Playing as William Yorick. I was so flush with experience points that I sunk 10 into two copies of The Red Gloved Man right before Shattered Aeons just to spend the experience. Was not a fan of him before then.

But a few turns in I wondered why I hadn't made him one of my first purchases. With Yorick... he just kept coming back! And when he did he was always helpful! We're still not through the scenario but he's so cheap and good at what he does that he is basically a natural fit with Yorick.

I still don't know if I would want to play with him in a deck that did not have some way to get cards out of the discard pile, but this is a card that I've underrated, especially when coupled with Yorick. My partner also was watching and he (who recommended I play Yorick) also discovered that this was a natural fit.

I think Ursula Downs is an awesome investigator worthy of a lengthy data driven review. In case "lengthy" is'nt your cup of tea, here's the TL:DR:

Ursula Downs is one of the fastest investigators in the game and she's reasonably survivable thanks to her high . She is let down by her minuscule cardpool but just bring all the clue cards and focus on the clues.

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First off, stats!

• 3 makes Ursula squarely middle of the road, defending against will be important to her since her weakness forces horror damage, give consideration to Logical Reasoning, Elder Sign Amulet and/or Tooth of Eztli and obviously: Guts.

• 4 is to be expected, it may take some work to make "I've got a plan!" hit but with the proper assets and allies clues will not be an issue. Because of Ursulas speed seriously consider Fieldwork in your base deck as a means to consistently finish difficult locations, this only gets better on higher difficulty and if you play Archaic Glyphs.

• 1 is to be ignored. Even Swarm of Rats is better evaded then fought.

• 4 means that the vast majority of enemies don't pose you real danger, it does mean that multi-clue pickup is extra important though so that you don't spend too much time hanging around a location with evaded enemies on it. This stat lineup also benefits unusually well from Hyperawareness. Sadly there is literally nothing in your cardpool that leverages into anything useful (aside from evaded enemies).

So, Ursula has a very single-minded stat set, GET ALL THE CLUES, EVADE ALL THE ENEMIES. Looking at her health and sanity you might think she wont ever die, Health will not be an issue, but horror can get very dangerous, resist it!

Her ability requires little discussion, free investigates! Keep in mind that you may use the free action to trigger your Investigate assets (Fingerprint Kit, Archaic Glyphs) and other Investigate effects. If you have Shortcut+Pathfinder or 2xPathfinder you can use all the free movement to shuffle around and net free investigates anywhere you like. Ursulas ability nets her more investigate checks per turn which makes Arcane Insight a good pick for her.

The ability is really nice, but not always helpful, you sometimes just don't want to move. A +1 with an optional bonus is still much better then a scaling bonus with no extra effect so Ursula has it pretty good in this case.

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So, cardpool. Short version, she's a straight , long version, the ability to grab artifacts is extremely limited. At level 0 the major options are The Chthonian Stone and... stuff you really don't want.... At higher levels it looks a little nicer, Charon's Obol for the risk-taker, Lucky Dice for consistency, The Gold Pocket Watch is one of the most powerful effects in the game, Grotesque Statue is another consistency route. So yeah, the XP options are interesting but still few in number, Ursula Downs has one of the smallest cardpools but look on the bright side, its bigger then Mateo's.

With her nice Ornate Bow might grab your attention, just keep in mind that there is no card support here, no Live and Learn, Lucky!, Streetwise, Narrow Escape, Double or Nothing, Leo De Luca, Quick Thinking you get the picture. There is still Hyperawareness so you can still muster accurate shots, but it will come at the cost of your Magnifying Glass and/or Fingerprint Kit. I'm obviously not a fan of this setup but if you're super desperate for a way to fight then this is it.

