Most likely you don't have to read this review to know how powerful Scrying is.

Everyone who played The Lord of the Rings LCG by Fantasyflight games over the last years knows what nasty stuff the encounter deck will throw at you to ruin your game and the same goes for Arkham Horror. (Everybody who got busted up by Umôrdhoth's Wrath please raise your hand.)

So just like in LotR LCG, cards with an "encounter deck manipulation" effect are very powerful. There are different forms of encounter deck manipulation. Some examples are:

• cards that simply cancel the effects of a drawn encounter deck card
• cards that let you know what the next draw(s) from the encounterdeck will bring
• cards that let you move cards within the encounter deck..

Scrying let's you do the latter 2 things. Knowing that a very nasty thing will happen in 3 rounds (or that it won't happen) makes it a lot easier to plan ahead and decide what cards to play or to keep in hand. "Burying" a particular nasty enemy or threachery to delay it being drawn for like 8 rounds and at the same time controlling in what order the next 8 cards from the encounter deck will be drawn is even stronger.

After using Scrying, you know its safe when to to play Drawn to the Flame, because you plan using it knowing that you will draw Obscuring Fog at a location with no more clues on it. Or you can just prevent Umôrdhoth's Wrath coming into play for a lot of rounds. And as a cherry on top, Scrying let's you take a look and order the next 3 cards in the investigator deck too.

For me, Scrying is an almost auto-include for every investigator whose deck building rules will permit me to use it... IF I'm playing solo. Due to the fact that more players means more draws from the encounter deck each round, Scrying sadly loses a lot of its power in multiplayer games. If the team of investigators has to draw 2-4 cards from the encounter deck each round, Scrying just can't keep up. In solo-play however, this will be a card that we will be still using for years to come.

I just realized how good this card is, it has so much depth and nuance as the game's core design depends a lot on encounter draws. The 4 phases are designed around reactively fixing unknown problems, then use whatever remaining actions left to go forward as much as possible. This card flips the phases around and now you are instead actively making progress that at the same time minimize the impact of now-known incoming problems.

Scrying is rather dependent on your team, so it is not commonly seen on decklists here that focus on card combos inside a single deck. I would like to review situations where this card gets good :

• Overlapping roles. (Should occurs easily on 3 players+) This is so you feel like using on Scrying is better than other things and the progress is still going forward by other players. It often won't feel convincing until you get to spend to see the result of it for a few times.
• A balanced party so you always have high affinity encounter assignment. This is mostly achieved automatically by not using the same faction and having 3+ players (I think 3 is the best as you know all assignment targets), for example :
  • Having 4-5
  • Having 4-5
  • A fighter with 2 damage weapon
  • Someone with clues (so they can drop/spend to get a milder punishment)
  • Mix of high health and high sanity
  • Someone that an entire card type (asset/event/skill) does not matter
  • Someone that don't need as much resources / cards on hand
• You should scry early in Investigation Phase so other players can change their course of action.
  • Many encounter cards can be nullified just by moving to advantageous location. (e.g. harder the higher shroud, you are going to drop clue, the location is going to get locked down)
  • Some other cards has condition that lands on the "worst" place judging from some value (e.g. most remaining clues, furthest/nearest location, empty location), and you can go do prep work to force ties so you can select a better one.
  • They can simply group up and try to gather commit icons ahead of time. I think this is one of the most elegant use of same location commit rule and it shows why this card is in a core set.
  • If enemy has Spawn you often can take advantage of it because you can choose engagement. For example, even if the fighter get arranged a treachery test, a Seeker that got arranged a Spawn enemy can group up with the fighter ahead of time and make it drop to engage the fighter anyway, appearing as if the fighter draws 2 encounters and Seeker gets none.
  • There are locations that the effect draws treachery inside investigation phase.
• You can disrupt "treachery combo" by rearranging. For example one treachery that adds doom to enemy, followed by an another that uses those doom for something worse. Or one that spawns an enemy, and the next one that forces that enemy to attack immediately. Usually you cannot do anything with this, and it often occurs on 3 or 4 players. You can also make some card Surge (and arrange what it surges into) or not Surge as you like as it often comes with a criteria you can play around.
• Improves the Resource and Draw action. This is not obvious to me at first that Scrying is an enabler of these actions, just like Fight / Investigate / Move gets better with other cards.
  • When playing with expensive Event (like Backstab, Will to Survive, etc.), chance that you are lacking resources to play while you already got them on hand. Normally, you would feel spending action to gather enough resources ahead of time, just in case, won't be the best course of action. Better to wait for Upkeep income drip feed.. or is it? If you know the future though, getting resources suddenly make a lot of sense sometimes.
  • If arranging an investigator's deck, likewise you can make Draw action more compelling for someone.
  • The same for someone needed to setup multiple Asset to get going, it makes priority clearer. e.g. If you have .45 Automatic and Beat Cop to setup and having 7 resources, with a strong enemy coming, getting 1 resource and play both to end your turn may better ensure swift dispatch of that enemy.
• You can talk about Peril / Hidden cards. (This is very thematic for having a Mystic in your team when it happens!)

