In order of appearance:

Agency

Educated Officer
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 3
Skill: 2
Icons: AI
Subtype: Investigator. Scientist.
Game Text: Response: After an Opponent’s character is wounded, draw a card.
F21

Cover Up
---------------------
Type: Event
Cost: 1
Subtype: Government.
Game Text: Action: Search your deck for a conspiracy card and put it into play.
F22

Cthulhu

Deep One Stowaway
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 3
Skill: 2
Icons: CA
Subtype: Deep One.
Game Text: Response: After you play Deep One Stowaway, choose and wound an exhausted character with cost 2 or lower.
F23

Disguised Serpent Man
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 3
Skill: 2
Icons: CCC
Subtype: Serpent.
Game Text: Action: Pay 1 to change one of Disguised Serpent Man’s [C] icons into a [T] until the end of the phase.
F24

Hastur

Sinister Clerk
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 2
Skill: 1
Icons: A
Subtype: Independent.
Game Text: Action: Exhaust Sinister Clerk to discard the top card of an opponent’s deck. If the discarded card is a character card, return Sinister Clerk to its owner’s hand.
F25

Twisted Choreographer
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 3
Skill: 2
Icons: A
Subtype: Artist.
Game Text: Twisted Choreographer gains all printed icons of characters attached to it. Response: After Twisted Choreographer enters play, attach a character in your discard pile to it.
F26

Horrifying Daydreams
---------------------
Type: Event
Cost: 2
Subtype: Madness.
Game Text: Loyal. Action: Choose a character. That character goes insane.
F27

Miskatonic University

Medical Student
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 1
Skill: 1
Icons: AI
Subtype: Student.
Game Text: Forced Response: After a character you control goes insane, Medical Student goes insane.
F28

Dean of Admissions
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 3
Skill: 3
Icons: AI
Subtype: Faculty.
Game Text: Faculty. Response: After you play a Student character, exhaust Dean of Admissions to draw a card.
F29

Flux Stabilizer
---------------------
Type: Support
Cost: 2
Subtype: Item.
Game Text: Characters may not enter play through triggered effects.
F30

Shub Niggurath

Predator of the Night
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 2
Skill: 2
Icons: C
Subtype: Dark Young.
Game Text: Response: After Predator of the Night commits to a story, choose a character with lower skill than Predator of the Night. That character must commit to the same story as Predator of the Night is able.
F31

One of the Thousand
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 1
Skill: 0
Icons: T
Subtype: Cultist.
Game Text: action: Shuffle One of the Thousand into its owner’s deck to lower the cost of the next [sN] character you play this phase by 1 (to a minimum of 1).
F32

Silver Twilight

Rich Widow
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 1
Skill: 1
Subtype: Lodge.
Game Text: Response: After a character leaves play, put Rich widow into play.
F33

Master Artificer
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 3
Skill: 3
Icons: CAA
Subtype: Lodge.
Game Text: Action: Exhaust Master Artificer to attach a Weapon support card from your hand to a character you control (following all restrictions).
F34

*The Silver Lance
---------------------
Type: Support
Cost: 3
Subtype: Attachment. Weapon. Artifact.
Game Text: Attach to a character you control. Response: After you succeed at a story where attached character is committed, return a character with printed cost 3 or lower to its owner’s hand.
F35

Spirit Dagger
---------------------
Type: Support
Cost: 1
Subtype: Attachment. Weapon.
Game Text: Attach to a character you control. Attached character gains “Response: After a character enters a discard pile from play, this character gains [C] until the end of the phase.
F36

Syndicate

*Thomas Bannano
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 5
Skill: 4
Icons: CCC
Subtype: Criminal.
Game Text: Toughness +1. While a character with [T] is committed to the same story as Thomas Bannano, Thomas Bannano gets -2 skill and gains [TCC] until the end of the phase.
F37

Gang Warfare
---------------------
Type: Event
Cost: 1
Subtype: Tactic.
Game Text: Play during your operations phase. Action: Sacrifice a Criminal character to exhaust each character with skill lower tan X. X is the skill of the sacrificed Criminal character.
F38

Yog-Sothoth

Stalking Hound
---------------------
Type: Character
Cost: 4
Skill: 2
Icons: TCA
Subtype: Independent.
Game Text: Fast. Response: After an opponent’s character enters play due to a trigger effect, put Stalking Hound into play from your hand or discard pile.
F39

A Gate Opens
---------------------
Type: Event
Cost: 2
Subtype: Disaster.
Game Text: Action: Choose an opponent. That opponent must return a character he controls to the top of its owner’s deck.
F40

Note: Please post any corrections.

