Map the Area

Just a lore observation, not a real review: This is likely the Art Student mapping the area. Why? Because she is also left-handed. And left-handed people were quite rare in the 1920s, when they were generally forced as children to learn using their right hand instead.

Then again: Mark Harrigan is also left-handed. And this is a Tactic... :)

Susumu · 383
Wow, well spotted. It's almost definitely the Art Student... it's not just the left hand, it's the black sleeve cuffs, and that BOTH hands are in EXACTLY the same position relative to the drawing. In fact, I think it's the Art Student at the exact same moment in time as her original pic, just shown from a different angle. — HanoverFist · 766
I don't think, it is exactly at the same moment in time. There is too much revealed from the dark sleeve we see. It is more covered by the light blouse in the other picture. But you are probably right, that we see here the picture, she is also rendering on the "Art Student" card. It's not a first time, they did that. Like I mentioned on the "Pay Day"-site, that one was most likely Trish, after she opened the safe from "Manual Dexterity". — Susumu · 383
I remember from 'Drawn to the Flame' episode they noted that Art Student has a ring on her right-hand ring finger — Databased · 1
I'd buy that it's the Art Student, because she's going way overboard with this map. It's practically a landscape drawing. : p — Mogan · 1
Summoned Servitor

While the design and the flavor of that card is great, it is sadly underpowered imo. I've run it in a dedicated Luke deck with plenty of static book boost (magnifying glasses, st Hubert key, yellow tarrot card), enablers and even then, at most, the summon picked up three to four clues over the course of the scenario, even fully upgraded. Sure, sometimes, it came handy because it evaded a few monsters for my fellow investigators, but if you had to choose between that card and Powerword, the latter is far more useful and versatile, and doesn't require a build around deck to function (even if the comparison is unfair, since a fully upgraded Powerword is the most absurd card in the game).

You clearly don't run it for the extra bit of unreliable damage, but mostly for its evade and investigation ability (also its 3 health pool that counter balance the squishyness of most mystic investigators). It's also awkward to use since it cannot explore on its own, and can only navigate through explored areas. Most of the time, I just landed it on a location I was tasked to investigate, then joined the rest of my team while it picked some clues on its own. The best point of this card is it offers you a good presence across the board, no matter your location (your own dream world for exemple). I absolutely recommend it if you want to do a Luke run. It's really a lot fun to watch the little buddy lives its life to its fullest on its own but you should rather skip it if you plan to play anybody else.

The card would've been great if it wasn't considered "unique" and you had to fantasy to be able to run two of them at the same time. In its current state, it is a below-average/okay card in a dedicated deck, but it won't carry you your investigator on its own. It kinda fits a peculiar archetype (flexing) as an element of the whole, but not at the foundation of the archetype. The ability to go through uncharted locations would make the card far better than it is now, even if the owner of the summon would have to be hurt the revelation ability from those locations. Putting two extra xp as fee with a taboo on "Wings of Night" with this said ability would solve a lot of its problem, without hurting the balance of that card.

Here is the list I used for a return to Dunwich playthrough: Initial version: arkhamdb.com Fully upgraded: arkhamdb.com

mugu · 261
Offer of Power

Core set card that's awfully dumb. The doom option is absolutely never worth it (draw 2 cards for a loss of two cards, two resources and six actions), so the card might as well read take two horror.

drjones87 · 206
Very much depending on situation and player count. In solo, if the horror would defeat you, it's a no brainer to take the cards. — Susumu · 383
Of course no one is going to take the doom, unless they're about to die. It can be a pretty nasty card at the wrong time, forcing players to decide if one of them being eliminated is better than taking 2 doom. — Tinkorn · 1
Shrewd Dealings

Bob's extremely cool special talent gives us interesting new deck-building options where we can get Survivor and Rogue items to investigators that have never had access to them before. The problem is finding that special talent in Bob's deck.

Searches Bob can do himself to tutor Shrewd Dealings:

  • Friends in Low Places 0 resources to play, and 1 resource per card you add to your hand from the results. One of the new customizable cards, but even at level zero, it allows you to search 6 cards deep for any cards with a trait you preselected (here you would presumably want Talent). By far your best native option; thanks to @death by Chocolate for the catch! (Honestly, this is probably one of the best deck searches in the game at all.)

  • As pointed out before, Lucky Cigarette Case: 3 XP, 2 resources. After a successful skill test, allows you to search the number of card you succeeded by. This likely won't search many cards at a time. (Edit: moved Rabbit's Foot (3) below. I forgot Bob can't take native Survivor upgrades!)

