Grisly Totem

Grisly Totem

FYI:

Greetings,

Both Grisly Totem (3) and Take Heart have the same triggering condition—“If the skill test fails”—which occurs during step 7 of the skill test, when the effects of the successful/failed test resolve. Because both effects trigger at the same time, you may decide the order in which they resolve. You may therefore choose to resolve Take Heart before Grisly Totem, then return Take Heart to your hand if you so choose.

Cheers,

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Matthew Newman

Senior Card Game Developer

Fantasy Flight Games

mnewman@fantasyflightgames.com

dubcity566 · 18

Pushed into the Beyond

Pushed into the Beyond

This and Corrosion from Carcosa has made me appreciate throwaway assets like Cherished Keepsake and Leather Coat even more. It's very scary to only have must-have assets in play with this card in the encounter deck.

bigstupidgrin · 5
Pushed into the Beyond and Crypt Chill can both be much safer with the two assets you mentioned, but neither help with Corrosion. Corrosion is better handled by keeping spare expensive items in your hand to feed it. — Death by Chocolate · 10

Hawk-Eye Folding Camera

Hawk-Eye Folding Camera

Staple. End of review. Thanks FFG. Now how do I make it 200 characters long? I'll maybe say that it is even better, when playing seekers that like magic. I'd play it on Roland also. One handed weapons, coupled with xp dynamite tend to be enough.

Onetribe · 164
It's a staple for Marie as well. Draw it early and she can get to 5/5 very quickly. Couple it with St Hubert's Key for 6/6. All of a sudden she's a monster. — Sassenach · 28
I think it works well for investigators who have 3+ willpower and 3+ intellect already and want to use both. Otherwise I tend to think that Magnifying Glass works better- seekers would rather have that +1 intellect now rather than later, and having to clear 2 locations first decreases the net benefit of the intellect boost quite a bit. The glass also has a more relevant seeker icon, is fast, and costs 1 which means you can put it out alongside Milan and get going turn 1. Plus there's the upgraded glass which is just an easy discount. So I think Marie likes this, Carolyn likes this, and Daisy likes this. Ursula might, but I think I'd still rather take Magnifying Glass with her since she doesn't have access to Mystic cards. — StyxTBeuford · 18

Drawing Thin

Drawing Thin

There was allot of hype about this card when it was spoiled and many reviewers considered it to be “OP” and a sure candidate for the next update of the “Taboo List”. Because you get the resources independently of the result of the skill test many consider this card to be free resources or card draw. After using this card though its limitations become apparent:

  1. Expending actions to trigger this is from an action economy perspective not worth it most of the time. The only benefit of doing this would be 1 resource, which is quite mediocre considering the price of failure in this game (#BS-Tokens).

  2. Accordingly, you want to trigger this card on test you don’t have to expend actions to initiate, namely skill test triggered by revelation effects of encounter cards or locations and skill test triggered by reaction effects of assets like Track Shoes. This means you can’t trigger Drawing thin at will. You have to hope for the right treachery or have track shoes and don’t care about failing the test or even succeeding and moving to a place you don’t want to go. This of course is a heavy consistency blow to this card.

  3. As any card that deals benefits over time, the efficiency of Drawing thin diminishes the later you get to play it. If it appears late during the scenario you probably won’t be able to take the possible tempo hit to play it and trigger it. This adds up to the consistency problem.

  4. I have to also emphasize the price of failure in this game. The effects of the infamous BS-tokens (cultist, skull, tablet, squid) can go from irrelevant to devastating depending on the scenario and the difficulty you are playing on. At least in 4 scenarios of a campaign the negative effects will be egregious, specially on hard and expert. “If you fail add 1 doom to all cultist in the game”, “if you fail search for X monster enemy and draw it”, “if you fail take 2 horror and burn your collection”…ok the last one was a joke but you get the point.

In conclusion I will say that this card can be awesome in certain circumstances but at least for me it fails to make a big impact more often than not. Using Drawing thin effectively requires good deckbuilding skills and some insight in game tempo and action economy. It is not like good old (pre nerf) Dr. Milan Christopher that you can just put into play and make it rain. For this reasons I wouldn’t support a nerfing of this card.

PD: I tried Drawing thin in the Return to the Night of The Zealot and in the first 5 scenarios of the Circle Undone on hard difficulty with Wendy Adams.

