Spectral Shield

Can't believe it took me this long to notice and correct me if I'm wrong, but this card seems fully Diana Stanley jank-enabled similar to Delay the Inevitable and "Fool me once...". With the Twilight Blade out, she can play this card from underneath her every round and then cancel damage or horror and place it back underneath her to recur the resource while drawing a card. Even better, Diana can take some of the Guardian allies that deal themselves damage or horror like Beat Cop or Field Agent to create a nice self sufficient card draw engine while testlessly getting clues and/or damage pings. On top of that, as these are all actions, they can very easily be done outside of the phases where you have played your other cancel cards since Diana's ability is a limit once per phase . Of course you'll need a charge battery that can help you keep enough charges in play to do this every turn but there are some useful options for that like the Runic Axe or the new Drowned City card Lost Arcana.

edit I think since these allies take damage/horror as a cost, the combo can't use them for their actions and would only end up generating card draw, which while nice is probably not worth heavily building around.

soiDF8 · 6
Would you need charges to do this? It always cancels the damage, it would just discard itself afterwards if it cant remove a charge, but if you're sticking it under Diana anyways that shouldn't be an issue. — Spamamdorf · 5
Correct me if I'm wrong but due to the ruling of Galvanize, your original idea with Beat Cop / Field Agent should be perfectly fine: Q: Can Galvanize be used even if you do not control an exhausted Guardian asset (or no Guardian asset at all), simply to gain a bonus fight action? A: It sure can! Generally speaking, in the absence of the word “then” or any other text that would infer that one effect is conditional on another effect functioning, you do as much as you can in all instances. In this case, there’s no text that says that the additional action is dependent on the asset being readied, so you can absolutely do one without doing the other. Enjoy, MJ Newman — Slippin_Jimmy · 1
@Slippin_Jimmy: No. The mentioned abilites of Beat Cop and Field Agent have taking damage/horror as a cost, whereas the effect of Galvanize is not a cost. — AlderSign · 313
Offer You Cannot Refuse

So Wendy Adams only benefits from this weakness? With her Amulet, she can cycle her new event sub-deck and never draw Fine Print back. It feels like those fairy tales where ordinary people deceive the devils

exin · 39
Oh, my mistake, it's a permenant change, whoops. In this case not that good. — exin · 39
Talisman of Protection

This card is also a good asset for William Yorick as he can recycle the card in and out of his graveyard into rebirth loops and replay the necklace again after an elder sign or ability to grab it from the discard pile like Resourceful or Scavenging. My group didn't have this when I first played Yorick and will consider it next time!

Palacer · 1
True of any 2 health/sanity item tho, right? — MrGoldbee · 1473
I think Palacer is about it being fast(?) — AlderSign · 313
True that it's fast off an Elder Sign. I think MrGoldbee's point is that all other health/sanity items are effectively fast for Yorick off of an enemy kill, which tends to be much easier for Yorick to plan around. — HanoverFist · 740
Ascetic

I absolutely adore this card because it mitigates a core problem of this game that has existed since Dunwich: investigator death.

In the past, if you failed certain scenarios, were an unlucky Charon's Obol bearer, were Doomed, or just suffered enough trauma to kill or drive your investigator insane, you would have to restart mid to late campaign with a deck that is severely under-leveled for the scenarios you would be playing into. I’m sure at many tables, players opted instead to just be flexible with the rules in these tense moments (“oh did we remember to hunt with that enemy last round?” looks at damage on investigator card “yeah I’m sure we did”).

With Ascetic, it’s still not good, but it’s significantly less painful to have to start over with a fresh investigator late in a campaign. This is exactly the power level this card ought to be at because we still want death to feel bad, but not so bad that the campaign feels derailed or that players have to fight off the urge to cheat.

joshcurtis · 40
Honnestly, I think I have almost always considered the death of an investigator as the end of the campaign so that I didn't have to continue with a 0 XP deck. — AlexP · 253
Morbid Curiosity

I love that it's a weakness that you can remove while progressing the game but it's too easy for cluevers.

I think this is well balanced for fighters as you can always get help from a teammate... unless you draw it during your turn. I had this in Marion and it was terrifying. In my most recent game I had 5 turns in a row where I draw this during my turn (after playing an event) and I was forced to take a horror and shuffle it back in my deck before anybody could help remove it. I ended the scenario with 1 sanity remaining and this being the only card in my deck. Very scary.

DrZoidberge · 13
The rules say you can’t shuffle 1 card into an empty deck so it gets discarded — Django · 5108
You should add fool me once to your deck. — Tharzax · 1