There's a very interesting mathematical analysis around this card in my opinion. At first I considered each combination of possible card splits as all the possibilities this card allows you, but then I noticed that each investigator draws the cards dealt to them one at a time (presumably in mythos phase order), which means you technically also get to choose the order you draw all the cards you deal to yourself. This makes the possibilities explode even further. In other words, the order of the cards matters, and without loss of generality all we have to do is combine all the possible orders of the cards with all the possible choices of who can be assigned cards:

• One investigator. (A). 1 possibility
• Two investigators. (AB, ) or (A, B). 2 orders x 2 assignments = 4 possibilities.
• Three investigators. (ABC, , ) or (AB, C, ) (x2, one for each person) or (A, B, C). 6 orders x 4 assignments = 24 possibilities.
• Four investigators. (ABCD, , , ) or (ABC, D, , ) (x3, one for each person) or (AB, C, D, ) (x3, one for each pair) or (A, B, C, D). 24 orders x 8 assignments = 192 possibilities.

The math is obviously less impressive if you don't particularly care about the order that you draw the treacheries, but it's still really good:

• One investigators. 1 possibility.
• Two investigators. 3 possibilities. (Goes from 2, 2 to 1, 2).
• Three investigators. 13 possibilities. (Goes from 6, 12, 6 to 1, 6, 6).
• Four investigators. 73 possibilities. (Goes from 24, 72, 72, 24 to 1, 12, 36, 24).

Either way you choose to look at it, this card explodes the possibility space at higher counts. The only caveat I'd make with the math here is that it doesn't account for duplicate treacheries which will heavily cut down your options. Even still, at 4 players or even 3 players I think you need to have a very strong reason to not take this card. The main killer in this game is tempo, whether that's not having enough time to do everything before doom runs out, or not having enough actions to deal with all the threats before you become defeated. First Watch, for a ridiculously low cost, can buy you an entire Mythos phase worth of tempo. Daisy won't care about that Rotting Remains, give it to her; let's have Mark draw the ghoul so he can kill it in one shot; let Diana cancel that Frozen in Fear no one wants to deal with, you get the jist.

Who should take it? Anyone with access at 4 players, full stop. I think the card is really that good. Do you like The Gold Pocket Watch? This is kind of like a non-exceptional mini version of that. At 3 it's a bit hazier but still amazing, and I think it's worth making sure you include a copy or two. At any counts below that the card is basically useless and not worth running at all.

If you want some particular investigators:

• Diana Stanley can throw something to cancel onto her.
• Zoey Samaras and Leo Anderson have great statlines to stand up to the encounter deck.
• Mark Harrigan and William Yorick love having more enemies to fight.
• Tony Morgan can use it to throw tests at his friends while taking out a few bounties for himself.

EDIT: A new little exploit has come to light. First Watch replaces your entire Mythos phase. Say in a 4 player game you have 3-1 cards left in the Encounter deck, you only draw those cards and distribute them among 4 players, and that's your entire Mythos phase. So if there were a single card left, and you played First Watch, you effectively cancelled 3 treacheries. Now it's questionable how often you'd be able to do this: it depends on how many non surge cards you have in an encounter deck and whether that number is divisible by 4, plus some effects may mess with the numbers in other ways (eg Stargazing), not to mention scenarios where you get consistent reshuffles of the discard pile. But, if you can pull it off, it's a hell of a play.

Haven't had a chance to play this yet, but at first glance it seems like a prime taboo candidate. The minimum that any investigator who can take it would be investigating at would be 6, but that's really only the off-class or splash card people and it assumes no boosts to either will or int are in play. For most players you're going to be able to get up to 9 or 10 very easily when using this card, which is enough to smash almost any shroud level in the game. As such it effectively amounts to "pay 2 resources to discover 2 clues while ignoring all triggered effects". It compares very favourably to Intel Report in that respect and is arguably superior to Drawn to the Flame since it doesn't require the drawing of an encounter card. Granted, this is not testless and can still fail, but I'd suggest that in most cases failure is very unlikely and the consequences for failure are not very severe. I'm surprised that this is available at level zero, or that they didn't make it cost a little more.

This card is as amazing as it is fun to play. Its overpowered action-compression () and variance mitigation (test less clues/evade) effects are balanced by the fact that you have to gather 3 cards to bring the Pendant of the Queen into play. Because of this and also because it takes allot of deck space, this card should only be used if you are building a deck around it.

What’s the best strategy to use with the Segment of Onyx

The possible strategies you can use to find the Segments of Onyx are search, mill or a combination of both. I consider a pure search build the best way to assemble the pendant, since searching reduces variance or even eliminates it so you will get the Pendant of the Queen faster than the most aggressive mill decks ever could. I would also recommend not adding pure mill cards like Preposterous Sketches or Cryptic Research to your search deck, because through your search actions you will be pulling 1, 2, 3 or even 4 extra cards out of your deck per turn so you will be milling just by searching. Here are some of the best search synergy cards: Mr. "Rook", Astounding Revelation, No Stone Unturned (5), Old Book of Lore. At 0 XP Backpack and Calling in Favors are also good.

What is the best investigator to play with Segment of Onyx?

