Lily Chen

I think thematically this character is pretty cool, shes the "chosen one" which is probably why she is an mystic. She is sworn to defend others,or fight evil. that's why she upgrades into a guardian, but is a martial artist, so no guns allow, but that's probably why she likes using her agility, this is odd because agility is the rogues stock n trade, but she is not even close to being one.

I think my favorite part about her are her 4 disciplines, and the weight they carry when playing. You chose one discipline at the start, And as you gain more experience, you become more disciplined, which is a unique Idea, granted this comes with a burden.( her weakness's)

Let's say you started with the strength one. It grants you a constance 1+ Strength. Which is great. She fights at 5 now. And can take down many foes. It gets crazy when you start to add weapons(no firearms), and alies. All guardian (or mystic I guess but usually with Will) love to fight at a 5.

However

There is a temptation. Every discipline has a unique action, which when used causes the discipline to break(filp) and you will have to rediscipline yourself afterwords, (or get lucky with her elder sign) you could just forgo using it, stay regit and maintain your discipline so you never lose that 1+.

But getting a 5+ to a skill test is amazing, that can allow you to fight the toughest of foes or pass those parley checks that you have to pass, but afterwords, you lose your static bonus, and are required to not preform a single skill test for 1 whole round. This is a tall ask, especially since this includes the mythos phase, which loves to force test on you, or enemies. You would be amazed of how many skill test you actually do, untill you are told not to perform them.(I'm not looking at you, testless builds)

Your weakness, burden of destiny, is yet again a really nice thematic weakness that pits you with a decision, you break your discipline, or you force you body and soul to maintain it.(1 damage and 1 horror.) This is worst if if you already have a broken discipline, as it forces you to take that damage and horror."how can I save them when I can't even save myself"

I think this game has many investigators that are very thematic, and with as many cards as there is, you can build anything, for anyone, there is a character for you. I can't wait to see more character this game has to offer.

Cyclopean Hammer

Finally, a Weapon, I would put into a 's hands. I was never a fan of any version of Enchanted Blade, even for Diana, Akachi or Jim, who have 3 , because trading to fight with instead of is still not a great thing to do for them, and spending an arcane slot for it even more awful. (Of course, there are other tools like Sword Cane or in some decks maybe Spirit Athame for , but I wouldn't see their main use as a fighting weapon.) I think, the Cyclopean Hammer will shine exceptionally in the hands of Diana Stanley, who gets an awesome card for Well Prepared synergies to boot with it, which also makes it easier for her to over-succeed by 3 on the test on this card. A disadvantage, compared to Shrivelling or Azure Flame will be, that have to rely more on or pips. Overpower becomes a consideration for them, possibly also Vicious Blow for Diana. This needs extra deck space, compared to a build, where you only rely on . Also, if I understand the syntax of the card right, you will deal the extra damage from over-succeeding only to non-Elites as well, on par with Spectral Razor. (Another interpretation would be, that on over-succeeding Elites would go flying as well, but that would be really strange and sounds silly to me.)

That's not to say, won't like it. They all come with at least 3 , several of them have 4. Of course, in this class, it has to compete with Flamethrower, with it's unpaired amount of damage. Sister Mary likes her Holy Spear, but she could wield the Hammer as well, and it might even be as good and less clunky. On the plus side, the Hammer improves the value of cards like Brother Xavier, Bandolier (2) or Police Badge, because suddenly get another offensive stat, they can buff with these. A minor consideration, but much more important for than , are enemies like Poltergeist or Wraith, who can be squished with the hammer quite easily. But it's really minor, in particular Poltergeists are only to be seen twice in Carcosa, and the first time in the first scenario, when no can currently have a Cyclopean Hammer.

The card is of course expensive in XP and Resources. In particular for , who get an XP discount from Arcane Research on cards like Shrivelling, which cost (at most) 3 resources. But it has not the spill-over effects, we usually see on cards, and unlimited uses (except on a Conglomeration of Spheres), so I think, the card is not overpriced. Some people like to put Spectral Razor on Dayana Esperence, and that's twice the resources (unless you discount the spells with Robes) for 3 uses of a similar effect. (You don't need to over-succeed, you can engage enemies, but can't bounce off non-Elites.) I'm very much looking forward to the release of this box to try it out!

