Lockpicks is a very strong card. We don't really need to dicuss this. Winifred Habbamock, Finn Edwards and Trish Scarborough all just get to go at it for eight (while Bob Jenkins at least gets to go to 7), which should be enough to beat the bag in most scenarios, at least at Normal difficulty.

What's more is that it synergizes greatly with Lucky Cigarette Case and its level 3 option. These two cards in tandem basically form an engine that lets you go really hard. Digging 2-4 cards to draw one and find a clue every turn is going to propel you through a scenario very efficiently.

Worth mentioning, too, is that someone like Lola Santiago or Gené Beauregard give you a boost on both numbers, effectively boosting your tests to 10 on the aforementioned characters. At this point, the engine gets a little XP-intensive, but still: This card isn't outright powerful in the way that other cards are, but it's incredibly consistent.

Along with Thieves' Kit and the rogue events like Intel Report and Pilfer, this card can turn your mobile rogue into a clue finding machine that has both consistency and explosiveness, which is just a fun playstyle to me. Where this card really shines is in True Solo, where a lot of your locations consistently only ask you to find one clue, so the exhaust often isn't that much of a downside if you manage to weave a lower shroud location into your patterns that you can crack with your base book.

Feast of Hemlock Vail launches with one of the most restricted and the least restricted investigators in the game’s history. Kate Winthrop gains, outside her class, access to first aid(0 and 3), emergency aid, and survival technique from her science keyword. If it wasn’t for her access to insight(0-1) she’d be Mono-Yellow.

But this isn’t a Kate review. I say all this because Narukami gains access to more than 110 Blessed/Cursed cards, with a spread across all five classes. And his ability means you can’t ignore the good tokens and let them be a passive benefit (The way Sister Mary could theoretically.)

All previous bless/curse Investigators had an issue: making sure they got their tokens out to power their effects. Favors of the Sun and Moon only went so far to guarantee results, the same with Olive or Jaqueline’s ability to look at more tokens. Narukami’s sig ends that. Do you want to use Fey once a turn for the rest of the game? Sure. Need to trigger Beloved to pass an agility(6) check? It's on tap.

The perils of his deck building are more subtle. First, he only gets Mystic 0-3, so his high-level spells need to be blessed or cursed. Second, you’re not >forced< to make everything blursed. The temptation is to try and cram every single traited card in the deck, without a thought of economy or flow. There’s an opportunity cost to making the chaos bag even more chaotic. If you’re playing in a group, make sure everyone else is capable and eager to ride the tides of fortune.

As a card, not bad, Guardians do love economy cards and his can be a great way to get a weapon in hand while engaged with an enemy. Somewhat niche usage, but any item heavy deck will find a use.

What I am curious about is the wording. "Take a fight action" does not specify a basic action. So I believe a fight action on an asset or a fight event could be used. Of course this balanced by it doing no damage. So using ammo on this seems foolish, same with an event. But, it only cancels the damage. So is Leg Sweep or Cheap Shot is used, it would still evade the enemy. There are probably other combos that I haven't thought of where you can take a secondary effect still. Blessed Blade could add blessings. Rita can take this, do an attack that also evades, play an asset and deal damage with her effect since it is separate from the fight action damage. I don't know if One-Two Punch (0) would count the second fight as outside the event. But if it doesn't, could you get two cost reductions? Or you can get crazy and have Skids or Leo use Cheap Shot or Leg Sweep, evade the enemy, tap Dirty Fighting to do a fight action using the asset you just played. Since the order of operations has the playing an item and the evade triggered simultaneously, so the item can be played, then the evade triggered thus making the Dirty Fighting attack triggered in a separate window (After the evade as opposed to after the fight.)

TL:DR - A useful economy card for certain specific builds. But potentially an engine for shenanigans, whether they are particularly good shenanigans or not, I don't yet know.

(Update form The Feast of Hemlock Vale Investigator Expansion) Cleaning Kit + Emergency Cache (3) = Unlimited Arrow Works. Especially for Skids who can double it and got a good . Good to see this old cards being useful once more.

Darrell Simmons players may want to consider this skill as it is very easy to turn on in most decks built around Darrell's strengths.

Darrell begins every scenario with a Tool in play (Darrell's Kodak), so this almost always commits for at least

In addition, every other asset that generates evidence is a Tool or Science asset, like Hawk-Eye Folding Camera, Empirical Hypothesis, and Research Notes. So are all of the assets he has access to that lower shroud, like Old Keyring, Matchbox, and Flashlight.

If you're planning to run assets to enable evidence-generation or 0-difficulty tests, Well-Funded is a powerful effect to help you or your team pass important tests while you gather evidence.