Mandy Thompson, the queen of search, should be the best investigator for this build right? Actually, I prefer Daisy Walker because of 3 reasons:

1. Her Weakness doesn’t cancel searches and she can use No Stone Unturned(5) in turn 1.

2. She can play Recharge. This is the most important reason why I prefer Daisy over Mandy. Once I have Pendant of the Queen in play and 1 copy of Eldritch Inspiration in my hand then every Recharge becomes a copy of Pendant of the Queen that cost 0 resources to play.

3. She can trigger the Old Book of Lore more often than Mandy and without losing an action. Once her Old Book of Lore of Lore is in play Daisy’s searching power is almost as good as Mandy’s.

Piloting the Pendant of the Queen

The Pendant of the Queen is inutitive and easy to use, here are some guidelines:

1. Use the free and test less evade effect only in case of emergency (to save someone from certain doom or scape from an enemy when your bodyguard can’t help).

2. Use the teleport action only if it would save you at least 2 actions and save 1 charge if you know that at some point you will want to teleport across the map.

3. Use the free clue trigger only in locations with 4+ shroud or in locations where investigating is risky (locations that drain your resources just by standing there or investigating).

Example of good piloting in a 2 player game:

You move to investigate in a 1-3 shroud location with 4+ clues. While you clean this location of clues, you use your Pendant of the Queen to clean the 2 clues at the 4-5 shroud dead end location your fellow investigator/bodyguard revealed. Using the Pendant of the Queen you saved 2+ investigate actions and 2+ move actions (you don’t have to move in and out of that remote location). This shows the action-compression and variance mitigation power of this card.

Cons of running the Pendant of the Queen

1. Tight deck space. The Segment of Onyx takes allot of deck space and can compete with other OP cards like Ancient Stone. Nevertheless the variance mitigation of a search deck allows us to play many of our best cards as one-offs, without skipping their powerful effects. In other words I can run only 1 copy of Ancient Stone in my search deck and still the probability of me seen it and using it is higher than in a normal deck that runs 2 copies and no search.

2. Many cards are needed to make it work. Indeed, but many of those are search cards and the search strategy is strong even if the Segment of Onyx wouldn’t exist.

3. The only true problem of this strategy is the lack of access to Adaptable of Daisy and Mandy. This means you have to expend XP on some lvl 0 cards once you get the Segment of Onyx or start your campaign with some suboptimal cards, namely 2 copies of Enrapturedand 1 copy of Eldritch Inspiration. This is not great but also not terrible.

Final Words

I really like the mechanics, balance and strenght of this card. If you like seekers (especially Daisy and Mandy) I would recommend trying it. To be fair constructing the perfect deck to go with the Segment of Onyx is no easy task and at the moment there are almost no decks on Arkham DB that focus on exploiting the Pendant of the Queen. Most of the published decks just run it as an afterthought/gimmick and the few that do focus it (1 or 2) are Mandy builds that are just ok. I do plan to publish a full in depth guide and build with Daisy but I still have to do some more playtesting and refinements, so this is as much insight as I can provide right now.

First review!

This card seems made for Tommy Muldoon:

1. expendable ally;
2. boost to useful stat;
3. preexisting damage is not bad at all because for Tommy that damage means resources, so he can play a “fast” Jessica Hyde for net 1 resource, or keep a “slow” one for the soak and boost. Cards with several “roles” are really nice to have in this game since you can tactically adjust to situation.
4. immediate fodder for Rookie Mistake.
5. [meta] right cycle, so the designers probably planned it.

Poor girl. Seems like she’ll be sacrificed by Tommy a lot. At least empirically in my game, Tommy (played by my partner) has sacrificed more people than all the “bad guys” combined...

Does this card have a place in a deck that isn't Zoey's? Yes, in one very specific case, which I'll get to in the last paragraph:

Taunt shares a theme with certain other fast cards; Shortcut, Working a Hunch, and Sleight of Hand, come to mind. Cards that involve a fast version of a basic action that any investigator can do, such as moving, discovering a clue, playing an item card, or engaging an enemy, as the above examples provide.

Thing is, some basic actions are more valuable, and needed more often, than others. Take the humble move action; every investigator is going to be moving between locations, in every scenario, from start to finish, regardless of class, role, or objective. It guarantees the usefulness of Shortcut, made even better when it's use can be applied to any investigator at your location, nor just the card holder. Same with discovering a clue, same with playing a item asset.

Engaging an enemy just isn't one of those actions. For an engage action to be taken, there must be an enemy at your location that's either exhausted, or engaged with another player. Even then, only the latter really calls for an engage action to be taken, and EVEN THEN it's completely optional, as all engagement does is eliminate the risk of the other investigator taking damage, either by your hand, or the enemy's. It makes justifying a card slot solely to be able to taunt faster very difficult, as it doesn't actually help perform a guardian's primary role, and non-guardians will be more likely to want to AVOID enemies, not Taunt them. So then why, other than being Zoey Samaras, would you want to include Taunt in your deck?:

To eliminate the downside of Flamethrower... yeah that's pretty much it. Flamethrower harshens the downside of not being engaged with an enemy, which makes engage actions more valuable, which makes Taunt more valuable. If you're running Flamethrower, consider running Taunt.