Susumu · 382
I actually thought that the clause in parentheses was meant to replace the previous text (that is, if you succeeded by 3 or more, you would deal +2 damage to any enemy, and then if the enemy is not Elite you could send it flying up to 2 locations away). Hard to say, the wording makes it quite hard to tell. — Lasiace · 23
MJ has confirmed that the damage is a separate clause to the movement. So you can hit Elites for +2 damage, but they cannot be moved. — Jaysaber · 7
A neat synergy that I just thought of is attaching a copy or two of Reliable onto this weapon. If my understanding is correct, unlike Well Prepared which specifies that the icons have to match, Reliable boosts ALL your skill values, so each copy would effectively be +2 fighting stat when used on this (+1 will and +1 fight). If this is the case then that's some good value, especially since you want to be oversucceeding with this card anyway. There also appears to be a minor synergy with Righteous Hunt, where you could use it as a free movement by sending them towards your intended destination. If you oversucceed to knock them 2 spaces away, or you're Zoey, or both, that could be decent action compression in some situations. — Lasiace · 23
@ Jaysaber: that's great to know. Can you tell, where she confirmed that? The card is for sure strangely worded in that case. — Susumu · 382
@ Lasiace: Reliable would sure be another option. It does not add more than "Well Prepared" though, because both add 2 to the skill value. The movement with "Righteous Hunt" sounds clunky to me. You need a non elite enemy with at least 4 hitpoints to make that work. Sure possible occasionally, but nothing I would expect to line up the way, I want to use it. — Susumu · 382
Yep, the main advantage of Reliable would just be that it wouldn't exhaust, the effective bonus per test would still be the same (though to be fair, not exhausting is a big deal, but being able to use Well Prepared on any test is also a big deal, so different reasons to take them, or both.) The Righteous Hunt thing is definitely not something I would ever actively try to set up - I mostly just thought of it while making a Zoey deck, since the hammer will be one of her best weapon options, and she would have considered Righteous Hunt anyway as tech against her weakness. More of just a neat niche tech than anything. — Lasiace · 23
So can we now keep bonking the Experiment back to the Laboratory? :P — ratnip · 68
Awww... I just saw the MJ clarification. Oh well... :( — ratnip · 68
Here's a suggestion if you struggle to pay the resources for the Hammer: Just let Dr. Elli Horowitz find and swing it! She'll be fine doing this... Also that way your hands are free for reading books, looking at weird statues or what not... — Miroque · 25
Cryptic Grimoire

Oh boy... there are bad cards, there are laughably bad cards, there's Flute of the Outer Gods, then there's this absolute hunk of junk. My goodness, what a terrible waste. Let me point some things out...

You'll need dedicated support curse token bag manipulation to make this card even close to being viable. That is going to almost certainly mean help from a red character running the absolutely overpowered Spirit of Humanity. Nothing else is going to come close in multiplayer in keeping the chaos bag stocked full of tokens. Even so.... good luck ever getting 5 charges on this card purely from curse tokens that ONLY you can pull. You're lucky to pull 5 curse tokens in an entire mission with a chaos bag filled with 10 at most times. So even if you DO manage to get 5 charges on it, and you manage to ignore one single encounter card, what have you invested...

You've struggled through the untranslated grimoire, which is just a dead card in your deck.

You've spent a whopping 4 xp to purchase this card.

You've had to find this card early in the mission so that you have a prayer of getting 5 secrets.

You have a precious hand slot taken up for the entirety of the mission.

You make all this investment for a card, that if drawn in the last half or so of a mission, is completely dead. There's no point trying to play this card when you only have a few turns left. It's only viable if found and played early.

All that to ignore MAYBE.... and I say MAAAAAAYBE 1-2 encounter cards (and draw 2 cards).

My goodness. You can make it your life mission to manipulate secrets via Eldritch Sophist, Ariadne's Twine, Favor of the Moon, etc... but my god. You're devoting all this effort simply to cancel a couple encounter cards with a big fat maybe attached.

There's no comparison to say, A Watchful Peace. Absolutely none. Cheaper to play. Far easier to play. No silly untranslated hoop to jump through. No hand slot to take up, and simply 5 bless tokens from anywhere.

I've run a campaign with a dedicated support curse token, Spirit of Humanity Agnes Baker, keeping the bag full of curse tokens, and i proc'd this card precisely zero times. Give it a wide miss.

A simply taboo fix that is DESPERATELY needed is to proc the curse tokens from any investigator at your location.

