Card Reviews · ArkhamDB

"Fool me once..."

Pointing out potentially obscure interaction (if it's already been discussed, my b):

The ability on "Fool me once..." is entirely optional. The means you can lock away nasty treacheries like Ancient Evils forever to decrease their appearance from the encounter deck at all. Then in the final stages of the scenario you can always choose to cancel it anyway if you'll finish before reshuffling the encounter deck.

The reason I'm bringing this up at all is because my group has found that Syzygy is just an absolute nightmare to handle. Since it is a Peril, your Ward of Protection or A Test of Will packing friends won't be allowed to cancel it. If you have a way to ensure that you're the one to draw Syzygy (say... First Watch or Scrying) you can ensure one or both of them are completely removed from the scenario for its duration.

Notably the reverse also applies. "Fool me once..." cannot cancel Perils drawn by your allies despite its card text.

"Peril is a keyword ability.

While resolving the drawing of an encounter card with the peril keyword, an investigator cannot confer with the other players. Those players cannot play cards, trigger abilities, or commit cards to that investigator's skill test(s) while the peril encounter is resolving."

Anyway, there's plenty of encounter sets that include only one or two copies of completely disgusting treacheries that can be completely negated for the remainder with some luck and/or some encounter deck manipulation. Give it a shot!

5/14/21

DanPyre · 62

Not only can you do this on encounters, you can also do it to weaknesses, locking a treachery out of someone's deck permanently after resolving it once. Not a big deal if you draw normally, but for decks that cycle quickly it can be very nice. However, as you pointed out, you cannot use FMO's reaction to then cancel another copy of the treachery unless you draw it, so the utility of locking a treachery is going to depend massively on how quickly you chew through that deck and/or if the deck gets reshuffled a lot, which to be completely fair is very common in Innsmouth I believe. — StyxTBeuford · 13049 5/14/21

Ancestral Knowledge

This card has totally replaced my original plan to run a Big Hand Studious Amanda Sharpe.

The flexibility Studious gives is threefold: You can get it in two instalments of 3XP, you get both cards turn 1, and you can mulligan them as well. But it stops there, while Ancestral Knowledge shines later on...

While Ancestral Knowledge has to be paid upfront in full and only gets the second card turn 2 - no mulligan - it allows for a nice flexible reserve, for when you need to fill the tank for a life saving Higher Education boost, get an extra bonus with Celaeno Fragments or Curiosity, save 1 resource when doing some Extensive Research, or even enable Farsight.

It also has the guaranteed Skill cards at the start of the game, helping enable Minh Thi Phan and giving Amanda Sharpe more options of skills early on.

It synergizes well with Dream-Enhancing Serum, since you will be having skills doubled on your deck - Big Hand builds without the early need to increase hand size!

And you can even get Studious with some leftover 3XP later on.

5/14/21

Kidaf · 6

Question, does this count as a search hability? "stick to the plan" counts but it says "search" explicitly — biuzenho · 1 5/26/21

It doesn't explicitly say search so it shouldn't count. — StyxTBeuford · 13049 5/26/21

Also, it says 5 random, so you are not searching the deck anyway. — Kidaf · 6 5/28/21

This is a really good comparison. Studious costs 3exp and gives 1 card. This costs 6 exp but gives 5! — fates · 54 5/12/22

Henry Wan

With the combination Wendy's Amulet and Premonition, which forebodes every token and thus prevents Henry Wan to miss, you'll get on average 2.67 resources/cards on his action (with the starting-standard NotZ chaos bag). It is versatile as you can avoid the overdraw and choose what you lack most, even upgrade a Dark Horse deck; but it is unreliable, as you basically toss a dice to know how much you earn.

I feel like making his ability a trigger or even "when you are about to draw a card or gain a resource" would make it funnier and yet not broken.

Spending action for this effect feels wrong.

5/13/21

LeFricC'estChic · 86

You can't play Premonition in the middle of resolving Henry's ability, since there's no action window. — Thatwasademo · 58 5/13/21

Indeed you're right. So, knowing your first token, and if you somehow always knew when to stop (as every AH player), you could expect on average 2.67 resources on the action. Still not worth the risk. — LeFricC'estChic · 86 5/20/21

Joey "The Rat" Vigil

Fast - I play Switchblade - lost 1 resource. => Fast - I attach Well-Maintained - lost 0 resource. => Fast - Discard Switchblade - Return it to my hand - Gain 2 resource. => Do Fast again and again => I'm billionaire. => Serious Errors in the game.

