This card is amazing for (most) Guardians, whose two primary concerns are 1. paying for their extremely expensive assets, and 2. making sure those assets actually hit when you need them.

It's useful when you have things to kill, because you can spend those dollars to boost your attacks. It's useful when you're waiting around for things to kill because it pays for fresh equipment. It's even useful when you draw two at once, because is always helpful. It's a very rare scenario where you won't get your money's worth.

The only Guardians that get nothing from it are Nate, because it doesn't work with events and doesn't really benefit Boxing Gloves for lack of a Fight action, and of course Carolyn the pacifist... with one exception.

Bruiser synergizes with Enchanted Armor. The test is a test on an Armor card, so those recurring resources can give you a +2 boost to soaking that damage. I doubt it's worthwhile for that alone, but it's a nice boost for an otherwise underwhelming card. Potentially useful for Sister Mary and Zoey Samaras if you want a more convoluted alternative to Spiritual Resolve.

[Edit:] I should probably also talk about the other classes that can take it.

Survivors tend to run a lot cheaper, so the resources aren't as much of a lifesaver. They also generally depend more on events than weapons, which it doesn't benefit. A big standout is half-Guardian William Yorick, who carries more weapons than your average survivor and tends to recur them fairly often. Those assets are cheap, but he has to pay for them each time, so it adds up.

On the Rogue front, there's of course Tony Morgan who tends to play more like a Guardian and focus less on economy than your average rogue, so a combat-boosting card that also provides econ is very welcome. Jenny Barnes is already rich, but needs a little help on the combat front due to a measley 3 , which Bruiser can provide. It helps her get out a .45 Thompson and actually hit with it, and synergizes with Mauser C96 to turn the free weapon-only dollars into actual cash to fuel the rest of her kit.

The hammer contends with the Flamethrower as king of all weapons and firmly relegates the Lightning Gun to obsolescence .

Enchanted*, the hammer is a match for the Flamethrower in raw damage. In addition, it:

• doesn't need to engage, making it easier to beat enemies off allies
• can shove enemies away into irrelevance or as a pseudo evade
• is a Relic which helps with with things like Poltergeist
• benefits massively from Reliable and Enchant Weapon for reaching huge skill values for boss killing
• doesn't need to be reloaded, saving many actions and resources playing Extra Ammunition and the second copy of Flamethrower

The downside is that you do need to oversucceed to do 3 damage per hit, but skills like Daring and Overpower makes oversucceeding very reliable even before you start attaching Reliables and Enchanting it.

I've also found that the actions and resources saved from not needing to reload or replay weapons means that Guardians become more capable in other capacities, be it from healing or becoming able to pick up the odd clue with the excess resources. At higher difficulties the testless damage and +1 from a Beat Cop (2) was usually too much for me to give up, but the incredible reliability and relatively lower cost of the hammer means that it's easy to forgo the cop for other allies.

This is a particularly huge buff for Sister Mary, who struggled to compensate for her 3 in a class that revolves around monster slaying. Now she can swing a hammer along with the best of them.

I'm more lukewarm on this weapon for Mystics. Mystics have so many good hand slot choices and just gained a few more. More importantly, Mystics also lack commits for the hammer to oversucceed at higher difficulties — you can't commit Guts to it — and don't have access to Enchant Weapon or Reliable. Therefore, there's less of an advantage over Shrivelling (5) (especially if you're only occassionally fighting), though it's nice to not have to worry about backlash and spell charges.

Still, there's probably an interesting build with Mind's Eye, allowing mystics to attack at double their , or to otherwise use the newly freed arcane slot for Seal of the Seventh Sign or Close the Circle.

* You could also enchant the Flamethrower, but the enchantment will be discarded if you need to play a new copy to reload it, and it's so overkill that it's impractical

"Anirniq" in Inuit religion is the soul or "breath" of all living things. Put nicely, you're shepherding the souls of your dead allies into the afterlife, sheltering them from the cruel whims of the mythos. Put in another way, you're capturing their souls in a soul jar for use in your necromantic rituals.