Here are some more minor combos, but they should not be the main criteria whether to take this or not, this is still good even if you don't have any of these :

• You can take advantage of (cheap) Spell Asset. (Dragon Pole, Summoned Servitor sacrifice, Meditative Trance, Arcane Initiate, Heirloom of Hyperborea, playing with charges, bump away doomed spells, etc.)
• Ease the encounter drawing card like Drawn to the Flame or Delve Too Deep.
• Obvious combo cards like : Foresight, Written in the Stars, Gloria Goldberg. Even someone unexpected like Lola Hayes will appreciate knowing the future so she can use this round's unused free role swap to prepare.
• Someone with cancel ability (Ward of Protection, Deny Existence, Alter Fate, Counterespionage, etc.) or forwarding/helping ability ("Let me handle this!", "You handle this one!", Brother Xavier, True Grit, Obsidian Bracelet, Martyr's Vambrace, Bestow Resolve, etc.)
• Having someone with spawn techs (e.g. Ambush, Disc of Itzamna), location techs (e.g. Barricade, Hiding Spot, Makeshift Trap, Map the Area), or multiple enemies techs (e.g. Power Word, Storm of Spirits, Dynamite Blast, Makeshift Trap Explosive, etc.) They worked out like happy coincidence if you know what's coming and you do it ahead of time!
• You can indirectly farm more XP with this card. Often near the end of scenario you are deciding whether to stay one or two more rounds or finish the scenario but enemy spawn or added doom would fail the scenario. You have no fear if you reveal the future with this card. (You may even see remaining random VP enemy and arrange to kill it.)

My friend is playing Akachi Onyele with Dragon Pole and is only including this for slot filling and Angered Spirits fodder. We were pleasantly surprised each time he decided to drink some tea, entire encounter draw is mostly neutralized using just 1 action of 1 player... This is a game with high chance of spiraling down, when you did not get spiral down, the situation at the end looks very different from the other sequence of treachery drawing. Fighter just fight. Seeker just clues. Any dump stats of anyone gets promptly patched up with grouping up and helping commits. Unspeakable Oath we just cleared was noticeably unlike any other plays without Scrying I started wondering if I missed any rules, there are so many rounds left!

From a theoretical perspective, this card is underwhelming and possibly overrated.

Counting 1 resource as 1 action, the first usage of scrying costs 3 actions, resp. a full turn. On that basis, let's evaluate what you get for that.

1) Use against encounter deck.

You get a slight chance of postponing something unfortunate, or possibly get a slightly smoother transition through the encounter deck.

Depending on the size and content of the encounter deck, there is a good to great chance that this card does nothing. If you hit a threatening encounter card, it'll just be delayed.

If you hit something that makes you feel smart (i.e. putting Obscuring Fog on top so that it lands on an empty location), there was a 33% chance that you would have drawn it in that order without playing Scrying in the first place.

All in all, there is a non-zero chance that this card does nothing.

Also consider this: you are investing at least the equivalent of 3 actions. While I can't estimate it precisely, I wager that I can handle a good chunk of the encounter deck for fewer actions than that.

2) Use against the player deck.

I believe this is simple. The first usage costs an equivalent of 3 actions. The player you use it on might as well have drawn 3 cards.

While consecutive uses get cheaper (as the upfront invest of 1 resource and 1 action to play have been paid), there is also the hidden cost of adding this card (with poor skill symbols) to the deck in the first place.

In the end, you are given a basic choice:

1) Draw the best card out of the top 3 cards for 2 actions. 2) Draw a random 1 of 3 card for 1 action.

From an action economy perspective, you are almost always favouring option 2).

In the end, action economy is the bane of Scrying. The feel good moments it creates obfuscate its inefficiency. An example: You scry top 3 and Paranoia shows up. You send it to the bottom of the 3 stack and spend your next 2 turns dumping resources, essentially countering your basic weakness. What a great effect!

Again: You spent 33% of your turn (and a measurable fraction of the entire allotted time!) doing that, for a slight chance (depending on how deep you are into your deck) of pulling this trick off. Furthermore, you must discount the odds of drawing Paranoia while being out of resources anyway.

Theoretically, this card isn't great. Practically, it's always sitting in my hand, eventually getting used for a skill check.

Edit: There is a further hidden cost of blocking a spell slot for something essential, which again, makes this card even worse.