Luke Robinson

There are a lot of good combos with him (some were already mentioned before):

  • Crack the Case when a fellow investigator finishes the last clue at a connecting location, and as his ability is per turn, you can also use an other event in your own turn.
  • Unfotunatelly Vantage Points doesn't work for his weakness, but you can also use it with the Box. It makes his location 0 shroud so it is auto-success other than auto-fail, and you can get a clue from any location to it. It pairs very well with Hawk-Eye Folding Camera. When you investigate the dream-gate you trigger the camera. You can do this multiple times in a game (ofc you need to put a clue on it to work) as per rules Limits and Maximums every time the Gate enters play it is a new instance. Alternatively you can use Dr. William T. Maleson or Quick Study to put a clue on your location. The later can greatly help if you want to investigate the weakness side of the Gate, and makes the investigation meaningful.
  • Barricade non-elites.
  • Shortcut(0) by wording causes a double move.
  • Time-warp an other investigators action from a connecting location (doesn't take up your turns event). You can even pull the other investigator back to your self if he/she moves away. Good if revealing location wasn't such a good idea, or if you only want to troll a little.
  • My favorite for a multi investigator game is Open Gate. You want to get your teammates from an other location? Or send them away? Put down a Gate on your location, enter the Box, then put down an other gate anywhere on the map by using his ability. You can even end up on a third location (and put a Gate there too).
  • Open Gate has an other good use. If there is already a Gate in play, when you draw your weakness, put down a Gate in the pointless reality, so you can move away without investigating. Its fast so you only have to move. Ofc you lose one of your Gate cards, but if you weren't ready for investigating the location it can be a good alternative. Edit:
  • Knowledge is Power is awesome to use shrivelling on neighborhood enemies.
vidinufi · 69
Hastur's Gaze

This card is a lot more dangerous than it looks. Should you be trying to reach Dim Carcosa via the Vortex, ie, leave through the Abbey Tower, then you could be in a bind.

Once you advance the "c" agenda to part 3, it will become an Act, and you will be unable to put any Doom on it. Furthermore, you will need to get this card out of your hand to investigate the Abbey Tower, which you cannot do via the Tower's ability or anything else that requires a choice of card discard. If you draw it at this point, you will be locked, unable to complete the scenario until you find a way to get rid of it.

Your only options at this point are to draw and fail either Twisted to His Will or Worlds Merge (the latter requiring you also to have 3 or fewer cards in hand). With the waters of the "a" agenda rising, this is quite possibly a campaign-ending situation, especially on Solo where you have no partner to finish off the Abbey Tower.

If you are playing on Solo - you must plan for this card, either with cancellation, or waiting to draw it before finishing off the "c" agenda. On multiplayer, you must also be aware that once the "c" agenda is finished, anyone drawing this (probably) won't be able to help win.

[NB: as an aside, the "a" agenda equivalent, Hastur's Grasp causes no such issue with it's Chapel of St. Aubert, which makes me think that this interaction was not intended, and this card is accidental in it's potential to lock you out].

Actually, Not even random discard/discard whole hand effects could save you, since the rules explicitly say hidden cards cannot be discarded except by its own ability. Which means this card will be a death sentence if you fail to cancel it. — ak45 · 469
Henry Wan

It strikes me that this card may soon see a new lease of life (or rather a lease of life, since it fizzled on arrival). The reason is that Haste is now a thing. Haste is a fantastic card that will most likely see an awful lot of run in rogue decks. It combos with Henry Wan really well.

The problem with Henry, as has been comprehensively demonstrated by various mathematical savants from the moment this card was released, is that it's almost never worth using the action it requires to trigger his ability because you're only about 50/50 to succeed on more than one pull, meaning you might just as well have taken a standard resource or card draw action. But what if it was a free action ? Haste effectively turns it into a free action because it's an 'activate' action. Fighting with any kind of weapon counts as an activation, as does investigating with Lockpicks or Sixth Sense or any number of other useful actions. This means that you can theoretically do any of these things, gaining a free activate action that you use to trigger Henry's ability. You wouldn't even need to gamble very much. You could just make one pull and in effect it would become "take two fight actions then draw one card", which would be awesome. If you want to gamble for more then you can still do that of course, and since it would only be a free action that you're using it wouldn't be the end of the world if you whiff.

