Girish is really good... but 4xp is a lot to ask. So why would you spend all that xp when you have Beat Cop (2), and Grete Wagner (3) in your class that both bring bonuses?

The answer is infinite health/horror.

Girish Kadakia will help you succeed in a test and heal himself in the process. Leave the Hallowed Mirror in the antique store, you don't need it anymore. Pack instead an Inspiring Presence for a second use each turn and some Trusted to turn it into an almost Carson Sinclair.

Who will want to pair with Girish Kadakia?

• Vincent Lee, of course, use his ability to get +2 and receive an On the Mend at the end of the test. He will be the perfect soak for your Bonesaw. You will always want to leave a bit of damage/horror on him to trigger him and end your Bonesaw attack with a damage on him.
• Carolyn Fern, who will make a good amount of resources out of Girish Kadakia if she finds a way to regularly deal horror to him. Forbidden Knowledge and Meat Cleaver are good options. The good thing with the latter is that you get the horror when you initiate the test so that you can heal it in the same action (and heal a horror on yourself at the end).
• Guardians that would be interested in using more than 1 stat, like Roland Banks or Leo Anderson with a Blackmailed Damning Testimony, Sister Mary and Lily Chen who would want to use their .
• Carson Sinclair to bring his statline to an acceptable number once a turn for a test and compensate for his lack of health/sanity.

This card was printed exactly as designed during Arkham Nights 2020, and that is amazing news.

3 experience per copy is a steep cost, so let's see the reasons behind.

The obvious:

• Flashlight (3) has 1 more supply
• Flashlight (3) now supports evasion tests
• Flashlight (3) logically gains an icon to commit.

That is alright at best. Supporting evasion is good, but except for a few evade-focussed investigators like Finn Edwards, Rita Young or Kymani Jones, this is unlikely to find many homes.

The less obvious:

• Flashlight (3) is not an anymore, and is instead a . This opens so many doors.
  • This means that Flashlight (3) can now be used on any investigate or evade action triggered by events and other assets
  • It especially shines in the succeed by X events like Pilfer (3), Breaking and Entering (2), Lockpicks.
  • Flashlight (3) is now one of the centrepieces of the "Difficulty 0" archetype. Not only it reduces the difficulty itself, but it adds onto other difficulty reduction effects like Winging It, Impromptu Barrier, Old Keyring (0) and (3), Lantern, Stealth and Stealth (3). As pointed out in the comments, it also works with The Skeleton Key, which guarantees every test difficulty to be 0.

Conclusion:

If you are planning to play the Difficulty 0 archetype, with Shed a Light and Exploit Weakness (reducing the evasion to 0), Flashlight (3) is going to be a must-have. As this archetype is mainly , this means that you'll probably use Scavenging (2) as well.

The other archetype that could use this card is if you plan to investigate/evade using the succeed by X cards and that has access to Scavenging (2) to replay it constantly.

Who will be playing this?:

Any investigator with Scavenging (2) and who would want to use Exploit Weakness can take Flashlight (3) and will get value out of it. Out of them all, the investigators that I see taking the best out of Flashlight (3) are:

• Darrell Simmons the master of the Difficulty 0 archetype.
  • Standalone deck example
• Wendy Adams as she can easily dispose of Winging It through her ability and play Shed a Light with her Wendy's Amulet and play Scavenging (2)
• Preston Fairmont with his 1-1-1-1 stat line, who can Double, Double Shed a Light and with Lola Santiago, you will actually have 2 so automatically succeed means triggering Scavenging (2).
  • Standalone deck example
• Rita Young and her new Breaking and Entering (2)
  • Standalone deck example
• Minh Thi Phan using Arcane Insight, Shed a Light and Scavenging (2).
  • Standalone deck example

With the permission of @Kelega from the Miskatonic Malcontent, I want to share this external link that breaks down in detail and with graphs on which traits to choose for every campaign up until TSK.

The author shows:

• What traits appear the most in each campaign
• What traits do enemies have in each scenario of each campaign
  • What is the best combination of 2 or 3 traits to cover most enemies in each scenario of each campaign
• What traits do treacheries have in each scenario of each campaign
  • What is the best combination of 2 or 3 traits to cover most treacheries in each scenario of each campaign

Warning This is full of spoilers, of course, but as Grizzled is mechanically made for guessing what the most common trait used is, if you have already been to this campaign and want to tech your deck, then this is all you're looking for.

