This card's stock has slightly risen with The Red Clock, which provides you with a free source of charges and lets you manipulate the bonus from the clock. On Sefina it's a solid if rather niche use. If Akachi and Dexter Drake happen to pick up the clock they do get more mileage out of the boost from Torrent of Power in higher difficulties if there are must-pass checks.

Diana might be a bit of a one-trick pony, but it's a really good trick.

Diana's stats and deckbuilding options are just mediocre, so we're playing her for her unique abilities, all of which are stellar.

• Whenever one of her cards cancels or ignores an effect, if she doesn't have 5 cards under her, she gains a card and a resource. It's quite easy to do this 6 or more times a game (yes, even with the 5-card limit). You will be bringing cards like Ward of Protection, Dark Prophecy, and Deny Existence, which are already good enough on their own, but with Diana they become virtually free. s can sometimes struggle to have enough cards and resources, but Diana is getting paid to shrug off Mythos cards.
• Her gets boosted by +1 for each card beneath her, allowing her to get up to 6 without assets in play. That said, you might not be at the full 6 most turns, but Diana can operate just fine without requiring max . If you do want to go the max route, and are the classes to do it in.
  • This does means her starts at 1; Diana is not prone to explosive starts. But it's not hard to get up to 4 within 2 or 3 turns, thanks to...
• Dark Insight always starts as a 6th card in your opening hand. It's a great card on its own, it's even better with Diana's ability, and you will always have it during the first Mythos phase if you aren't done setting up your kit and need to keep the monsters away for another turn.
• Her other unique card, Twilight Blade, lets you replay cards you've placed beneath Diana. This can be a bonkers effect in some decks, as you're getting multiple uses out of your cancel cards, but also freeing up space under Diana so you can continue to get your bonus card and resource from future cancel cards. You do have to pay full price when playing cards this way (no bonuses), so if you want to build a deck where you cancel 15 things a game, bring ways to pay for it. And I guess you can stab with the blade too, if that interests you.
  • Her gives a similar effect, but at random. It's usually a nice bonus when it happens.
  • Oh, and her weakness? You can't cancel it, but you can ignore it with Deny Existence. You can even intentionally peel off a card or two to make room for more stuff.

Alright, so she's great at making nothing happen, but what does she do to advance the act? You've got the full suite of cards, so you can pick a lane between cluever (Read the Signs, Sixth Sense, Rite of Seeking, etc.) and fighter (Shrivelling, Azure Flame, etc.). Cyclopean Hammer makes her a reliable damage dealer if you go that route; Bandolier lets you also hold your Twilight Blade and boost . "I've had worse…" lets you get paid to tank, and works with Diana's cancel ability. Sword Cane can be a fine starter card until you get some XP. Arcane Initiate can find spells (which many of your "cancel cards" are, further fueling your card draw and boost). Prophetic and Robes of Endless Night can save you resources as you play all your spells. And Dayana Esperence can be a nice "win-more" card since most of your cancel cards are spell events.

Diana's a lot of fun... you start out slow, but you can "powerup" while protecting yourself from early Mythos cards, then start steamrolling as you get your core assets out and have a nice high . And near the end of the scenario, you bring out your Twilight Blade to replay your bank of cards under Diana and provide extra protection against the Mythos deck to make sure your team doesn't trip at the finish line.

Here are my thoughts after running this in Silas Marsh:

• This has been a great horror soak replacement for Peter Sylvestre so I can run On Your Own (perm). I'd pay 4XP to upgrade to two Peter Sylvestre (2) if I wasn't playing On Your Own anyway, so that feels like a wash to me.
• Both versions of this work really well to keep damage and horror off of any of the Level 3 composures in this set, (Plucky (3) for Silas), but I think Plucky (1) from Echoes of the Past is the better combo; this version of Precious Memento "heals" horror from itself (on Standard difficulty Silas is easily passing almost all tests by 2+) and you don't have to worry about "healing" damage from it because Plucky (1) doesn't soak damage (so it can't force you to put damage on memento instead of it).
• While it usually won't be defeated by horror, it may still find its way into the discard pile (the previous reviewer also noted that it commits for just like Unexpected Courage), so Resourceful and Scavenging (and William Yorick!) get it back.

Playing Roland solo is very workable as long as you get good card draw. When I get an ally in play, and Pathfinder, and a weapon, I do pretty well. I've been trying to use his special ability to get clues after killing enemies by running 2 copies of On the Hunt. You also want to end your turn on a location with a clue just in case you draw an enemy in the Mythos phase.

However if you draw his Cover Up weakness mid to late game, it almost guarantees a bad ending. His sanity stat is so low you can't afford to just ignore the card. Roland has to work hard for every clue, so having to spend a minimum of 3 actions plus cards to commit or resources to boost your can be crippling. At least with my limited card pool (Dunwich & Carcosa cylces only) I find it very challenging.

(This is probably just repeating other reviews but I would like to talk about William anyway).

William Yorick is my favorite investigator. No question about it, the Survivor/Guardian combo is great for the job of being the monster killer/bodyguard combo and the feeling you get from playing him is like no other investigator.

But why would you want to play Yorick? His card pool is good but he doesn’t have access to the big blue weapons. And Tommy has a better card pool with guardian 0-5 and almost all the survivor cards. Yorick’s stat line is pretty good 3 2 4 3, and 8 health and 6 sanity. He has 3’s in his defensive stats, 4 in his offensive stat and a 2 in the one he doesn’t want to use. This is means he will struggle to get clues and progress the investigation but you have cluevers to handle that so you can just focus on protecting them. His Elder sign effect is great +2 and return any card from your discard to your hand! While this is great, it’s unreliable. You do have survivor tricks to make this happen more often, but I don’t think any investigator should be picked because they have a good elder sign effect (except father Mateo).

No, the reason to play Yorick is because of his investigator ability. After you defeat an enemy play an asset from your discard pile (paying its cost). This ability is a absolute flavor win as well as being fun and powerful. Flavorfully our gravedigger plays assets from his “graveyard”, It’s great! From a gameplay perspective the ability is powerful, your “graveyard” becomes a second hand for assets (your elder sign can grab events and skills) and all you have to do is kill something. This ability is not just deck recursion but also action efficiency! Some great targets for this effect are: -Weapons (so you can fight) -Ally’s (because they’re powerful) -Cherished keepsake (free sanity soak) -Leather coat (free heath soak) -Knife (cheap weapon and a discard effect for a big hit) -Grave diggers shovel (cheap weapon and a discard effect for clue) -Mysterious raven (fast discard effect for clue) -Stray cat (fast discard for an auto evade) -Any card you can discard for an effect or discard themselves once they are empty -Any free card (because you still need to pay) -And any cards the game ever decides you need to discard because it wanted to “hurt” you

Actually the only cards you shouldn’t recur are expensive cards that don’t have arrival effects or discard effects (try to run cheap with Yorick)

So now that you know all about our favorite gravedigger and his ability the last thing to talk about is his role on the team. He is a monster killer and in turn a bodyguard with insane survive ability thanks to your ability. Partner up with your squishy cluever and keep them safe with your teddy bear in hand and old coat wrapped around you you’ll be able to take whatever the mythos has to throw at you, and with your choice of weapon weather it be a knife or chainsaw you can even throw whatever the mythos right back at it.

So if you’re like me and your job is to protect your less equipped friends from the things that go bump in the night and stand strong as a bulwark against the darkness. Or You feel goosebumps rise as you defiantly hold you’re own against a eldritch monstrosity and “whisper gimme your best shot”. Give Willam a try, you’ll like him.