Even ignoring the fact that this is copies 3 and 4 of your The Red-Gloved Man at a fraction of the XP, don't sleep on the draw 3 effect. This is a basically a 1 cost Cryptic Research with a more restrictive play condition. At just half the XP, that's a steal.

Consider that seekers and mystics run many disposable allies: Arcane Initiate, David Renfield, Art Student, Research Librarian, Laboratory Assistant, and the new Medical Student, and so on. It's easy to get value out of the card, be it from a Mystic killing off their Arcane Initiate from spell backlash or a Ward of Protection or from Dexter's ability, or the Seeker simply drawing through their deck, or just passive damage from the mythos. And you can even play both copies to draw six cards actionlessly!

Most Seekers can easily fit this into their decks as Seekers tend to run low resource curves with plenty of skills. Mystics on the other hand need to consider whether they'll have the resources to make use of all the cards they'll draw. It does mean it's a lot easier to actionlessly use Winds of Power (funding the cost with Prophetic) or set up your Favor of the Moon/Recharge combo.

Edit: I've also somehow missed the excellent though thematically ridiculous combo with Sacrifice. This is now my favorite two card combo.

It's thematic, but kind of a bummer for the investigator, who would like it most, that this card tests : Nathaniel Cho. He loves cards, that could trigger his ability out of the investigator phase, and there are not that many. So far, I've found:

• "Get over here!" (2)
• Ambush (in particular, if you pair it with On the Hunt, or better yet the upgraded version)
• (of course) Counterpunch and the upgrade
• Dynamite Blast (3) (which is nice I guess, but kind of situational: you play it mainly to hurt many, not for the one additional damage)
• Heroic Rescue and the upgrade
• Taunt (3)

So unless I have missed one, this would be the seventh option for him. (Not talking about really weird exceptions, like a Teamwork to take Chuck Fergus to do either version of One-Two Punch out of turn. ) But testing ? The only possibility I see, how this might work for Cho, would be spending money on Combat Training. This card also got an Upgrade, which is coincidently right the next card in this pack. It makes, among other things, passing the check 2 resource cheaper. But I'm still not sure, if this would be worth it.

I'm working on a rich over succeed Tony Morgan combat build that wants to use this as one of the primary weapons. Sawed-Off Shotgun will make it's way in too as it also wants to over succeed. Hard Knocks will probably be a huge get in this deck as well.

A couple of nifty combos in the deck around this card:

1. Overcommit with Momentum since you're trying to succeed by the fight value of a monster at your location this will make the next attack much easier.
2. Watch This, the extra money will be poured into hard knocks when you need some extra double taps.

Some core cards and why you'd choose them:

1. Opportunist & Opportunist - Generally good in over succeed but since you often will want to over succeed by a lot it's useful here.
2. Tabboo'd Sleight of Hand works with this gun.
3. Narrow Escape helps when you need to play a new gun after picking one up with Well-Maintained. The +2 on your next shot is welcome for mowing down 2 enemies in one check.
4. Daring Maneuver is probably gonna pull some weight in terms of adding consistency to your double taps.
5. Since you're already going for oversucceed pair your main gun with some Mauser C96's to get some added resource generation when doing normal fights and Switchblade to round things off.
6. The upgraded Joey "The Rat" Vigil will be a great way to clear your cheaper weapons and make some money for your main one and let you compress actions in general since you're already money focused.
7. With Contraband (and Contraband) both in class and this weapon being an ammo hog it might be worth it to run.
8. Decorated Skull & Decorated Skull probably work ok here as you're a primary fighter and when You're not fighting you need to be preparing while sitting on top of your clue gatherer.
9. "Let God sort them out..." might actually work in this deck, probably as a 1 of, as you will have the kill potential and action efficency for offing 6 dmg worth of enemies when combing across multiple enemies.

I'm not sure yet if the deck is going to be great but looking at this card I do feel like it has potential, especially in campaigns with lots of enemies like Dream-Eaters. I feel it particuarly pairs well with evasion heavy investigators such as Trish Scarboroughor Ursula Downs.