So I've had the chance to use this in Dunwich now as Zoey, and I was pretty dubious at first but I think I really like it. I didn't even combo it with any of the ways of getting extra ammo. Ok, the obvious thing to say - in most cases the Flamethrower is better and for various pretty clear cut reasons. But anyway, I had one Flamethrower already and so I got a BAR just to mix it up and try some new stuff and was pleasantly surprised.

The first time I used it got snagged by an Avian Thrall in a very early turn and that really sucked, big time. I ended up spending all 8 ammo in one go to overcome the negative modifier which felt really bad at the time, but it highlighted the flexibility of this gun - not only is the damage flexible, so is the combat boost. Now, ok sure using all 8 ammo in one go is well yeah pretty wasteful, but with the Flamethrower I would've had no way out of that other than to just take a bunch of pot shots and hope I got a 0, or alternatively swap it out for a blade and lose the ammo entirely that way too. Basically, got two rules wrong there. Flamethrower wins that one.

I did get to use it in a more piece-meal way later and the ability to take out a creature with exactly the right amount of health all in one action is pretty strong, stronger than I realised. If you end up spending lots of ammo on a tough monster, you also get a much higher modifier - so it actually scales really well for larger creatures as you're more likely to make the damage stick. To be fair though, taking only one action only really applies to big monster of four or five health, and then you're likely only to get one of those out of the ammo supply.

Another nice point is that with the Flamethrower, a couple of times I found myself wanting to engage more enemies to fully utilise the damage, but that would incur an attack of opportunity. Without the damage efficiency the value of the Flamethrower goes down (though it's still great obviously). Perhaps I should not have swapped out those Taunts earlier? But then we're talking support cards which essentially increases the cost of the weapon. BAR on the other hand doesn't suffer from that problem - exactly as much as you need all in one action. The sheer damage output of the Flamethrower means it still holds up really.

The comparison is more relevant for the Lightning Gun as you really need that second weapon to deal with the monsters with four and five health. This is of course means you need a Bandolier, so support cards again. With two four health monsters you can kill them both in two actions with the BAR. With Lightning Gun you can kill one and damage the other in three actions. Flamethrower says "hi" at this point of course, which is why it's still better, and what it potentially loses in the action efficiency it makes up for ammo/damage supply.

Lastly, I frequently find myself at four XP after a mission too, so this one just feels significantly easier to pick up, even though it's only one XP cheaper.

So the M1918 BAR then? Yeah I actually quite like it.

She's a junkyard dog lookin' for snacks in all the wrong places! He's a rookie cop from the wrong side of the tracks!

They Fight Crime!

Yorick's career-minded brother joins the battle, and the similarities are plentiful. Both are blue-and-red. Both wallop baddies. Both are 8/6 Health/Sanity. Both are 4/3/3/2 in Combat/Willpower/Something/Something. Both laugh at the "discard pile". And both are Tanks.

There's a divergence of method, though: where William wants to run cheap with welfare, fire safety, the CIA, and cutlery, Tommy here wants to run rich, with dogs, cops, clergy, the FBI, and different cutlery.

A few notes:

• Tommy wants assets, so he can- and should- plan ahead. This lets him go full doomsday prepper.
• Tommy wants lots of friends. Exploding priests aside, dogs cops & feds are non-unique, so double away!
• Card-economy is Tommy's weak suit. He's got money, and encouraging attacks generates action economy, but defeated assets that go into the deck still need to get thinly-drawn.
• His rifle is a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say. If a cheap reloadable .45 with 2 bullets that hates Survival Knife is your thing, go for it.
• Mistakes will be made. But short of encounters, this is the only way you can unintentionally lose a health-havin' asset to the discard pile, so the usual survivor recursion tricks are of questionable value.
• In multiplayer, there's more baddies, and tanky characters can afford to drag enemies into the same room. Consider military equipment.
• Lastly, one thing both Tommy & William can agree on is that Best Ally is Mr. Pawterson.

I'm a fan of this card, it has a funny way of increasing your odds at a test.

On standard, tokens tend to run the gamut of -1 to -4, they can be a nuisance yes, but they do not warrant Defiance level hate.

On hard/expert, those things can HURT. tend to be the most game-y with varied penalties from 0 to -4, god forbid the craziness that tends to key off them in campaign finale's. and strongly tend to be -3 with nasty effects, finally the varies heavily from campaign to campaign, in Core, Dunwich and Circle it's the "punishing token", with a huge penalty and often bad effects, in the other campaigns this token is more routine at -3 or -4.

The thing is, on hard, these tokens can influence your decisions and options so heavily that they limit your choices, some scenarios have tokens so punishing that if you're not testing everything at +3 you're screwing yourself over.

Defiance eases this pressure a lot.

The later in a campaign you get the more special tokens will be in the chaos bag, a few campaigns add very few, others pile them on like sprinkles on a 5'yr old's sundae. Obviously Defiance is therefore much greater value in said campaigns and so/so late in any given campaign. I would never go without it into the finale of Carcosa for example.

My best case for Defiance: It pretty routinely turns impossible tests (The kinda test where you say "Well, I'f I get a !") into something more like a 60% chance.

This one is playable.

Dump 1 extra ammo from something like .45 Thompson or an upgrade, from .32 Colt or it's upgrade, these weapons are rolling in ammo anyway. If you're making the attack at a decent value like +2 or +3 over the target difficulty, revealing and choosing from 2 tokens is a pretty safe bet for success.

The upgrade "Eat lead!" can spend extra ammo and reveal extra tokens, but why would you? (Actually, it can help you 1-shot a certain, large, monster, but that's a story for another day).

Freedom from is a boon in of itself and a reasonable pinch play when you're making a big attack with things like Lightning Gun or Vicious Blow, just cover the largest penalty in the bag and you get a guaranteed hit, this can be pretty useful in multiplayer.

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Unlike the 2xp version, this card is presentable, playable, it's still not a particularly good card, it's very specific and even so it will not as consistently score you successful attacks as, say, Lucky! would.

Finally, Diana Stanley has special interest in this card, as an "ignore" effect she can use it to power up.

There are only so and so many enemies that will come your way per scenario, and Vicious Blow is one of those major tech cards that can bridge the gap and turn a risky fight into a trivial one, and keep you ahead of the enemy curve.

Picture this: You've got a .45 Thompson in play with 2 shots left on it and Vicious Blow in hand and a 4 hp enemy shows up, you could shoot it twice with the Thompson, or you could save the ammo and the action and try to kill it outright. The saved bullet then goes towards killing a (probably) smaller 2 or 3 health enemy later.

While the +2 prerequisite can be risky, the added + tick offsets that quite a bit.

The power of your main weapon directly affects Vicious Blow, a Lightning Gun lands that +2 damage more routinely then a Machete, in a pinch a simple buffed punch to deal 3 damage can solve a LOT of problems. Especially in Forgotten age where 3 health foes with reasonably low fight stats are all over the place.

I highly recommend you get Vicious Blow in your deck when you're in the mid-campaign, once you've put in the key tech at 10-15 XP it's probably time to upgrade this one.