Butterfly Effect

It's Silas Marsh the investigator ability, slightly weakened, on a card, that hits your friends too. And that's quite alright.

It's not really worth mincing many words, but here is a reminder about Silas's ability: Some skill cards have an effect as soon as you play them or before the token is revealed, like Defiance, the benefits on these cards stick around because the card has already caused it's ability, no takesies backsies. Other skill cards wait around, usually to see if you succeed, like Perception, if these arent in play when their trigger happens, no benefits.

TL:DR. Unrelenting + Butterfly Effect good, Perception + Butterfly Effect, less good.

Butterfly Effect is flexible, but not very powerful, it can help you preserve your deck when the going's tough, Silas Marsh for example will often run out of steam if he repeatedly fails tests, draining his hand. Butterfly Effect also helps you steam through tests, but when you do, you're effectively spending 2 cards to beat a test (Butterfly Effect itself, on top of the skill card you commit), that's a downward spiral of cards!

I do not think this is a good card, only take it if you're aiming for a power-combo with Unrelenting, and/or to protect high-value skill cards like Brute Force, All In, Overpower. ETC.

Tsuruki23 · 2568
Stirring Up Trouble

So. In lieu of the massive walls of text, I want to give you guys a TL:DR.

2 automatic clues that cost no resources is bonkers freaking good! Take it in characters like Roland Banks, Tony Morgan, Joe Diamond or Luke Robinson (I.E, characters that struggle to crack locations with regular tests, especially in hard).

Dont even hesitate to use it just for the test security and speed, nail that 2 shroud location for 2 clues and keep moving! It's especially great for group play where if the Fighter can actually cover that 2 clue 1/2 shroud location, that's incredibly good for tempo. With something like a 6 or 7 character blasting other locations with Investigates, the will barely register on their radar.

This might already be hinted at by the other, huuuge, reviews, but to me, this is an indescribably good card for the tiny-tiny niche it fills.

Tsuruki23 · 2568
Hyperawareness

One of the less taken core set talents, Hyperawareness has a weird set of stat's, and as such, not many characters actually like it. In older campaigns is a relatively weak stat that's little tested, is obviously universally useful, but Hyperawareness is costly to play and costly to run, so characters that might use it (Roland Banks comes to mind) cannot actually afford to. Since then has picked up as a useful stat in newer campaigns, so characters are actually picking it for the ability to get out of danger.

Enter: Hyperawareness, a clue focused character is all but guaranteed to find use for +2 free every single turn, and all of a suddent thei've got a very powerful emergency button to press when an enemy gets too close.

You'll most probably be looking at Hyperawareness when you're playing Rex Murphy, Ursula Downs or Harvey Walters, the former two might actually even consider using it to fuel some killing with an Ornate Bow.

Good card, it's just a bit niche.

Tsuruki23 · 2568
Book of Psalms

Good card.

Spending actions to heal horror is already a thing people play, albeit usually with techniques that heal 2 horror in one go, as with Logical Reasoning and Clarity of Mind.

That said, healing 1 horror and pouring into the bag is just very, very good. But tokens may not be quite as good as healing a second horror, and the book is a hand slot item. Which means that if you aren't targeting mechanic, or if you need that hand for something (usually a weapon), then it's not super great.

For builds, especially in a team setup, it's outright excellent! A fighting character with an empty hand can wait for enemies to show up, and instead of wasting the turn taking resources or cards, they can heal people, and while they're doing that they're making tests easier and creating a window for combo's to activate in. Because you often find yourself using this thing twice or thrice in a turn you actually blow up the Chaos bag quite a bit with , perfectly setting up for the next turns where you hopefully draw into these tokens.

Outside bless: Only ever really look at this card if your hands arent full, and even then, only if you're worried about horror.

In bless: Yes, near autotake in big teams using .

Tsuruki23 · 2568
Blessing of Isis

To define how good this card can be. Take note of Favor of the Sun. You can trigger Favor of the Sun after you've seen the first bless token in your draw and thus guarantee Blessing of Isis triggers right there. It's a strong combo, but I'm not sure Blessing of Isis is worth it by itself.

The probability to see two bless tokens goes from neglible at 2-3 tokens in the bag, to nearly 20-30% at the maximum 10 tokens, with a Mary doing her very best to fill the bag with goodness, and/or other characters helping out somehow, those odds can actually be rather good and consistent, netting perhaps 3-5 extra triggers. The trick then is to take characters who've got great abilities, Leo Anderson, Nathaniel Cho and Sister Mary herself all like this effect.

As a last method to support this card, there's seal mechanics. When you've got a Chthonian Stone, the Day of Reckoning weakness, Seal of the Seventh Sign and other mechanics to block out other tokens, this in turn enhances your chances at seeing back to back tokens, this is actually a reciprocal synergy so a large group playing into this theme together can set up games where a heap of negative tokens is locked out entirely and blesses are more then half the bag.

I dont think Blessing of Isis is a particularly excellent card, for the simple reason that it relies on setup and randomness, but it's fun and can be extremely powerful in that niche window when you're consistently seeing those lucky draws. At least once you've set up, the that trigger Blessing of Isis do go back into the bag when triggered, so Blessing of Isis is a bit of a "self refueling engine".

Tsuruki23 · 2568
Good review, two notes: Father Mateo can take this too, and he has arguably the very best Elder Sign effect, plus access to lots of sealing cards and token manipulation. Also, if you have a supportive build for Mateo, Carolyn, or Mary, you can run this alongside a non-guardian with a good elder sign. Skip buying Favor of the Sun and let your Silas, Winnifred, or Lily run it instead to trigger their powerful recursion effects. — OrionJA · 1