The "The chosen investigator loses 1 action during their next turn, then draws 3 cards" option works particularly well with Geared Up. If you have a Revelation effect in your opening hand, after mulliganing you resolve it immediately (before your turn begins). With Geared Up, your first turn has no actions anyways, so: 1) You to draw 3 cards before triggering your Geared Up, which makes it even easier to hit 3+ Item assets. 2) You don't even lose an Action on that turn, unless you somehow have 4 actions on your first turn.

It also works well with Lola Hayes. The Revelation trigger is not an activated/triggered ability so it does not require Lola to be a "Survivor" to benefit from it.

Question: When exactly does the card draw occur? Is it you lose 1 action next turn and 3 cards now? Or are the cards only drawn on your next turn?

I think this isnt too good (especially for regular use).

It costs 1, an action to play the card, the card itself and require you to drop a clue (approximately an action). For all that effort you get to look at 6 cards and draw 2. So 3 action and 1 resource to get 2 cards.

Even at it's best, for 4-5 actions worth of stuff and 1 resource you can draw 6. You're probably better off just drawing cards unless your deck need specific cards or can HEAVILY leverage the dropping clues.

This is an interesting card, and some ramifications are not quite apparent at first glance.

First : the Illicit asset does not cost any ressource to put into play from your hand (nor any action either), but once it's attached to the Trigger Man, you have to pay 1 ressource per use. Most Illicit guns have a cost that is either the same or higher than the number of ammo it comes with. So a gun with 3 ammo that normally costs 3 ressources to put into play will cost you 3 ressources to fully use with the Trigger Man. With "more expensive" guns like the .45 Thompson, you can actually save a ressource, and in all cases you have the advantage of paying only for the ammo you actually use.

Of course, you have to factor in the (non-negligible) cost of the Trigger Man himself. But you get what you pay for : "fast" actions with a base value of 4. Interesting for a low-Fight rogue who wants to use weapons. The lower your stat, the better value you get from this, so Kymani, Trish and Sefina seem like good candidates. Alternately, a low-Int rogue could use Damning Testimony or, with less benefit, Lockpicks for this. And for our good mayor Charlie Kane and his horrendous stat line, it's even better, for fighting or investigating ! (It would have been awesome for Preston Fairmont, but you can't get any Illicit cards in his deck, so barring any "card-sharing shenanigans" with teammates, it doesn't work.)

Second : Nothing says you can't use the "activate" action on the asset yourself, even once it's attached to Trigger Man. So you could decide to use the gun (that you put into play for free) yourself, without paying the Trigger Man's 1 ressource. Probably not a good strategy by itself just to save money, but could be useful in a pinch, if you need to attack again.

Third : Nothing says the asset stops using slots, so you have to "share hands" with the guy, both of you holding stuff together. Weird, but OK

Which brings me to : other interesting assets that don't use hand slots.

Burglary : For 1 ressource, Investigate as a "fast" action with a base value of 4 to gain 3 ressources. It becomes a money engine, especially if you can boost your investigation with Magnifying Glass (Finn, Kymani, Trish)

Liquid Courage : Heal without spending you precious actions, at the cost of paying more. For rich rogues.

Disguise : Tony Morgan could reliably evade at 6, if necessary.

Edit: Some mistakes. It's hard to review any customizable card because it's actually a multitude of cards all in one, with different interactions with all the folks of arkham, so lets fire my shot and see what I can work out.

So, in a vacuum, the base card is terrible, you probably should not ever include this thing in a deck. dont have 4 resources to spend on 2 health and 2 horror, that's a terrible deal at any level and never worth it beyond some very, VERY extraordinary campaign starts where you've dealt yourself some unusual pain with cards like In the Thick of It or Arcane Research and you NEED some soak to compensate.

This means then that we really are only looking at this card in the context of the upgrades. All of the upgrades are in the afforable 3 XP range or less which makes them available to off-class characters like William Yorick or Diana Stanley. So, lets have some fun!

First off, a baseline upgrade that by itself is invariably good: Hexdrinker.

• Hexdrinker gets you a card everytime you take treachery damage. This right here is often going to be worth the 3xp investment and 4 resource cost, it'll easily draw you 2 cards, often net 3. 4 Resources to save 3-4 life and draw 3 cards is just extravagantly nice.

• Hexdrinker + Protective runes = The 4 card draws become almost automatic, especially in a 4 player game.

Obviously the +2 health / Sanity upgrades combine very nicely with Hexdrinker+Protective runes to create almost absurd card draw but I'dd argue that, because of the exhust clause, you need to curb your thirst for cards just a bit and lean more into the tanking aspect.

