Its not new to say this is one of the best cards ever printed, its not even really original to say this is a cornerstone of survivors to this day, both are things I feel strongly about but today I want to say something else great about lucky.

Its one of the first and best examples of a card that wins you the game by doing nothing at all besides changing your approach while its in your hand.

I have many times run lucky and held it back in my hand for rounds, sometimes half an entire game, never committing very highly on tests, sitting at a gentle 60% pass rate and never actually failing to a point where it would matter, the sheer amount of energy you save, the resources, the cards and the mental strain to just play super reckless and worry about the consequences later, you will win so much faster playing that way if your luck is at least marginal.

I can't count the amount of games I've ended with a lucky in my hand staring at me, gathering dust and looking back at how demolished the level was.

Its gotten to the point where lucky is SO good at making me win, I don't even include it in decks any more, it is perhaps to me is the only card in the entire game that simply by having had it in a previous deck (and no longer running it) I still get a massive benefit from it, simply by allowing myself to experience that risky, devil's gambit play style.

Lucky, it used to make me win games by sitting in my hand doing nothing, now it sits in my collection, and still is making me win games.

I'm curious what other cards can say the same for other players.

I've been running this as house rule alternative text on The Bell Tolls for awhile now and been having a ton of fun:

• Revelation: Put The Bell Tolls into play in your threat area. At the end of your turn: Discard The Bell Tolls. You are defeated. Suffer 1 mental and 1 physical trauma.
• Log, under your investigator's earned story assets / weaknesses: "But somehow, you've defied your fate..."
• Remove The Bell Tolls from your deck and search the collection for Overzealous and place it on the bottom of your deck.

The two main changes:

• Gives you one last turn, instead of outright death. Have had a ton of fun with this in multiplayer as the person who draws it gets to plan our their final blaze of 3 action glory!
• Does not outright kill, but simply replaces itself with another weakness. I chose Overzealous because it's generally regarded as pretty annoying. But, narratively, I always adore the idea of a doomed investigator surviving their fate against all odds... and get a bit cocky after ;)

In defense of the original:

• I will say, that playing it in the above way has actually made me somewhat love this weakness and appreciate the original as printed text.
• Recently, with the right / more experienced play group, we sometimes do opt to go with the text as is and simply plan ahead for the player who drew it to ready up a 2nd investigator. Oddly enough, the act of planning out that 2nd deck, sometimes makes them eager to die and switch! :P

TL;DR: they're your cards, have fun!

There will be scenarios where its downside won't even be a true cost. I've been playing dunwich right now and in most of scenarios you don't advance the act by collecting x clues, but instead use clues for other things or just have to clear some specific place to get to the next act, so you won't even lose one action by dropping clues. Fantastic card!

Ah, the good old Mag glass. Many years have passed, and i can honestly say from the bottom of my heart that i hate Mag glass even more now then i did back in the days. Sure, it was strong, but no way did i know that Seekers would be so over-the-top overpowered that a simple item that gives them +1 would be deemed as OP. Why, you might ask? Well, let me give you an example.

Imagine if Guardians had something like Mag Glass from the core set, which most of the community does not even see as problematic, but imagine a guardian asset like this: takes up an arcane slot for example, 1 cost-0xp fast asset that says you get +1 . Why would anybody in their right mind NOT play that card?

And they won't print it because it would immediately be auto-include in most Guardian decks. But even if they print such an insanely broken and not fun card, here's the fun thing; IT WOULD STILL BE WEAKER THAN MAG GLASS! (since mag glass gives Seekers the thing that they use all game long in almost all of their actions, it gets the job done and clues win you games, while fight is something that you need only when enemies show up and most of them end up being dead in the same turn). Every single thing about this card screams "VALUEEEEEE", and the fact that this card came out alllll the way back in the core set, it pushed designers into a bad alley of balancing future cards around cards like this and Dr. Milan Christopher which we already know is the best ally in the game at lvl 0. The worst part of all of this is that poor Rogues still do not have an ally that gives them +1 to play with at 0xp which does something usefull, Mystics again have no good allies at 0xp after poor David Renfield got nuked with the latest tabboo list and are again back to the good old Arcane Initiate which is pretty damn good but still not on the level of Milan.

This whole review might seem like a lot of complaining and not a straight up review, but i just wanted to tell the new players that they should not look at this card as a simple, poor +1 . It is insanely strong, and you will never feel bad to draw it and just slam it onto the table, because even in the worst possible outcome if you need to discard an asset because you have drawn Crypt Chill, you can discard this damn card which didn't even cost you an action to play and just continue doing what Seekers do, which is running around and clearing clues and drawing cards and winning the game. Just put your high enough, and that's it!! Even better when designers put something like a boss enemy to "balance" it out, so that Seekers cannot win the game just by themselves, which is the time for our Guardians to shine!

But wait, aren't most of the bosses and scenarios "balanced" out by having the ability to spend clues to deal dmg to enemies, or spend clues to move for free, or spend clues to.... you get what i'm saying? Well, the normal brain would then ask: "If Seekers get the best draw, best movement, best search, insane action compression, completely maxed-out stats or insanely strong abilites, i can deal dmg with Strange Solution and Ancient Stone, i can get easy money with cards like Crack the Case etc., why would i play anything else?". And that's where my group is at currently! With the full cardpool, there ain't no way in hell that any other class compares to Seekers, so we just stopped playing them. And it all started with this poor, simple card........

I think Jury-Rig raises the usefulness of this card even further for the 6 investigators who can take both without buying Versatile (and I wouldn't buy Versatile for a single copy of Jury-Rig):

• Carson Sinclair
• Tommy Muldoon
• Zoey Samaras
• Charlie Kane
• Lola Hayes
• William Yorick

While I typically don't like assembling a three-card combo, Old Keyring + Jury-Rig + Well-Maintained is pretty strong. You won't get Well-Maintained back, but you will get the Keyring and Jury-Rig back.

Lantern only gives you -1 shroud instead of Keyring's -2, I think it's better for the Investigate combo because of no Uses (X) and you can discard the Lantern on demand, which allows you to wait until the combo is assembled and then "recharge" your Jury-Rig when empty.

Any Firearm + Jury-Rig + Well-Maintained is a great combo with this and Jury-Rig, as it allows you to recharge the Firearm AND the Jury-Rig, and obviously synergizes really well with Act of Desperation.

A Well-Maintained Backpack is really interesting for investigators who need to find their items and supplies, and / or those wanting to search their decks (anyone who can take this and Astounding Revelation or Surprising Find)