Alogon · 22
I agree with this. I feel like it's a really powerful card, but only as part of the right combo, whereas e.g the Key of Ys is/was just enormously brilliant all the time. I think in some ways the card it's most comparable to is Double or Nothing. Both cards encourage you to try and get as much as possible out of a single skill check, but the main differences are that Double or Nothing wants you to pass the skill check at increased difficulty while Drawing Thin wants you to fail, the maximum payout from Drawing Thin is lower and Drawing Thin can be used every turn. So, since it's much easier to guarantee that you fail than guarantee, I can see why Drawing Thin looks so attractive as the missing piece, so to speak, of the survivor fail-to-win combo. That said, though, I don't think it's the only way to use the card. The most use I've got out of Drawing Thin is in a Finn deck with Lockpicks and Lola Santiago. I think that gets around the two big costs of the card , in that you're not spending actions just to trigger Drawing Thin (because you want to investigate anyway), and you're aiming to pass the check so the consequences of failing aren't a problem. And base 10 investigation skill is often high enough that adding +2 to the test difficulty doesn't make a practical difference to the odds of success. In that case , it's all upside. So I think that because Drawing Thin is only really really good within combos, and because those combos are quite diverse it's going to be tricky to nerf it without making it useless. If it does end up on a taboo list, I'll be interested to see if the designers strike that balance :) — bee123 · 9
Must say when I first saw this card I thought it was hugely OP, or at least it really needed to cost a couple of xp to make it more realistic. Having used it a bit in a variety of decks I'm less sure of that now though. The best results I had with it were with Wendy in combination with either Trackshoes/Peter Sylvestre or Lockpicks. It's massively useful there because you can trigger it during a test that you're likely to succeed at even with the extra 2 difficulty. I haven't tried it yet, but I'd imagine it would also be great for Agnes in combination with Pete Sylvestre(2) , Holy Rosary and Sixth Sense. In that scenario you can just plough through any shroud 3 or lower location and likely get a clue + 2 resources every time. If you're aiming to use it as a 'fail to win' card it's not so hot though. It's basically take an action to gain 2 resources, which is not terrible exactly but how often are you able to just burn an action ? I've run it a number of times in decks without an obviously dominant combo and found that most of the time the returns were way more disappointing than I expected them to be. — Sassenach · 28
I agree with the comments, Drawing Thin shines only within a well thought combo. Having to set up for it to work properly though limits the consistency of the card. I think that in a Finn Edwards deck with Lokpicks, Lola Santiago and Track Shoes this card has the most probability to shine. Nevertheless it must be considered that on hard and expert difficulty, specially during the mid-late campaign, the chaos bag will get so nasty, that you will be burning through your lockpicks allot quicker if you are using them while triggering Drawing Thin. — Alogon · 22
I’ve been running it in Calvin on Normal Circle Undone, and it’s been great. I fail tests often enough anyways that it floods me with resources, and it has a sweet combo with fire axe that lets me make multiple bonus damage attacks with an attack bonus in a round. That said, there are also plenty of rounds that I don’t have the opportunity to use it, especially in the late game after I’ve built up, but it doesn’t really matter by then. In my experience, it hasn’t been OP, but it has definitely been strong. — Death by Chocolate · 10
I didn't consider Calvin because he is...well Calvin, the embodiment of masochism. I think in his case it becomes even more vital to draw Drawing Thin early to make it work, because of his painfully (he literally has to take damage) slow set up and momentum/tempo problems at the start of the scenario. — Alogon · 22
I think it's worth noting that you're very likely to draw Drawing Thin early if you really need it, given that you're willing to mulligan your whole hand. Expected # of Drawing Thins drawn in an opening hand (that seeks through 10 cards given the mulligan; this is a hypergeometric expected value) in a deck with 2 of them is 2*10 / 33, or 20/33. So on average your hand will have 3/5 of a copy of DT, and the variance is 20/33 * 31/33 * 23/32, or about 4/9 , S.Dev is about 2/3, so it's reasonable to expect around 1 copy in every other opening hand. You could go further with this and say that we probably are also running Take Heart and Rabbit's Foot, which will help us draw into Drawing Thin earlier if it isn't in our opening hand, so the expected number of economy cards in an opening hand given we're willing to mulligan for them is 6*10/33 or almost 2, meaning our average opening hand has around two of these cards in them (variance is 60/33 * 27/33 * 23/32, about 1 therefore S. Dev is also about 1, so expect on average 1-3 of these cards in an opening hand). I'd say if you're running DT in an economy deck it's reasonable to expect that you'll draw into them, and with Calvin there's not really any other good early game options for him (aside from Rise to the Occasion and the new card coming in Clutches), so he's perfect for such a set up. — StyxTBeuford · 18
Actually quick correction: the odds are slightly better because it really should be out of 31, not 33 (weaknesses get automatically replaced). — StyxTBeuford · 18

Enchanted Blade

Enchanted Blade

I really like this card in Mark Harrigan, and think that it might be a good option for Roland Banks as well. I think the card combines 3 different effects into one for a pretty cheap price. Over time the card will generally end up drawing you 3 cards and healing 3 horror for 3 resources, but on top of that it's a weapon that gives you +2 to hit and also can gain +1 damage when you need it. The downside of it having such limited charges is somewhat mitigated by the fact that at least for 3 health enemies you still take the exact same amount of attacks to kill, and with a character like Mark you already want to be running Beat Cop, Vicious Blow, and have access to The Home Front so you can make the card 1-shot 3-4 health enemies without having to exert TOO much effort. The temporary nature of the card is made up for by the fact that it draws you cards, so you can reasonably draw into another weapon with that. And the Sanity heal is wonderful, Mark and Roland are both investigators that you're always worried about taking Horror, but most of the horror healing cards in the game are pretty slow and aren't very good, meaning you had to choose between playing weak reactive cards or put yourself at great risk of getting defeated by Horror. With this card you can get some crucial horror healing while not having to divert yourself from your main gameplan. It might be a bit bad to spend 3 XP on a weapon that isn't really going to be your primary option into late-game, but it's a solid rolefiller that I think is worth the XP cost, especially if you have a bit to spend.

Sylvee · 31
The XP cost is a tad high, but this is probably one of the best "backup" weapons out there. Not only is it good enough until you draw your main weapon, but it actually helps you get your main weapon with a little card draw! — cb42 · 15