AussieKSU · 1134
I think 2x forewarned is also a good comparison for a much easier way to cancel 2 encounter cards in seeker. — Django · 5164
There are worse cards out there. Treachery cancelation is a pretty powerful effect, and this one even more so since you are effectively ignoring enemies as well. I agree it’s not a great option for multiplayer since other players will be pulling your curses, but it’s less important when you have other players to help deal with your problems. Seeker has plenty of draw and tutors to ensure the grimoire hits the table early. And you can power it up with secrets from Truth From Fiction, Astounding Revelation, and Ariadne’s Twine. — LaRoix · 1646
Can confirm. I ran this with Ursula, paired with Marie, both running full curse suite and aggressively trying to make this card work. I knew it was bad, but just wanted to see for myself. Well, I think it was the 4th scenario before I even got the grimoire translated at all...and then in the following four, I wasn't able to use this card one single time. Haaard pass on this card--it's beyond useless.. — Pinchers · 133
Tried it twice. Swapped it out twice. — MrGoldbee · 1493
What if we tried this with no curse support at all? Would it work better with the standard Seeker secret cards artificially pumping it with charges? Especially if it's just one of many "get secrets on this card and we win the game" cards in your deck. Might be worth playing a whole campaign to figure out. — SGPrometheus · 849
SGPrometheus, it's an interesting thought, but my opinion would be that after all you'd do to get the secrets on the card... Ardianne's Twin, Sophist, events, etc... you'll likely get far more return from playing traditional cancels. — AussieKSU · 1134
Also take a look at Ward of Radiance, when it comes to cancel efficiency. Super card. — AussieKSU · 1134
The more I read this review and its comments, to more I realize what an awful card this is. I guess they were afraid of having a encounter canceller that technically has unlimited uses. — Nenananas · 272
This can counter Overzealous. If you trigger this when you would draw encounter card by Overzealous, you also don't need to resolve surge. I think, this is the ONLY efficient usage of this card. — elkeinkrad · 498
Elkeinkrad, i saw this card, and wanted to try it in a mandy deck to counter her weakness, which draws an encounter card. On top of that, she is likely going to get quite a bit of search to fine her tomes. Despite this, I had such little success with it. — AussieKSU · 1134
A sufficiently strong seeker deck can reliably guarantee 1.5 curses drawn each round with Favor of the Moon. This means an encounter card skipped every 3 rounds, assuming nobody else draws curses and you don't generate any secrets. Of course, with such a strong deck there's a lots of other things that can be exploited. — wheelgroup · 1
Can confirm, this card is steaming hot garbage. — snacc · 1021
Wheelgroup I think you miss the part where you discard favor of the moon after you use its curses. So after 3 uses your chance to get curses reliable should decrease significantly. — Tharzax · 1
How FotM works is, you play FotM, releasing 1 curse per round. On the 3rd turn, after using the last curse on it, you discard the FoTM and play a new FoTM and use it on the same round. Then 2 rounds later, being a seeker you've drawn through your discard and have your other FotM in hand again, playing it again. This means that every 2 rounds, you release 3 curses, giving the 1.5 curse per round number. Of course, with that kind of draw power you don't actually need the draw from Cryptic Grimoire, and you could be Daisy Walker just playing Ward of Protection every round instead. — suika · 9506
Nkosi Mabati

Not a review but a question: does this work with Bless and Curse tokens?

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Cpt_nice · 83
Bless tokens count as having a symbol. So you can use the second ability to swap for a Bless token. But only if there is one in the bag, otherwise the old token won't be returned to the bag. — duke_loves_biscuits · 1285
A clarification question. What non-auto-success-token with a symbol is meant on this card? Could it be a Blesses or Cursed token? I guess it means any non-numbered/non-auto-success-token,.. just want to be sure. — Rune · 1
It's any token besides a number token and the Elder Sign. So it could be Bless, Curse... Even a Frost token, tho no idea why you'd want that. — MindControlMouse · 45
I think you can then combo Nkosi With Ancient Covent have is just be the bless token so when you make it the bless token with Nkosi you exhaust Ancient so you don't need to reveal another chaos token so its just the Bless token for the skill test — Hazbin · 1
Prophesiae Profana

B R O K E N

You are playing The Forgotten Age, got 5 exp in first scenario. Then, you buy this card.

Hard mulligan to get it. When you got it, make the entrance The Locus. It means u have this efect until the end of scenario. When you will get the Relic, give it to other player, move him to entrance, win.

There is a lot of other scenarios that can work with it. Cassino with Peter Clover, Theater in Carcossa, and every scenario with resigning.

Pawiu14 · 202
Round 1: play this. Round 2: Crypt Chill. — SGPrometheus · 849
"I'm Outta Here" does this at lvl 0 tho :) — MrGoldbee · 1493
But it can't give you +1 intellect and agility, ignoring AoO and it moves whole team — Pawiu14 · 202