The lv0 Baseball Bat has always been a really solid weapon. +2 Combat, + 1 damage, and unlimited* uses at only 2 resources is an insane bargain, even with 2 hand slots. Of course, it's not really unlimited, since it can break on any attack. But Survivor's have enough flexible recursion that if it does break, it's easily retrieved again. As long as you don't do like 2-3 attacks every turn, it should last you the entire game. A perfect weapon for a fighter on the side (or William Yorick).

But that's kinda were its main drawbacks surface. A flex investigator usually wants to keep that second hand free for clues or other support. And this lv2 version doesn't really fix that problem. Instead though, it fixes the other problem: it makes it more reliable for main fighters. You don't have to waste too many recursions on this one as you can choose to just return it to your hand, or if you have plenty of recursion left, you can still discard it for that extra damage, and most enemies will be defeated by that single hit, giving you time to retrieve it.

Ultimately, the argument you have to make as to whether this is a good upgrade or not is if you believe it's worth investing XP towards a backup plan for a particular situation you're kinda hoping is not going to occur too often anyway. Otherwise, you just take/keep the lv0 version which - if you're lucky - does the exact same thing (and can actually be more flexibly be retrieved), and invest your XP towards something that's certainly gonna be useful whenever you draw it.

Also, can I just say it's kinda amusing that of all items, it's not the Lockpicks, the Thieves' Kit, the Hawk-Eye Folding Camera, Darrell's Kodak, Patrice's Violin, Jim's Trumpet, the Flute of the Outer Gods, the Dowsing Rod or any book that requires 2 hands; it's a freaking baseball bat.

I found that the strong point of this card is more on the "Actions performed using Grappling Hook do not provoke attacks of opportunity." rather than to get action compression vs. cost. 2 or even 1 meaningful action inside the hook is not bad if it ignores critical AoO you normally have to take, and can save your friend's action such as Move if you go first. You can always go first as you ignores a lot of AoO with the hook.

The amount of AoO increases the more enemies you have before you Move or Investigate (not Evade), and Engage increase that amount, so the "AoO saves" you get from the hook depends the earlier the order of Engage comes before Move / Investigate in the chain.

The most common play I found that utilizes AoO ignoring is simply when I draw an enemy that hits hard, I want to continue working on clues, and the real fighter is nearby. Just by using move-evade to serve the enemy to the fighter is already good value as the fighter can spend 3 full actions to fight it with no friendly-fire and Retaliate disabled, and I didn't take AoO dragging it. The last one I can choose to investigate or just throw away the action. Saves no action on average, but can't deny the value of ignoring AoO.

Investigation is sometimes useful to not end your chain with Evade. Perhaps you just move to the fighter and engage the enemy away from them to give them a chance to gear up a bit before attacking. You trust the fighter to hit the enemy engaged with you with that new accurate weapon, you can end the chain with investigate instead of evade to get a clue.

A more involved built-in combo is to engage-move-evade to drag an enemy away from a friend and get it exhausted at the other location, or move-engage-evade in the case that you are 1 location away from your friend. In any case you have 1 more action to perform the 2nd Evade to . The plan is normally ruined if you got your own enemy to manage in Mythos Phase too, but the hook guarantees you can do it anyway ignoring like 2-3 AoO in the process. (e.g. If it is engage-move-evade and you have 1 enemy at first before trying to get 1 more, you take 1 AoO to engage, and 2 combined AoO to move.)

This card is very playable with Kymani Jones, often I found I am going for 3 HP discard with the "consult" reaction ability. On average I found I am against 3 too, so an unboosted attempt at 5 + 2 = 7 would allow up to only -1 token to get 3 points over-succeed. In Standard when I add one more from this card to allow up to -2, the chance of discard became much better.

Hello, I have a question. Do you think it's for balance reasons that this "mi-go boss" is the only one without XP? See Mi-Go Harvester, Mi-Go Abductor and Mi-Go Meddler, the other 3 mini-boss which appear according to stories selected randomly.

Regards.

This card is imho the hidden COTE (Card Of The Expansion xD). There are some other REALLY great cards I love even more, but they are talked about consistently. Meanwhile, this one is extremely overlooked and people don't even try it before they say it sucks. Well, it doesn't. It's good, and I mean REALLY good. It flat out opens a new playstyle for a consistent fighter-evader and excluding some Customizable cards, it may be the most game-changing (or better; game-expanding) card in this expansion.

I've tried it a few times so I'm by no means a master of using this, but it's basically the only card you need for a completely new (viable) playstyle, while completing it with anything that does consistent damage like two handed rifles, knives, akimbo guns... You could've done that before Scarlet Keys with some cards like .25 Automatic, and while it's completely viable (especially the .25 Auto. (2) is incredible), it's still just a limited tactic you can use once, maybe a few times per game with recursion, but this is a talent that sticks and works every time all the time and it's basically just flat +2 AND 1 bonus action per turn. AND you can still use something like .25 Auto for better effect. And yes, the "fight action" keyword is NOT "basic fight action," but ANY "fight action," so you can use weapons and stuff to supplement it. And it's 2 xp, so investigators who dip into Rogue can also take it and use it effectively.

I think that this effect is not niche at all, but EXTREMELY adaptable, since you can use that +2 for ANY attribute; Fight, Brain, Foot - shooting, smacking, arrowing or spellcasting the enemy; as long as you're fighting in one way or another, you get better numbers. I might be overselling it a bit here, time will tell, but as said, I've tried it a few times and so far it's been incredible. If it's the evade & attack playstyle you want, it just became a legit and competitive fighter playstyle. And this card is the main component for mere 4 xp for two copies (Kymani gets 5 xp before the game even starts!).

This card single-handedly makes investigators like Rita, Skids or Wini into competent fighters (Yeeey Skids, it's finally your time to shine! And while not useless before, Rita's also a much better fighter now.), or basically any investigators that can evade and use a competent damage dealing card - like Kymani, Finn, Dexter, Sefina...

Another thing is that this card in the two latest expansions just became highly searchable and readily available with awesome cards like Black Market (it's Illicit), Friends In Low Places, Underworld Market, or even better - Finn’s Smuggled Goods (again, Illicit).

And that’s just the basic effect. There's also parleying, which is fantastic the few times you need it - it always gets on my nerves when I miss a necessary Parley. Also, it's completely stackable and basically anything that gives you more numbers combines with this like .25 Auto or Lonnie, and these two are also simple to use and play. There're also combos with Stealth (3) for a free fight action without the boost, Blur(s) are both great with their action extension, it also does well in an Ornate Bow fighter because of naturally high Foot and many more... And it's not even very expensive, takes one action to play that it even gives you back instantly, while as a Talent it doesn't take any slots and it's quite "resistant" to the Mythos deck. This +2 also combines well with "Succeed by number" playstyle, so you can go for "Succeed by number fighter" now, which was niche before. There're many more things it does and if nothing else, when playing it in Kymani, it's a flat +2 Foot and +1 action every turn.

I really like this card and while I wasn't a fan of a focused evade deck before, the fighter-evader is an interesting prospect to me and I love how this makes some subpar investigators much better, and also opens up some interesting new decks.

EDIT: Some corrections.