PACKING A HUNCH - A brief guide to hunches

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It is very important to note that the hunch deck operates on a different form of randomness to your hand. In short cards in your regular deck will show up and can sit in hand for a turn or two while you position to make best use of them, hunch cards on the other hand need to be spent fast before they get shuffled back into the deck. In exchange for access to them at sub-optimal timings, we are given a hefty 2 cost discount and an effective free card draw a turn - a bargain if used well, a hindrance if not.

So how do we get the most from this? Here`s a few ideas:

1. Try to make the cards in the hunch deck perform a roughly similar role. That way it matters less which card you draw from the set, and means the function they provide can be relied upon from the deck as a while rather than a specific card showing at the right time.

2. Fast Cards are great. Without the need to draw these, they function like a bonus action in a lot of cases.

3. Avoid cards that depend on or benefit heavily from timing. Since you are least likely to be able to play these well when they show. Examples:

   • Interrogate - suitable enemy needed at the right place.
   • Logical Reasoning, important to keep in hand to maintain access when sanity is low and enemies are few, also covers for Frozen in Fear.
   • Shortcut Timing that fast move can be crucial to leverage it well such as moving to a clue for Scene of the Crime or dragging an enemy around for Evidence!.

4. Where possible pick cards that cost 2 or more A bit of a no brainer. If you are being encouraged to play these sub-optimally timed then the price your paying for their reward usually needs to be lower to compensate (I'm sure there will be exceptions ofc).

With these points in mind, we're looking for sets of cards that match up to common or core deck functions. After a little scoping a few sets stand out to me:

• cards that draw
• cards that get clues
• cards that augment combat
• All fast cards

The set picked needs to be considered while building the main deck. Good options include suring up something you lack, or bolster your primary activity. I'm still to get my head around it fully but on paper it looks like a long term a pure clue base will be best (and most thematic). Unfortunately the tools available at level 0 atm (mainly Interrogate) are a bit too circumstantial to pull off a reliable purist auto clue hunch deck just yet.

There's a fun place for this in a Finn Edwards's deck that is using Fence, not to use it himself but in a support role, dishing out invigorating shots to colleagues with high enough willpower. It may only be a consideration late in the campaign when your deck is already well-tuned and you have Adaptable to bring it in or if you are working with someone who you know will always be on the edge when it comes to sanity.

There is a lot to this card because it gives you so many interesting options to work with.

• The asset you discard influences the power of the attack.
• The asset may be discarded from hand or play.
• It can be any hand item, including empty guns and flashlights.
• It may yield resources.
• It's a tactic.

Being a and tactic card, aimed at focused characters this card currently benefits mostly William Yorick, Silas Marsh and interestingly, Mark Harrigan.

First off, discarding stuff is usually negative, so it's a good idea to try and find ways to make the discard work with us instead of against us, use it on assets that you've finished using like an empty Flashlight or ammoless gun to recurse the cost, .45 Automatic is a good early target and later there's Old Hunting Rifle or Lightning Gun or whatever weapons Mark Harrigan went with. The discard mechanic has Yoricks name written all over it since he can discard the asset, then use the gained cash to replay it immediately, one trick is discarding a jammed rifle and replaying it immediately.

If that was the only thing this card did, why does it even allow discarding from hand? The option is there, so when do you use it? You might for example be in a circumstance where a shot from a gun would be wasted (like to kill a Ghoul Minion with a Shotgun blast). A Baseball Bat might break on the first hit and you need a +1 damage attack to finish the foe. It also means that you can get some use out of backup items that you don't need to get into play, like a Machete that you wont play because you already got the other one (also this bypasses the engagement requirement).

When all else fails to be useful you still sit on a nice boost.

That all sounds real good right? Well. Now have fun affording it a deckslot ;)

Great card.

A ".45 Automatic for investigation and an interesting way to "nerf" the strongest in the game.

For 4 resources and 4 actions you pick up 6 clues with a +1 bonus. Use it alongside Magnifying glass or instead of it, the compressed number of tests lends extra usefulness to Perception and Unexpected Courage and other cards with intellect icons, also large bonuses like from Fieldwork become that much more impressive. An Ursula Downs with Fieldwork and Fingerprint Kit can blast locations at 7 for double clues, 8 with Milan in play, high difficulty investigate locations aren't too common so a Eureka! would stop the gap just as well as the good doctor would.

Rex Murphy has been the strongest for a while, but giving accessible multi-clue to everyone in the class all of a sudden frees up a lot of space for fresh blood in the spotlight. Ursula Downs can trigger it on her ability, Daisy's long setups are mitigated by the added clue speed. Finn Edwards and Carolyn Fern can also make use of it. Resupply with Venturer or Emergency Cache, yeah, there's a lot of options there.

To say the least, this card is going to shift the way characters are built. Or not. Less investigations means less money from Dr. Milan Christopher. There's an anti-synergy here. I figure there will be new and divergent build paths.

Edit: A little more experience playing with it.

Fingerprint Kit is not a catch-all good clue-getter card. it is very expensive for what it does. The specific deck-tech this thing is for is to speed up a character who is doing little else, and has cash to spare. Ursula Downs or Daisy Walker, Norman Withers, characters whose actions are predominantly used to beat the clue part of a scenario. If you've ever seen these types of characters at work you've probably seen them sporting piles of 10+ resources doing nothing at the end of a scenario, this card is for them.

For a character whose role is multifaceted, such as Roland Banks or Joe Diamond, fingerprint kit falls off the radar, it's just too expensive a card for characters who need to be paying for weapons and Physical Training usage as well. For these guys there's cards like Pathfinder or Magnifying Glass, cards that are cheap enough to play in between guns or will be generating action value whether you're killing enemies or getting clues.

QUESTION: How does Flamethrower interact with Custom Ammunition's damage bonus when engaged with multiple enemies?

Here's my situation: Leo Anderson is engaged with a non-monster enemy with fight 3 and a monster enemy with fight 2. He has a Flamethrower with Custom Ammunition attached. Leo succeeds on his fight action and now wants to distribute damage. From my reading, when I distribute a point of damage to the monster enemy, an additional point of damage is dealt as well (Non-monster 3 pts, Monster 1pt + bonus 1pt). Correct?

Which naturally leads to other questions: If I am engaged with two enemies both of which have the monster trait, do I add +1 damage to each monster enemy (3 and 3)? Or do I get 1pt of bonus damage added to the base 4 only to distribute across monster enemies? If one enemy has the monster trait and one enemy does not, do I not get the bonus damage at all, simply because a non-monster enemy will be receiving damage? Does it matter if the enemy with the highest fight is the one with the monster trait?