Two additional janky situations:

• Have Open Gates in two characters. Then the card does not only skip backtracking, but let's you skip parts of the map. Some copies might be useless, though.
• Play an Open Gate with "You owe me one" from the hand of your friendly neighborhood mystic. You can do this from the other side of the map. Sure, it's not fast anymore, but enables you to reunite your party. Played this in Lost in Time and Space to pull the Akachi of the team to the top as Mandy.

Can't argue with getting 3 copies of a skill in your deck. The ability to cancel the effects of a failure are really just icing on the cake. In addition, it is a Survivor card, and an innate skill, so it can be recurred with either Resourceful or True Survivor.

I mean, really, what more could you want?

So I am thinking that maybe there is a character that goes under looked when considering the Ace of Rods and that is our friendly Pete.

So you lose your tarot slot but the survivor tarot is the most easily skipped so no great loss there.

If you don't draw it in your opening hand it can be fed to your dog like any other card so its lack of icons isn't as much a hindrance.

I also find myself flush with cash to burn in my dark horse pete decks so banking an action for 3 resources being the worst use of this card doesn't seem like a bad use of money I typically end up burning anyway.

The end of the day if it was good enough to include in every deck then it would probably be too good for a neutral 1xp card.

For a skill card to cost 5 xp, the effect must be awfully useful, and this card definitely is. It's not just that you're helping the entire team pass an annoying treachery easily; you're also permanently removing one such copy from the game, which is useful in every scenario you can think of and especially ridiculous in The Circle Undone with its "if three of these are in play, bad thing happens" treacheries - Terror in the Night, Ultimate Chaos.

And if that wasn't enough to convince you, it's practiced, meaning you can just pull it with Practice Makes Perfect on any kind of non-treachery test you're having difficulty with. Parley/evade/whatever at +4, then get the card in your hand ready for the next treachery.

As the other reviewer said this card is printed for Luke and only him. His ability to play an event in a connected location is just so versatile. I've recently finished the Return to Night of the Zealot campaign on Expert with Luke and Zoe and Luke was definitely a lifesaver! Especially, in the last scenario he was able to set up a link between a ritual sight and another location in the woods to help Zoe skip the cultists! And he himself Shortcuted through the enemy. The deck I used arkhamdb.com

Inference: I wouldn't use the gates outside that mystic.

Moreover, I feel like Open Gate has such a synergy with Arcane Initiate.

And... A question: If an investigator with an enemy moves through a gate, will the enemy follow him to that location?