With the 10/15/2020 taboo giving this card icon to activate instead of , the whole cycle is quite a bit more likely to see play.

Truth be told, this much was obvious. But I want to touch on a particular interaction that the Scroll of Secrets has going for it:

It can bury weaknesses in investigator's decks.

Now I don't necessarily mean "if you happen to hit an investigator's weakness in the bottom three, you get to punt it into their discard pile." No, what I mean is "My sick-nasty Winifred Habbamock deck happened to draw Doomed as her basic weakness, while our Rex Murphy player drew Offer You Cannot Refuse and I hate it."

Enter, Scroll of Secrets. Not ONLY do you have the option to dropkick these weaknesses into the Shadow Realm, you ALSO have the ability to effectively negate them by always choosing to put any player cards from the bottom of the deck to the top. In doing so, you end up 'pushing' any weaknesses not drawn closer to the bottom of the deck and away from the top, regardless of whether or not they're necessarily relevant to the scenario at hand. Because if it means you get another scenario out of your 30XP character who is waiting for The Bell Tolls, it's worth it.

Now I just need to convince our Rex player to pick up the second one so I don't hear that damn bell.

TL;DR interesting corner case in flipping cards from the bottom of your deck to the top to avoid being Doomed.

Getting three cards for an action and zero bucks is extremely powerful. It can protect you from the encounter deck in Dunwich and night of the zealot.

You’ll have to deal with the curse tokens sooner or later, which means spending experience points. Which makes total sense for a card with the keywords of both insight and cursed.

Django‘s review explains many many ways to play Amanda, but doesn’t answer why.

Amanda is the seeker equivalent of Calvin or Preston, with low stats that are accounted for with a special ability. And while Prestons makes a lot of sense (he’s a lazy guy who makes up for it with money), and Calvin’s is a bit more tenuous (looking at rotting remains gives him additional willpower?), Amanda’s is amazing.

For young people, college is a time of unparalleled opportunity. Especially for a woman going to an integrated college in the 1920s, there’s really no archetype to fall back on, how to act, or who to be.

So Amanda gets to choose. If Roland Banks gives her a machine gun, she can lay down brutal attacks. But if she decides to spend her semester in the Orne library, she can equal the card draw of professor Harvey.

Unlike other adaptable characters, like Jenny Barnes, Amanda can be super good at what she needs to be when she needs to be it. No need to be broke to trigger dark horse, no need to flush cash into physical training or hard knocks. So what’s the downside?

Again, it’s like a college. You might run out of options and have to be someone else for a while. That someone else might be an ancient frog person. It could also be hard to prioritize playing assets, compared to using your high skills to just pass checks.

But as a seeker, Amanda is extremely well-positioned to cycle her deck and get her best cards back. She also has better self-preservation through most, able to raise her brawling talents or simply run away.

In solo, Amanda can hoover up clues, then deal with bosses. In multiplayer, she can carry fightier investigators without needing rescuing. And that’s a Major advantage.

I think this item will make Yorick good for multiplayer as main dmg dealer again. This was exactly what he was missing!

Act of Desperation should be your main interaction. You will use it to gain resources back, get finishing hit and play it back into your play area for free. How does this work? AoE first discard Chainsaw and after the fight is resolved Chainsaw should be already in discard pile to pick it up with Yorick ability back.

Then you can use Resourceful to get your AoE back. In emergency case it should be of course used to get back Chainsaw directly (even if less effective)

Still not enough charges ? Use Emergency Cache to put up to 4 charges into your Chainsaw.

Still not enough charge? Cheeze it out with Versatile + Contraband 3 base +4 from cache doubled by Contraband for 14 supplies thats 42dmg in your disposal by 3 card combo that cost 8 resources. Who can do that? :)

Not forget that Chainsaw has 3 icons for Well Prepared You will test for 9 without any other buffs.

If you just count how much dmg you can put into your deck with all those interactions its getting pretty crazy with how consistent it could be.

I'm a little surprised that discussion of this card so far has been focused on two issues that seem to me secondary.

1) How bless and curse tokens change your odds of passing checks. 2) The advantages of deck-thinning.

The main reason to play this card, in my view, is because you're going for a build that exploits either bless or curse tokens to achieve other, card-based effects. And if you are, it's wonderful! Here are some nice combos that you can pull off with current and upcoming cards:

Bless deck:

1) Rite of Sanctification: If you happen to have both the Rite and Tempt Fate in your opening hand, you can immediately seal three Bless tokens on the Rite for a total savings of six resources over time. Not bad! If the combo emerges later in the game, it's less valuable, but still likely to be helpful.

2) Radiant Smite: If you have Tempt and Smite in your hand at the same time, you can drop the Tempt to make an absolutely bonkers attack with +3 Will and 4 damage.

3) Ward of Radiance: Unfortunately, I don't think you can use the player window in the Mythos phase to draw your card, dump bless tokens in the bag with Tempt, and then cancel with the Ward. BUT if you have the Ward and Tempt in hand heading into a Mythos phase and think you might want to cancel what you draw, you can increase your odds of doing so by plumping the bag.

4) Beloved: If you desperately need to pass a check but lack the skill value, you can increase your odds of an auto-success by dumping some bless tokens in the bag before you draw (heck, even if you draw a curse token, your second pull could be a bless).

5) Ancient Covenant: Once a turn, bless tokens are pretty much auto-successes. They therefore become MUCH more valuable, and worth the 3 curse tokens.

Curse Deck: As a general rule, curse decks love this card even more than bless decks do. Bless decks are willing to deal with the three curse tokens in order to achieve some other benefit, but if cursing is your jam, it's not like you HATE having bless tokens in the bag as well. Tempt Fate simply becomes a win-win!

1) Blasphemous Covenant: Tempt Fate works great with this card. Just play Tempt Fate as soon as you draw it, and feel the math of the bag bend in your advantage...

2) Skeptic: This seems like a weak card to me, especially at 1xp, but if you happen to be running it, Tempt Fate does make it mathematically more advantageous.

3) Eye of Chaos: Once again, the bless tokens help you pass checks; the curse tokens get you clues. If you're into ocular entropy, you're happy about all SIX of the tokens that Tempt puts in your bag.

4) Gaze of Ouraxsh: I have no idea whether this card is good or not, but I do know that the cursier the bag, the better it gets!

5) Cryptic Grimoire: Man, this thing seems hard to translate, even with a couple tempts in your deck. But the tempts will certainly help.

Summary: To me, it's kind of an academic question whether this card is good or bad in a deck that has nothing else to do with blessing and cursing. Clearly, it's a FANTASTIC card, probably even an auto-include, in decks that are using bless and curse tokens to do other things.