Second up, the other card defining baseline upgrade: Armor of thorns.

• Armor of thorns suddently slots Hunter's Armor into the passive damage archetype that rose to some prominence with William Yorick and his trusty doggos. Picture this: a Hunting Nightgaunt spawns on you when you have Guard Dog and Hunter's Armor out, instead of attacking it twice, you attack it once and then just move or investigate, triggering an AoO, killing it with retaliation damage. There's nothing to dislike about that for sure.

• Armor of thorns + Protective runes is not the wondercombo that it is with Hexdrinker, because without the other "spike" damage triggers, dealing only 1 damage often isnt enough. Even so, every now and then you might be able to ask a friend to engage a Whippoorwill that can then be killed off easily.

Again, like hexdrinker, the +health/sanity upgrades also may not combo as nicely as you'dd like, because frankly, even if you're actively triggering enemy attacks, you're often just not going to be attacked 6-8 times in a game. So again this is less about retaliation damage but a bit more about actual tanking.

Third up, the last card defining upgrade: Protective runes.

• Protective runes turns Hunter's Armor into a communal health pool, which is awesome. All of a suddent you can act as a living shield that moves around and covers harmed friends from danger, love it, like it.

• Protective runes + Health/Sanity upgrades = Bigger health pools, love it.

When you add the other upgrades, Hexdrinker, Armor of thorns. Protective runes becomes a routine way to benefit off of the "mister tank" role or to burn down enemies slightly faster sometimes. Perhaps the most major downside to taking Protective runes is that off-class folks cannot afford the level cap to combine it with the other major upgrades.

• A major point to worry about is that Armor of Thorns and Hexdrinker interfere with each other, both of them "cost" the armor's lifepool, both of them exhaust the card, IF you intend to take both, the upgrade path is then probably:

  • Hexdrinker/Thorns -> Health/Sanity/Protective -> Health/Sanity/Protective/Lightweight -> Hexdrinker/Thorns.

  • That said, I'dd like to argue that once you've spent 5 or 7 xp on it, you can probably just stop and be happy with it like that.

As a note on the unmentioned upgrades, Enchanted and lightweight, the former is primarily a choice of slots, which might seem superfluous but then you realise that it might interact interestingly with Dragon Pole. Lightweight meantime is less a priority upgrade than it is a capstone after you've gone for either Spikes or Cards.

To name some names, here´s some character that can seriously look at Hunter's Armor for nice builds:

• : Tommy Muldoon and Mark Harrigan come stock with mechanics that reward getting hit or taking damage. Stacking "Spike" damage with Guard Dog, Toe to Toe, Heroic Rescue, that's a compelling build with upgrade options to scale into the higher levels right there.
• Lily Chen can use the armor to fill her hand and maybe combo with Dragon Pole, meanwhile Diana Stanley REALLY likes the card draw.
• William Yorick is one of the first who did the retaliation archetype justice and this card is a great addition to his repertoire.

Lastly, anbody who can take the Protective runes variant should legtimitately consider taking up the tank role, Carolyn Fern and Vincent Lee are both the kind of character that's trying to protect the team and this is a pre-emptive way to do so without taking any risky skill checks.

Turns out I shouldnt be posting reviews when Im having a bit of a manic christmas stress episode. Sorry y'all! Apocalypse averted.

So anyway, to properly review this thing.

Hidden Pocket does by itself a relatively weak thing, +1 hand slot. It does not change the board state but enables more flexibility with weapons and tools. Hand slot tools universally take 1 slot, so the point of extra slots is all about enabling greedy strategies with 2-slot weapons. Ornate Bow comes to mind. The illicit requirement is'nt much of a drawback, but "I'll take that!" can help with this issue.

In an older version of the game, or with a limited collection, this would be a very, very bad card. Card draw used to be a premium that only had. Wasting a draw to find Hidden Pocket with a core+Dunwick Jenny Barnes would be like shooting yourself in the foot. The reason it'd be so bad is that a card like this needs a strong, dependable flow of cards to find all the pieces. You need to find the clothing, find the weapons and tools, find the pocket, find money generation to pay for it, find the card draw. For a large swathe of characters this is a ridiculous stretch.

But the support does exist, and the synergy, particularly if you have Underworld Market which single handedly assays the card's downside of dudding a draw and the deckspace issue. Also of note is the synergy, not only can you use Pickpocketing to fund the expensive boardstate, you have good illicit hand assets like Thieves' Kit to put into the extra slot.

I misjudged this card first time around. Even so. It is -very- niche. I wouldnt reccommend it for most decks without careful planning.