Searches with support from a Seeker (or someone who can use Seeker cards) to tutor Shrewd Dealings:

Searches Bob can do by "borrowing" a card from another player to tutor Shrewd Dealings:

  • A Chance Encounter, used to steal Mr. "Rook" from a discard pile for a turn, and search the top 3-9 cards, up to three times on that turn. Somewhat convoluted and slow to set up, but it could happen.
  • "You owe me one!" can be used to steal a search card from another player's hand and play it for Bob. -- Take Old Book of Lore or Mr. Rook from a seeker and then use Bob's own actions to search his deck, freeing up the Seeker for finding actual clues instead of just helping Bob get his act together. (Can't you just hear the librarians who kindly offered to help Bob search his inventory, aghast at the state of his warehouse? "Don't you ever ORGANIZE anything in here, Bob? How on earth do you FIND anything?")
  • Take Rabbit's Foot from another survivor (the upgraded 3 XP version). After a failed skill test, allows you to search the number of cards you failed by. This option is cheaper and maybe easier to trigger than Lucky Cigs, but with Bob's baseline at 4, he doesn't have a great option to fail badly on tests that don't have any negative repercussions. So you probably won't be searching super deep this way.

Mandy's ability to enhance any search by an additional 3 cards would obviously be quite helpful to Bob, with the latest 50-card deck taboo, I'm not sure anyone will actually play Mandy anymore.

Edit to clarify: There are indeed many other search cards that can help Bob find and recur items and other assets, but this list is specifically regarding ways to tutor Shrewd Dealings, not other assets.

I think your biggest miss here is not including backpack(2), 12 cards deep, up to 3 items and most importantly its an item itself, meaning bobs extra action and cataloge payments apply for it... getting the necessary items was never a problem with bob, certainly not to the extent that i would consider you owe me one to get search options from other players — niklas1meyer · 1
OMG, I can't believe I missed backpack in the list! I even have it in my Bob deck right now--just swiss cheese brain. Thanks for the catch. Will add with an edit. — SleepyLibrarian · 46
Oh, nope, wait. We're in the post on Shrewd Dealings. This isn't about Bob finding *items*--it's about Bob finding *this specific signature card*, which is a Talent, not an Item, and can't be found by Backpack. In fact, since it can be found by so few cards, I thought a post with an explicit list might be helpful for anyone considering building Bob deck that intended to supply critical Out-of-Class upgrades to other players. — SleepyLibrarian · 46
I feel like this is completely overlooking the best new card for this exact purpose, Friends in Low Places. You get to choice what traits it looks for, so you can pick Talent (and later add Item if you want to find those too.) — Death by Chocolate · 1492
@death by choc, thanks for the catch! I'll add it to v the post above above. — SleepyLibrarian · 46
Grizzled

It's a fairly expensive (in xp) skill card, so it's pretty easy to just avoid it. The fancy thing it does is 5 xp for Always Prepared, which is a lot even if you've got 2 copies, and it's limited to once per round. Usually it's pretty similar (+/- 1 symbol) to Unexpected Courage, and the traits portion limits it to monsters or treacheries, and can't be used to investigate or do tests on location cards.

Humanoid and Monster traits will get you a card that's useful against a bit under 100% of enemies, and enemies are only around 1/3 of the encounter deck. Adding Elite and Ancient One means it will give you 5 symbols against most of the more difficult monsters. The good news is, those 4 traits will get you almost all enemies (and double coverage against difficult monsters) in all campaigns for 3 xp. I'm not sure what combo's you would need to cover all of the tests in the encounter deck, but I can't imagine 4 traits would be limiting if you're careful.

Nemesis instead of Always Prepared (or with fewer traits; elite covers the monsters you'd want to use it on) sounds useful if you're willing to have a card in your deck just for fighting difficult monsters. Not a bad plan.

If you can find the traits that cover all of the really nasty treacheries, Mythos-hardened might be a way to thin the encounter deck. But that requires knowing about them ahead of time.

Iduno · 18
Locations are also encounter card, so in theory, you could choose a trait like Arkham or Cave to help you there, not that I would recommend doing so. — Susumu · 383
You definitely need game knowledge to have this strike gold. I'm currently play forgotten age, and I have 'hex and humanoid' then serpent, then trap and it always sees use, especially if you get the always prepared upgrade. — Therealestize · 76
Pnakotus helped me 6/6 City of Archives. 6 ?s added to tests of 3 pretty much guaranteed a success barring the autofail. — osumariokartman · 1
.... but now I see that all Pnakotus locations are also Ancient... which would have helped in other scenarios. Oh well, I just really wanted to beat that scenario, I wasn't thinking lol — osumariokartman · 1