Ursula Downs lover her the classic go-to clue stuff, everything that grabs extra clues, boosts and buffs. Dr. Milan Christopher, Magnifying Glass, Deduction, Fingerprint Kit. Another important thing for Ursula is speed, Working a Hunch so that she doesn't spend too much time on a location after evading, Shortcut and Pathfinder are musts, Fieldwork and/or Arcane Insight to put all this speed to use, the high movement also gives extra strategic value to Connect the Dots since you can easily leverage Pathfinder to browse locations to make the combo happen.

Ursula Downs likes her some Archaic Glyphs, both options sync with what she does so with/without Shrewd Analysis risks you'll always get stuff you want, I prefer the bonus clues though.

Strange Solution however is a bit less useful for her, her only way to buff a Strange Solution attack is with Unexpected Courage, so accuracy is an issue, the Strange Solution isn't needed and she doesn't have time to spend her actions supporting the team with Strange Solution. I'dd say Strange Solution is still worth the work if you're desperate for more killing power but leave it on the shelf in 3 player.

Defensively you can ponder Trench Coat and/or Tooth of Eztli.

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Finally, the signature cards.

Jake Williams is'nt terribly helpful. Extra cards are nice but this has an upper limit on how often it may trigger and contests the ally slot for Dr. Milan Christopher, you might grab an extra buddy like Dr. William T. Maleson and go for Charisma but generally I just play Dr. Milan Christopher whether or not I'll bediscarding Jake Williams to do so, > Card draw.

The weakness, Call of the Unknown, woo this one is nasty. Luckily if you draw this early you'll only be slightly more desperate to do things you want to anyway, move forward and get clues, as the game progresses less locations will have clues, you may still investigate a location with no clues but this will still suck away your movement advantage and free clue pickup on a roundly basis. Try to resist horror the best you can so that you might take this on the chin every now and then.

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Altogether. Ursula Downs will probably take more investigate checks per map then any other character, with an effective of 5-7, she can not quite match Rex Murphy clue for clue but the race is still very close, and she's a heck of a lot safer then he can be. Her ability to kill stuff ranks among the worst in the entire game so partner with friends who can cover that aspect and bring "I've got a plan!" to relieve the pressure against the worst encounter enemies and bosses.

Frankly speaking, I do not think this is among the best of cards.

• The risk. Drawing just one, two, or no cards if you draw a bad token.
• The actions. An action to play and more actions to use. The net gain is very fast on good token draws, but you're still depending on luck! I find 3 draws at 5 a rather stable result on standard.

There's also a resource cost but as a you don't care about that much.

So, when is it good?

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Not for every Daisy Walker, she's busy with her Old Book of Lore, the arcane slot also has lots more competition. It might be worth a shot once the book turns into Encyclopedia, but that's often very far down the line.

Not for Norman Withers, obviously.

Rex Murphy can put it to use, you can definitely build a deck with it to quickly draw all the tools and support to keep you moving and clue-ing. But be aware that you'll see a lot more of his weakness.

Ursula Downs can use it too, but again in a fairly "alternative" kind of way, just to draw her deck faster and find the movement assets, the plan more consistently.

And finally, in my opinion where this card is at its finest, Minh Thi Phan. Minh likes skill cards, she likes Cornered to work around the weakness and to use with Strange Solution, Cornered + Strange Solution means that she fights at +8, very nice for a , and Feed the Mind fuels it with cards to discard.

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So, at the moment, a utility card that's just got one proper deck where it really really shines. Try it. I recommend it.

This card is underrated. Imagine a fast 1-cost guardian card that gives +2 combat and +2 agility until the end of the investigator's turn. That would be an auto-include in many combat-focused decks. So why is this card so little valued when it basically does that (at least against one enemy)?

I’m having a bit of a hard time quantifying the strength of this effect. It seems like it has about a 50% chance of combining a bad token draw with a good one, thus giving you a great choice. Two good tokens or two bad ones drawn together is not as helpful. Also it seems to be better on higher difficulties, where the difference between good and bad tokens is larger. But I think the card might be a bit overrated because of the high XP and the significant chance of drawing two similar tokens.