This could be a great combo for Tony or Skids in particular since they value the horror soak. I can't wait to try it out.

Sassenach · 189
I'm not sure if Henry Wan is worth the opportunity cost. I think if you're really trying to get extra resources, Dario El-Amin could probably offer a more consistent two resources every round. For Henry to be better, you'd need to either be in combat a lot (in which case Haste would be usable for combat purposes), or really need the draw rather than the resource. — Ruduen · 1031
That, and of course, all rogue allies still have to compete with Leo De Luca giving you the same draw/resource every turn directly or more flexibly by simply giving you an extra action to draw/gain a resource with, meaning you're probably looking at secondary options after already getting both Haste and Charisma. — Ruduen · 1031
Leo de Luca is better than almost every ally in the game. It gets boring after a while. What's the point in having a diverse card pool if you never use most of it ? — Sassenach · 189
There is room for other Rogue allies. Gregory Gry and Dario are good backups if you want more resources. The problem is that even for Haste synergy Wan is awful compared to those guys. Wan will really only ever get played if seal gets buffed in such a way that we are able to seal all of the spooky tokens. — StyxTBeuford · 13063
The difference here is that it can be used for either resources or card draw, and the latter is more valuable. I think it's worth experimenting with. Henry is still most likely going to be a useless card most of the time, but the addition of Haste does at least make him viable, — Sassenach · 189
I still dont see it. Safer to take two draw actions and use your Haste trigger to get a third card. — StyxTBeuford · 13063
How can you use Henry twice in a row? You have to exhaust him. — batman14 · 7
Haste

Haste requires you to take two of the same type of action in a row, before giving you a bonus of the same type of action. While free actions are amazing, this means that Haste works best if you can use it a number of times to make up for the cost of doing so. (A baseline would be at least 3-5 times in a game, to make up for the card it takes, the play it takes, and the resource cost.) To confirm its usability, I've laid out the listed set of actions, in a vague order of less to more likely to be done in triplicate:

  • Unlikely:
    • Engage: You really don't want to repeatedly engage in most cases. It requires you to have 3+ monsters in one space on other characters, and you to take multiple Attacks of Opportunities.
    • Evade: You'll only make multiple evade checks if you're either evading multiple things, or have managed to botch numerous evade attempts. Neither are great situations to be in, but they can happen.
    • Move: Three moves is an awkward amount, since it's the equilvalent of spending your entire turn moving. If you really need to get somewhere, it can help, but since it requires you to move three or more spaces in one turn, it's generally better to avoid being in those positions if possible.
  • Possible:
    • Resource: While it's not ideal, there are turns where you need two more resources to get something. A third resource gain can at least help give you a bit of a boost for the future.
    • Draw: Similar to resource, while it's not ideal, if you're desperately searching for a card or need to refill your hand, an extra card won't hurt unless you're pushing yourself over the hand limit.
    • Play: If you have a turn where you really need to get a lot of cards out, this can give you a boost. You'll need to either have a good initial hand with Haste included or be in the right place for a couple of events along with assets lined up, but the saved setup time can be worthwhile.
  • Common:
    • Fight: Enemies can often require multiple hits before going down. This can give you a buffer if you're using some of the rogue's Opportunistic weapons, or save you a few charges/shots if you're using an Enchanted Blade or a Firearm.
    • Investigate: Now we're getting somewhere. If you're not playing Solo, you'll often need multiple investigate actions to completely clear a space of its clues. Even if you are playing solo, this effectively gives you a bit of wiggle room to deal with a failure along the way.
  • Special:
    • Activate: This is the most build-dependent use of Haste, but also what likely determines whether or not it's a good addition to your deck. You can activate different items in order to make Haste work, as long as all of them require in Activate action. You can spare a little extra to make an attempt at Burglary or take a swig from Liquid Courage. Go ahead and make a couple of attempts with your weapon of choice before using a Flashlight or Lockpicks to help clue up. Preston Fairmont can mix in an action banking his Family Inheritance. Sefina Rousseau can mix in a pull or two from underneath her card as long as you don't overdo it. Ornate Bow allows for you to work in both a shot and a reload before doing anything else. But if you have the XP to spare, the most flexible mechanism to use is Borrowed Time. In the worst case scenario, you can bank two actions for next turn and get a third free, earning an extra action every round. In other cases, you can make any other activations you have and bank the others.