Yay, the first to reply!

Cards I like:

- Educated Officer: Now, Agency also gets to draw (n) cards after wounding characters? Ugh. It's character like this that intrude into territory that should be reserved to Miskatonic. Where's the point of adding a second faction if Agency can already do it all by itself?

- Twisted Choreographer: More ways to utilize your discard! Not as potent as putting a character back into play as a character but still quite nice for the Hastur faction.

- Flux Stabilizer: Recently spoiled by Marius, this is a solid addition to the game. I'ts important that this is not a location. Though, judging from the new Cthonian cards, that may soon be irrelevant.

- *Thomas Bannano: Wow! Is this the first cost 5 character for Syndicate in the LCG? He's definitely potent, but will you ever be able to play him?

- Gang Warfare: This should be quite nice in the right deck. There's an increasing number of ways to profit in mutiple ways when sacrificing characters.

- Stalking Hound: Nice. Yet another character to enter play 'from out of nowhere'. Should be fun in mirror matches

- A Gate Opens: Another card previously spoiled. It's definitely potent. And it's also an intriguing new effect.

This AP reinforces my impression that Yog-Sothoth is on its way to turn into the most powerful faction. It also appeals to my preference of always having a trick up in your sleeves. I's hard to believe it once started out as the weakest faction in the Core Set!

Thanks for the Spoiler!

Yeah thanks for the spoiler, can't wait to test some of those cards.

I do think I have to put some thoughts into a conspiracy deck. Cover Up is a great addition to that mechanic.

Rich Widow, wow. seems like a card that may help make ST a bit more potent.

Highlights By Faction:

Agency

Educated Officer provides an interesting effect, I was thinking how Agency-Cthulhu could make great use of him with cards like Feeding Frenzy, and Ravager added to the mix of directed Agency wounding. I assume if you multi-wound from the same effect EO would let you draw as many cards as the number of opponent's characters you wounded.

Cthulhu

If the Serpent also had the Cultist trait he would actually be runnable and the deep One is a worse version of rats. IMO, both of these cards will not see play out of fun theme decks. As a person who has a mono Cthulhu as one of my main decks I see nothing of interest in this set for big green.

Hastur

Is the time ripe for a Yog-Hastur discard deck? Sinister Clerk would be potent with Things in the Ground and Prism of Many Views because you could preemptively control an opponent's hand, which is a nice set-up for a discard win condition.

Miskatonic University

I actually like Medical Student, you just need to make sure they are the ones who go insane first during struggles. MU has solid trifecta of 1 cost investigators. I may resurrect my fun mono MU rush deck... Flux Stabilizer is great tech fo MU who have some interesting meta choices (see: Cultist Journal Sketches).

Shub Niggurath

Predator has 2 skill which is sort of meh and does Shub really need another cost reducer? IMO Shub has weak cards in this AP... However, we all know what fantastically game warping support eater is on the horizon so you better watch out...

Silver Twilight

Widow helps the ST baby eating tech. The card I really like is The Silver Lance (How many Artifacts do we have now Mr. Shoes?). This card fits nicely into my Syndicate-Twilight deck. Evasion and bouncing is not just a kids game...

Syndicate

I am contradicted as some non-Euclidien angle regarding these cards. By themselves they seem like they are filled with awesomeness... Then I look at my deck and realize I will not be able to use them. Why? Bananas (seriously, that is his nickname on the card) is super cool but 1 above the cost ceiling for cards that I will consider a viable for the way I play Syndicate. IMO, design has consistently missed the mark on what Syndicate needs for their Character pool and they will not take submissions so I am at a loss on this one... Get this: Evasion>confrontation. Gang Warfare requires running higher skill Criminal Characters than what is optimal for a rush. But what real kills GW for me is the phase limitation. The reality is that I would need the kill my guy, causing some of my Characters to also exhaust, then what? GW requires too many contingency and is too limited to actually be useful (for me). I think design missed the boat on this card and on the Magician (previous AP) by being overly cautious regarding limitations, resulting in meh...

