a doom token right at the beginning or in late game (except you want the GOO to wake up, of course).
Yes, you can use it during final combat, but why would you save it post-Innsmouth? It's normally much more effective to use it and pass her condition for an extended doom track.
If something can't be used in the final battle it will usually tell you it can't.
That..... never occured to me. Against certain AOs that may actually be a good tactic, if you think you can't win before final combat.
If you do have IH (and use Personal Stories), Marie becomes almost too powerful, since when passing her PS (which gets done by turn 2 easily), she can use WB twice in a game. +2 doomer requirement makes 12 doomers into Azathoth. 10 and 11 doomers can still cause problems, but even they become more manageable. 13 and 14 doomers? 
Avi_dreader said:
Yes, you can use it during final combat, but why would you save it post-Innsmouth? It's normally much more effective to use it and pass her condition for an extended doom track.
I don't own Innsmouth Horror yet 
A. Harbinger said:
Avi_dreader said:
Yes, you can use it during final combat, but why would you save it post-Innsmouth? It's normally much more effective to use it and pass her condition for an extended doom track.
I don't own Innsmouth Horror yet
In that case save it for when the doom track is close to done and then decide if you're going to final battle or not (one risk in this strategy though, is that she'll get devoured— it's unlikely, but possible, beware the black swan!)
Avi_dreader said:
Yes, you can use it during final combat, but why would you save it post-Innsmouth? It's normally much more effective to use it and pass her condition for an extended doom track.
Well, sometimes, you feel that an extra-turn won't be enough, so it then becomes useful to remove one (/two with PS) doom tokens after the AO has awaken (I found it useful anyway 
) especially with Innsmouth AO that are very tough to defeat in combat.
Her ability also becomes more valuable the larger the game is. Using Marie's ability in a two-investigator game is equivalent to getting two successes in combat. Not terribly difficult. In an 8-player game, that's 8 successes in one shot; significantly more impressive. Of course, using her ability during a larger game gives 8 more 'investigator turns' so you have to figure out which is more valuable.
Generally I save her ability for the end of the game when it may or may not be getting too close for comfort. Her ability isn't going to sway the game in your favor if you use it early and then everything goes horribly wrong afterwards, so why not? If you need to get someone out of a gate but depending on what cards are drawn the final battle may or may not happen, I'd use it. If you need to get a gate closed but there's no one in there, I'd save it. Short of a miraculous combination of card-drawing, the final battle would happen anyway.