Either oddly or fittingly enough, some of the more flexible users of this will be people who are already using Leo De Luca, or otherwise have bonus actions to begin with. It becomes much more practical to set up action chains when you have a bonus action to better position yourself before starting, and Tony Morgan can save a bit of ammo when he can take a preemptive couple of swings.

Ruduen · 1031
Some of these are a bit more common than you're making them out to be I think. Play for example. How often do you see something like play emergency cache followed by play an asset ? I'd that putting Haste itself into play constitutes a play action, so you could play Haste, play EC and then immediately play another card, be it an event or asset. I suspect that kind of combo will be quite common. Another would be play Mr Rook, activate his free trigger (which doesn't interrupt the action chain) and then play the resulting card that you draw, gaining another play action. But it'll really bring home the bacon with activate actions since these usually double up as other actions. It makes action sink cards like Scrying or Alchemical Transmutation much more attractive since you can for example 'activate' another asset for fighting or investigating and then use them as effectively a free action. There are probably loads of awesome combos out there. Tbh I think this is card is a little underpriced for what it does. Compare it with Ace in the Hole for example, which is 6xp for 3 additional actions. This is 2xp and ought to easily give you 6 actions over the course of a game so long as you draw it earl enough. — Sassenach · 189
Remember that this is a Rogue 2 card. As is, there are actually very few non-rogues with access to Rogue 2 or other access to the card (Just Wendy and Marie for the moment, I think). The only person who could pull off a Mr. Rook combo is Finn, and that's costing him a valuable slot. And for the Mystic assets you're describing, the Arcane slot becomes a much larger concern for viability, seeing as you often can't spare a slot for an 'unusual' action and a second slot for Haste itself when you need them as primary fighting/investigation tools. Haste is almost certainly is underpriced if you can make good use of it - but that's a substantial enough 'if' that you can't just slot it into every deck, or justify it over other important early tools. — Ruduen · 1031
Jenny also has access to Mr Rook. For that matter so does Marie, but actually I don't think she can take Haste since it's not a spell, it's a ritual. I take your point of course, but those were only examples I came up with off the top of my head. There are bound to be more. Hell, this might even make Henry Wan into a viable card if you can now trigger the action for free. In fact I really should try that out... — Sassenach · 189
Yep, for some reason I keep forgetting it's a Ritual and not a Spell. But yes, the main limiting factor for a lot of these combos is that the ally slot is valuable, so it's still hard to justify use for a lot of these. It's why my examples primarily focused on either common or slotless examples. — Ruduen · 1031
Leo Anderson can also use Haste. — WolfGeneral349 · 12
Yes, he can. I actually looked over the list and spotted him when confirming everything, so I have no idea why I didn't add him to the list. — Ruduen · 1031
Not sure about how this triggers. I believe that you can't play hot streak, haste, and then exhaust haste to play leo de luca (Jeeves model bioroids only count your click spent when rezzed, likely this card should only count your actions taken when played right?). But will its ability start to work when you are playing this asset? — Tzolkin1065 · 155
Haste has to be in play to count actions. So no you wouldnt be able to do that. — StyxTBeuford · 13063
@Tzolkin1065 I believe you can do that. Haste's reaction triggers at "After you perform the action...", at which timing point playing Haste would finish resolving, thus Haste should already be in play. @StyxTBeuford I don't think this is the case. As long as Haste is in play when the timing point triggers it should be fine. — ak45 · 469
Arkham Chronicle has a video that goes in depth explaining what Haste can and can't do, and triggering Haste after playing it based on previous things you did that round is something that does not work. I thought it might as well, but his video uses Matt Newman as his main source. At 3:45 exactly in the video, he quotes Newman: "You can't trigger Haste's ability if it wasn't in play for one of the actions being counted." — StyxTBeuford · 13063
@StyxTBeuford And at 4:05 in that same video it explicitly says that Haste does count the action spent to play it. — TheNameWasTaken · 3
I didn't think that's what we were referring to but maybe I misread. I assumed we talking about counting play actions (eg playing Hot Streak beforehand) counting towards Haste if Haster were played after. — StyxTBeuford · 13063
Haste needs to have been in play for all the actions required eg not just when the timing point would trigger, but playing Haste itself can count as one of the actions towards its trigger. I think that's the clearest way to put this. — StyxTBeuford · 13063
Also important to note for some builds that Haste tells you to ‘take an action’ means that a) it provokes AoOs and b) it counts towards action count for cards like Pay Day. It’s also an expensive combo, but Haste with Borrowed time gives you very easy ways to trigger it. Every turn you can spend 2 actions for 3 the next turn activating Borrowed Time, and during a six action turn, it is much easier to find some action you’d like to do three times! — Death by Chocolate · 1504
I really like the Haste / Borrowed Time interaction (though admittedly you probably can't count on getting both of them out). I kind of want to build a Chicago Typewriter deck that makes use of that, now. — Zinjanthropus · 233
Torrent of Power