Yog Sothoth

Stalking Hound works with Things in the Ground and Limbo Gate correct? If I am right about this SH added to Intruder from Beyond is starting to make Yog extremly potent on the free Character level. A Gate Opens is also a sweet card. Yog seems to be the big winner in this AP!

Beasties entering play through Triggered effects has become one of the most dangerous Techs in the game. Flux Stabilizer puts all that crap on lockdown and gives Misk the time and control it needs to swipe stories.

Best card in the set IMHO.

Rich Widow's Response is unusable as written, since for a card to work from an out of play state it must specify from which out of play state it can be played, like "from your hand" or "from your discard pile".

EchPiEl said:

Good call. I double-checked the text on the card and it is accurate.

Also, Widow needs to be ruled to work exclusively from hand because it creates a loop that leads to a virtual auto win on turn two. If her ability is usable from discard then this:

• Ritual of Summoning, Horrific Methods
Type: Support
Cost: 3
Subtype: Ritual.
Game Text: Action: Sacrifice a character to place a success token on this card. Action: Discard 5 success tokens from Ritual of Summoning to put a character into play from your hand.

The card's controller Sacrifices Widow and Responds to bring her back into play, repeat 1,000 times to bring forth unlimited free Ancient Ones.

House Rule Errata in immediate effect: Response: After a character leaves play, put Rich widow into play from your hand.

I am sure we will get a correction in the next FAQ sometime in mid August…

Tokhuah said:

The version I've seen (and which I assume is the current version) has Steadfast for MU, so if you want to play it the normal way, you'll need an MU resource.

Tokhuah said:

I mean, it really is unusable, a character or support card ability is only usable when that specific card is in play unless its text specifically states from which out of play state it can be triggered, so Rich Widow's Response can only bring her into play from the already in play "area", which is a complete nonsense.

And allowing her to come into play from the discard pile gets even worse than the situation you described, a second turn widow + Ritual of Summoning + Stone Calendar means a 20 or 30 card draws, putting into play all characters drawn and proceed to stomp through the stories for the win.

@ Marius: Haven't you heard of the new dominant Agency-Cthulhu-MU archetype?

Seriously, you are correct of course... curse balance!

In the future I need to put steadfast requirements on the spoilers. Since it is associated with cost/play requirements this might work:

Educated Officer
-
Type: Character
Cost: 3 (MU)
Skill: 2
Icons: AI
Subtype: Investigator. Scientist.
Game Text: Response: After an Opponent’s character is wounded, draw a card.
F21

@ EchPiEl: I do not disagree. However, I think intuitively people will have a hard time believing FFG would print up a functionally blank card that obviously was intended to have functional text. My suggestion was more of a house eratta until the text is officially fixed by FFG. BTW, I already sent this issue to the official rules Gurus.

Tokhuah said:

@ Marius: Haven't you heard of the new dominant Agency-Cthulhu-MU archetype?

Seriously, you are correct of course... curse balance!

It's so crazy, it might even work! Don't worry, IMHO steadfast could be done better. Putting it in the name field puts it in a bit of a blind spot. Wouldn't be the first time someone halfway a game notices that something couldn't have been played due to steadfast requirements, doubly so for cross-faction steadfast.

Marius said:

I usually note that there are icons, but not necessarily of which type. It's the cross-faction cards that get me confused. Luckily the LCG doesn't have many (yet). 'Endless Interrogation' was one, but since it's now banned...

jhaelen said:

It entrirely not your fault. It's a problem in the card anatomy. There is a lot going on during a game, with keywords, icons and other moving pieces. The least interesting piece of information is the name field. I don't know how you play the game, but usually I identify cards by art, not by name. When I play it I say things like "I play a shoggoth" instead of using the proper name.

