This card is exceptional as your team gets bigger.

In a typical 3-4 player game, monsters will be engaged to your far friends more often than to you. Now, you could spend an action to Engage, or invest in a Riot Whistle. But blackjack is cheaper, straightforward, inexhaustible, keeps your accessory slot free, and its upgrade isn't bad either.

When you run up to a friend on the brink of defeat, try to whack their worst nightmare on the head, and then see a tentacles, there's nothing more relieving than knowing that they're still going to live because you used your Blackjack.

So, if you're not using both of those hand slots, why not fill your offhand with a blackjack? I had a great Leo Anderson campaign in Carcosa running Blackjack & Survival Knife with a party of 4 investigators.

Just realise that the wording of parallel Agnes Baker provide an opportunity to "pay" one more damage as an additionnal cost. It can provide an other leverage to make it a 0 cost spell and enlarge the scope to make it a 5 dmg card. Not game breaking but quite fun ;-)

This card deserves a full-throated endorsement for use in Tommy Muldoon. First, it is Myriad, giving you three copies for five XP. Second, it provides up to six resources or ammo on Becky. Third, it only costs three resources, which is one less than the Beat Cop, which has less soak and provides a +1 that Tommy would rather not lose. Fourth, it uses the arcane slot, meaning that it is not competing with other Guardian assets and you can have two active at a time to make sure that you're optimally distributing damage and horror to get maximum value. All around a great card that has served my Tommy deck well.

Well, it's a good secondary way for Ursula Downs to get her Moonstone into play (the preferred way, of course, being Dr. Elli Horowitz). 'Putting an asset into play' is manifestly NOT the same thing as using the 'Play' action to play the card from your hand.

For an action-intensive setup, play this on the first round, move to a location with a clue, trigger your bonus investigation (and overcommit with Inquiring Mind, if need be), pick up a clue and get your Moonstone on the board. Third action: out comes Elli, and with her, another Relic of your choice...hey, maybe another Moon Rock? That would make Ursula 5/4/1/6 on the first turn, with little to fear from treacheries OR enemies. And she's still got both hands free for investigative tools...

Cunning compares rather poorly with generic skill cards like Perception and Unexpected Courage. It is decisively inferior when it gives a bonus of only +1 or +2. Even if it were to give a bonus of +3 all the time, I would think the card was maybe too good, but not by a large margin, it would still depend on what I thought was best for the deck. So in order for this card to be even average, it has to have a + 3 bonus most of the time. Meaning your deck has to be spending the great majority of the game with ten plus resources saved up. That means that Cunning can only be used in the type of deck which is specifically built around saving tons of money.

I have played that kind of deck and I find Cunning to be a perfectly useful card in that deck. The funny thing is that even in the deck which it is specifically designed for, I don't always include Cunning. It is good, but not so good as to clearly outweigh the value of other good cards I might be considering putting in the deck. It ends up depending a lot on how much I think that particular deck really needs a good skill card that gives both an intellect and an agility boost.