I played this card in George Barnaby and was left disappointed.

Only being able to do +1 damage once per turn is quite weak for a weapon. It makes dealing with 4 health enemies a pain and missing an attack against a 3+ health enemy means you won’t be able to kill it.

Furthermore, George wants to discard 1 card per phase. At level 0, his main way to do that during investigator phase is with Nautical Charts, so having Hand Hook or Anchor Chain to trigger his ability is quite useful in scenario 1. However, as you add cards such as Cornered, Bound for the Horizon, and Gift of Nodens to your deck, you really don’t want to be discarding a card to Hand Hook.

Overall, I have found Fire Axe to be a better card in George. It’s cheaper, has more consistent damage, and doesn’t “waste” a use of his ability.

Pretty surprised the reviews for this are mostly lukewarm/negative when this is one of my favourite cards ever printed and is extremely fun. It essentially thins your deck by up to 6 cards per reshuffle, because you are saving 3 actions drawing the cards (if you find them in a search) and you get 3 bonus draws from the successful tests. In reality you might fail the tests or draw the card, but if you put some thought into it you will be thinning your deck by at least 4, and usually 5 or 6.

You do need at least some search support to make it work, but a lot of search cards are already very good and once you have even a handful of them in your deck. Cards that you might run anyway that also give you search synergy here: Practice Makes Perfect (anyone), Eureka! (anyone), Bewitching (Trish, Parallel Skids), Guided by the Unseen (seekers), Research Librarian (tome users), Arcane Initiate (Luke).

If you're already running some of these cards, which I frequently am, then Surprising Find turns into 1 xp for a 15-20% deck size reduction. Huge value. Compared to Astounding Revelation it's also more useful when you draw it because is better than . If you have enough search then you can even run them alongside each other, but devoting 6 cards to search payoffs does make it hard to fit all your other cards.

Overall just a really good and cheap way to smooth out your deck and get to your good cards more quickly.

DISCLAIMER: Solo Review

I don't really wanna talk down on this card, because I love the idea, but in solo it doesn't do what you think it does, at least not well.

Let me explain: When you are the only investigator most locations will exactly have 1 clue on them. That means you can use the move option to dive in, but then have to find another location to discover the last clue from and get rid of the doom. In multiplayer, you can usually discover the last clue more or less in the same turn, especially when you are not the only one investigating (which is probable if you are running this card).

Also, since there is no one else revealing locations for you, you often have to use the move option "blind". This can cause you to drop doom for the resulting location to have 0 clues, face unknown investigation restrictions or nasty effects that trigger when you investigate. Of course, you could just move to a location to check it out and come back later, but I feel in solo you have to be even more action-efficient.

Something I never considered but also cannot find anything against:

This card does require an enemy for option 1 at all. There is no "must" and no "then", you simply resolve as much of the effect as possible, which is discovering a clue.

I'm a little surprised that this never caught a review!

This card is -somewhat- nasty. -1 to all skills definitely sucks no matter who you are. But despite how evenly applied this looks, it definitely hits some investigators harder than others.

Investigators that don't mind this: -Investigators that are hyper focused on boosting and using one stat can potentially ignore this, at least until it's convenient to deal with. -Investigators that can reliably get extra actions have more room to clear it and not lose most of their turn. -Investigators that can do things without tests.

Investigators that do -not- like this.: -Investigators that rely on multiple stats (especially if they have add X stat to your stat for this test cards) get it way worse. They can't reliably stack their stats high enough to negate the haunted -1. -Investigators that don't have good action compression or extra actions will (as with any double action weakness) have less of a good time with this as well.

It's not the worst weakness in the world, but it's sure messing me up sometimes. And ultimately, a -1 to all stats will affect almost any investigator, unlike some of the more recent basic weaknesses that might as well barely be a weakness if you're the right investigator.