Not that steadfast doesn't work, but it's very easy to miss. Still, yeah, I also had the reaction of "what's card draw doing in agency?" when I saw the card for the first time. Took me a while to see the steadfast too.

Tokhuah said:

Tbh if the text would be just "from your hand" the card would be pretty bad. There are different ways to play a turn 2 GOO or even a turn 1 GOO and you have several counter possibilities for the rich widow/summoning circle mechanic. So I personally don't see there a problem yet.

The card does not work the way you say it does as per the current FAQ so I am not going to argue the brokeness of it at this point. Thanks to EchPiEl for pointing this out right before regionals. Here is the Official ruling from FAQ version 1.3:

(v1.0) Working Effects
In general, Support and Character card effects
can only be triggered (or affect the game) when
the card is in play. Event cards can be triggered
from a player’s hand using an action. However,
card effects on non-event cards in a player’s
hand or discard pile are not considered to be
actionable unless the card specifically states
that it can be triggered while in its out-of-play
state.

For Example: Darrin has The Thing Behind You
(Summons of the Deep F110) in his hand.
Normally he could not trigger the text on the
card unless it was already in play. However,
since the text on the card specifically states that
a player may trigger its effect from your hand,
Darrin may choose to use its ability.
Additionally, cards that are in play (or event
cards that are played) do not interact with cards
that are out of play unless they specifically
refer to an out of play state they will interact
with.

/FAQ quote. As you can see Rich Widow has no usable ability despite having a printed ability. Maybe there will be a future card that gives cards with an unusable printed ability or blanked text the ability to use their ability. I hope not... I hope they simply issue a card clarification that makes sense...

Yeah, my post should've said that IF there is coming an errata text for that card, I wouldn't mind if it can be played from your hand and discard pile.

But after I thought about it for some time, I guess it would be too powerful that way, even without GOO summoning, you could draw cards like crazy with a stone calendar combo...

I'll make the same comment here as the rules forum. That faq entry doesn't say that it has to mention which out of play state it's coming from, just that it's coming from an out of play state. "Put into play" by itself indicates that the card enters from out of play, so...

But yeah, I think it probably should have had "from your hand" on the card text.

Technically the card does say to put into play, an effect which can only ever work on a card in an out of play state, so there is a very solid argument that the card is specificying that it can be used from out of play. The rules do not require it to state which out of play state it works in.

Of course all of that is splitting hairs. Without that text this card could literally be triggered from anywhere, my hand, my discard pile, my deck , my box of spare cards out in my car .

It needs an errata. Has this been submitted via the rules question link?

Penfold said:

Well, to address the areas of play... You couldn't trigger it from the domain as it doesn't have a text box when attached to the domain (specific rule from the FAQ put in with Zoog cards I believe). Discard pile you could legally trigger it from (providing it was a character and not insane when it went to the discard pile) making this a card that is almost impossible to permanently get rid of.

Unfortunately, the box of spare cards in your car isn't a legal play area (either in or out of) as defined by the game, so I think we're ok there. Although, if you were trapped in the car playing, I suppose that's a "play area" but I think we're getting into Shoes territory here.

I knew the domain bit (which is why I didn't specifically mention that one), and the car part was me being facetious, but yes I agree that it needs errata for clarification.

Penfold said:

Endlessly...

I just got a response back from Damon and he said he had received only one other inquiry about it, this week.

There may have been some sort of glitch to prevent him from getting previous emails, or maybe they went to James instead. This is what I got -

"Thank you for the courteous email. Yes I was previously aware of the need for a FAQ addressing Rich Widow. I received 1 other email about this, a couple f days ago, but it has been on my radar for a few weeks now. Her text should read, "Response: After a character leaves play, put Rich Widow into play from your hand ." A FAQ for upcoming Regionals should be coming out before the end of the month. Thank you again for the email.

Damon Stone
Associate LCG Designer
Fantasy Flight Games"

So I guess we can expect one in a couple of weeks. FYI I replied back that a printer friendly version would be extra appreciated. Lets see what happens with that.

FYI, the last FAQ does have a printer friendly version. I believe it cam out a few weeks after the initial offering.