Torrent of Power is a tricky card to play well. A single wild icon on a skill is not very good, so you're really looking for ways to reliably turn this thing into 3 or even 5 icons. The problem is most Mystics don't need to be up by all that much, and spell charges tend to be quite expensive to replace. Mystics as a whole have a tendency to rely heavily on assets or events, as skill cards are much less flexible when you rely so heavily on a single stat () to do anything. Events like Spectral Razor and spell assets like Shrivelling for example are often way too good not to include, so skills like Torrent tend to get left behind for other skills that increase consistency. Compare this card to say Guts which draws you back a card and costs nothing to commit for 2 icons, which is pretty much a sweet spot for spell casters, or Fearless which can be used on more certain tests for horror healing, something that Agnes Baker in particular appreciates (but all Mystics can benefit from). Overall, it's a card that understandably sees very limited play in Mystics- Akachi Onyele can benefit from it okay with her better charge economy, and recent addition Twila Katherine Price may make the cost of expending spell charges lower to warrant this card as a more common include.

The reason I'm writing this review, however, is to tell you about one particular use of this card that just has me absolutely floored, and it's one that I've seen almost no one talk about or try yet.

So let's look again at Torrent's biggest problems. 1. It's a skill card that doesn't give a nice utility effect (such as card economy) that Mystics tend to require from including skills over assets/events 2. charges are expensive because it's unlikely you'll be able to replace that Shrivelling or Rite of Seeking fast enough to warrant spending 1 or 2 charges to make Torrent good, and 3. the icons aren't necessarily wanted anyway. What we require then is someone who doesn't care as much about economy cards, for whom tossing charges is a relatively low cost, and for whom the icons- even possibly just for wild icons on non-Willpower tests- are super valuable.

Let me introduce you to Patrice Hathaway.

Patrice draws through her deck quite fast, so spells can be replaced very quickly. The combination of Patrice's Violin and Madame Labranche makes paying for spells surprisingly easy, particularly the already low costed Mists of R'lyeh. She is someone, in my experience, who can fully benefit from torrent even just for icons, spending 2 or 3 charges she no longer needs on any test to put herself up by 3 or 4. In fact, Patrice is so flexible with her event draws and ability to test insanely high that I often find myself not needing to rely on the spells as much, and spells sit around with extra charges. Torrent of Power is, take my word for it, a fantastic Patrice pick. Give it a try!

StyxTBeuford · 13063