For 6xp (Always Prepared and an additional Trait), you can either build yourself a repeatable enemy management tech or a 2-card constant +3 against treacheries.

Auto include in any Amina deck. One of the most common issues with playing a doom-based deck is that your fellow investigators will complain that your cards are adding to the doom total. Deafening Silence solves this problem by moving the doom off of your cards.

I'll offer a less... apocalyptic take on this card.

All in all, the possibilities aren't mind-boggling, merely intriguing. Like many of the Upgrade cards, it requires you have something you want to attach it to, so you're not going to take it willy-nilly. On top of that, the thing you're stowing needs to be Illicit and take up a Hand or an Accessory slot.

The "vanilla" use case for this card is straightforward: you're playing a Rogue with your hands full, and, in typical Rogue fashion you'd like to squeeze just a little more out of your deck. Say you're Wini with Lockpicks and Mauser C96 out, but a miniboss just spawned and you'd like to legerdemain out a Lupara for that sweet 6 damage turn. Your Hidden Pocket on a Leather Jacket (impeccably maintained by your favorite seamstress) lets you do just that.

A lot of things need to happen before this can work, of course, but I'd argue that a decent number of things need to happen before you find yourself with full hands (and a need to continue to fill them). Upgrade cards are by their nature dependent on other cards hitting the table before them, so it's corresponding a gamble to choose to include them. I think Hidden Pocket's saving grace is that you can let it ride until your slots are full; it's not the kickstart to a combo, it's the flourish at the end to round things out.

Admittedly, I'm a sucker for Upgrade cards, personally, so I'm biased. :)

Let's talk about some potential combos.

At the time of writing, there are 14 (non-signature) level 0 Illicit 1- or 2-Hand slot assets, and all of those are pure Rogue cards except for .18 Derringer ()and .45 Thompson (/).

• I'll lump all the Firearm cards together: You can store an extra gun (or half gun). Handy for Tony, Leo, and Zoey, to name a few popular enemy managers. Finn might like it as well, since you can run him flex and he might have his hands full of Finn's Trusty .38 and 2x Magnifying Glass.
• Lockpicks and Thieves' Kit: both neat Investigate pairings. Sef, Finn, Kymani, and Trish can dig it.
• Switchblade and Knuckleduster: maybe a curious choice if you're not playing Tony, but a weapon with infinite use can come in handy (er, pockety?).
• Damning Testimony: I haven't run DT yet, but it seems good (or at least fun!), so I'll offer proportional hype to be able to hide it in a secret pocket.

I won't say anything about the XP Hand slot cards except that I think the above comments apply to them uniformly. I'll highlight Lupara and Sawed-Off Shotgun as two fun ones to store in a pocket, though.

At the time of writing, there are no cards printed that are Illicit Accessories. With that said, you can always play "I'll take that!" to make any Item card Illicit. In this way, a very charitable interpretation of Hidden Pocket is as a poor man's Relic Hunter.

Simple Armor choices include Leather Jacket (or Leather Coat if you have access). Lonnie Ritter will be happy to tailor these for you, of course, but as others have mentioned, we often run these cards as throwaway soak.

Correspondingly, I think the hype rests with the Clothing assets:

• Robes of Endless Night is usually taken for its economy over its soak, so it's a candidate for an extra pocket if you're Sef or Dexter (or Jim or Jenny, I suppose).
• Track Shoes and Hiking Boots are both great choices. They're slotless themselves and are generally robust to being taken from you (knock on wood). Also, you can attach multiple copies of Hidden Pocket to an asset, so you could conceiveably fit a Chicago Typewriter into your boots. Cheeky!
• Tool Belt is interesting, since it's already affording you a bunch of slots. Kymani likes this combo, obviously, and I suppose you could always Versatile the pocket in to let Joe get an absolutely disgusting number of things on the table.
• Fine Clothes deserve a mention. I usually only take it as teching for Parley-heavy scenarios, but, hey, Clothing is Clothing.