5/13/21

huybn9493 · 1

Well Maintained doesn't bounce itself. It returns each other upgrade attached to the card to your hand, but goes to the discard pile. Also there's a million ways to break the game; it's not a competition, so why do we care? — SGPrometheus · 841 5/13/21

A game having a broken combo doesn’t mean the entire game is broken- taboo hits a lot of them, and the remainder you can just choose not to play. All such ways require very specific builds in specific gators, and all of them require XP to my knowledge. If you can’t accept that, then this may not be the game for you. — StyxTBeuford · 13049 5/13/21

and like SGPrometheus said, it's not working anyway. I don't like people accusing the game of "Serious Errors" if they didn`t even read the cards correctly — niklas1meyer · 1 5/14/21

Fast - you play switchblade - lost 1 resource. => fast - you attach well maintained - lost 1 resource. => fast - discard well maintained and return switchblade to your hand. - gain 2 resources. => don't do it again, do it again to a maximum of two times, because you only have one more copy of well maintained. Congratz, you spend 5 XP, 4 cards and 4 resources to fain 6 resources. wow! Much Combo! — PowLee · 15 5/15/21

So can you use his ability to play a card in any player free action window? It doesn’t explicitly say during your turn, but I am assuming because it say ‘play’ you can only do it during your turn? Or can you play yr newly drawn Tennessee Sour Mash in the mythos phase? — gazzagames · 7 9/13/21

Moon Pendant

This card doesn't say its effects only applies to YOUR tarot cards, just that the hand portion only applies to your hand. While players without a Moon Pendant wouldn't be able to commit Tarots from their hand (as they would have no icons while in their hand), every player would get the benefit of each other's Moon Pendants while a Tarot card is committed. In a 4 player game you could have everyone run a copy, and with all 4 out, every Tarot card would have 8 wild icons. Or, using Relic Hunter, if each player has two Moon Pendants, each Tarot card would have a whopping 16 wild icons. Which seems....pretty good.

I doubt this is intended, and you'd need multiple packs without using proxies, but if you wanted a fun cheesy multiplayer buildaround, this could be it!

5/13/21

Neofalcon · 23

Check out "You/ Your" in the RR. This effect falls into: — Susumu · 381 6/28/21

(forgot again: you shall not <Enter> in these comments) Any other instance of "you/your" that does not fall into the above categories refers to the investigator who controls the card, the investigator who has the card in his/her threat area, or who is currently interacting with the card. --> Only the symbols from the card controlled by you are applied. — Susumu · 381 6/28/21

This section of the FAQ does not apply to cards committed to skill tests, as there is no "You/Your" for that part - only for cards in your hand. The only "your" is applying to cards in your hand, which is what I was pointing out with my original comment. "Each non-weakness Tarot asset committed to a skil test gains ??" is a global effect. — Neofalcon · 23 7/15/21

"Moon Pendant" is a card you control, and therefore only you can use it. Even "Shortcut" (2) was erratat, because RAW only the investigator who controls the card could use it while attached to a location. — Susumu · 381 8/1/21

If I remember correctly, the limit of having the ?s on tarots in your hand effectively prevents anybody else from using it anyway, as you can't commit a card unless it has relevant pips to begin with. In fact, I'm wagering the main reason for "in your hand" is to make it possible to commit tarots in the first place? — HanoverFist · 746 8/2/21

Reading as written, the you/your portion applies to adding “??” To tarot cards in your hand; while the adding “??” to committed tarrot cards applies to any Tarrot cards committed. So if all (4) investigators had this item, committed tarot cards would gain “????????” while committed. As for the Shortcut Eratta, the rules normally prevent you from activating/exhausting items controlled by other investigators except for cards in their Threat Zone; so to allow other played to exhaust shortcut it needed an eratta/clarification. In this case, the other investigators are not “using” the pendant, the pendant is passively applying “??” to tarot cards committed to tests. — darkernectron · 8 8/28/21