While this card benefits from having the ability to cancel any encounter card YOU draw, it loses out on utility to its level 2 younger brother by not being able to protect your fellow investigators. I'd rather have the ability to help out an investigator or even the whole party on a particularly treacherous drawn encounter than being able to discard an enemy. (which most Mystics shouldn't have a problem dealing with anyway with the right spells)

This card gets panned for good reason. It costs a lot for something that other cards already do at level 0. However, with the Vengeance mechanic in the Forgotten Age, it will be interesting to see if this card moves up in priority at all. It's one that I would keep an eye on for now, to see if it ever makes it into someone's deck.

Roland Banks is certainly a fun investigator to play with. He is mainly Guardian class and secondarily a Seeker class which makes him versatile in the two main objective in the game, fighting and obtaining clues.

He has a nice ability that lets him find clues whenever he defeats an enemy which, though you might not always be able to activate it, due to there being a lack of clues in the location, can save you an action or two when you need to gather clues (and possibly even more resources when trying to gather clues in high shroud areas).

Stats

He has 9 health practically making him a tank when it comes to taking damage but his low sanity of 5 make him quite vulnerable to a lot of the monsters in the mythos. You will definitely need cards that can either heal horror like Smoking Pipe or cards that shield you from horror like Elder Sign Amulet.

Combat: His 4 combat stat complements his beat up enemies to get clues play style and with a decent weapon like a Machete or his signature weapon, Roland's .38 Special, he can hold his own against a lot of what the mythos has to offer.

Willpower: Willpower is mostly a defensive stat. 3 willpower though on Roland isn't amazing but it's decent. There are rarely encounter cards that require you to succeed on a willpower of 4 or higher.

Intellect: Likewise with willpower, 3 intellect isn't amazing but it's decent. Having cards like Magnifying Glass or Flashlight definitely makes him better at gathering clues, especially when there are no baddies around for him to trigger his ability.

Agility: Roland's worst stat is agility, which isn't really game breaking as his playstyle mainly revolves around him killing enemies to get clues and he is in a class that has a lot of decent weapons. But it severely limits his options though as there are some enemies that he's better of evading and others that he might not even be able to damage at all (I'm looking at you Spoiler for Path to Carcossa)

Signature Cards

Roland's .38 Special is reliable even if you can't proc the +3 to combat buff it still functions as a cheaper version of .45 Automatic but when you get that +3 combat is when the signature card really shines. Also cards like Extra Ammunition works well with this card but if you have Lightning Gun you might be better off saving it for Lightning Gun's limited ammunition.

Cover Up is definitely one of the harder signature weaknesses to workaround which requires you to get clues (which thankfully Roland is decent at). Alternatively, you can have your allies help you especially if there is a more specialized seeker in the team. Also, the price for failure is the equivalent of being defeated in Roland's worse stat (sanity).

Overall, Roland Banks is a versatile as a fighter and clue gatherer but players need to work around Roland's 5 sanity and signature weakness Cover Up.

I think Doomed is an amazingly cool weakness, and those who feel like it denies player agency might want to take a closer look at the math. I ran some simulations, and assuming I did it right the numbers look very fun. In these simulations, I ignore the possibility of drawing Doomed or its replacements twice during one scenario, since that should be uncommon (but it would be quite bad).

Let's say you run 8 scenarios, and draw half your deck each time; specifically, let's take a 28-card deck (standard 33 minus the starting 5) and draw 14 cards per game. In 8 scenarios, Doomed will kill you 36.4% of the time and there's nothing you can do about it.

Or is there? What if you try to draw fewer cards (by pushing to complete faster, taking fewer draw actions, etc)? Just by reducing by 1 card draw per game, and taking 13 instead of 14, your odds of death by doom drop to 28.8%. Reduce to 12 cards and it's down to 22.1%. Alternatively, suppose your deck is built for card draw and you ignore Doom and pull 16 cards per game: you'll die 52.7% of the time.

Maybe the worst happens and you draw Doomed the very first scenario. Your odds of death (back to 14 cards here) are now 50.0%. Maybe you play the remaining games super aggressively, deciding that the risk of defeat and trauma during a scenario isn't that big of a deal now, and only draw 10 cards per game: with that strategy you can push your doom risk back down to 21.2%.

If you have better luck and survive the first scenario without any Doom, your (14-card) odds are down to 22.7%, so you aren't out of the woods yet. Survive 2 games sans Doom and you can breathe more easily: 10.9%. Draw Doom once in the first 2 games and you're at 34.4%, close to where you started... and even with only 6 scenarios left, the impact of drawing 1 fewer card per game is still significant.

Note that, because of the way the probabilities work, drawing Doomed/replacements 4 times over the course of a campaign is much more likely, and many players will find themselves with The Bell Tolls in their decks by the final scenario (something like 50% using base assumptions). Also I did not include the effect of adding additional story assets or weaknesses over the course of a campaign, but it's fairly significant too, so whoever has Doomed should try to pick those up when possible.

Bottom line is Doomed makes a situation similar to the chaos bag; players can change the odds at a cost, but aren't in control of the outcome. The interesting difference is that the cost/risk picture is very long-term: each avoidable card draw hurts you very little (probably), but over the course of the campaign the likely cost for making a lot of avoidable draws is enormous. It's very much in keeping with the concepts of the game both thematically and mechanically.

The economy boost your entire group gets from not having to boost/commit cards to cover that -5, is that worth 1 resource a turn?

I say yes.

Is it worth an arcane slot? Hmmmmmm.

Rich via Dr. Milan Daisy Walker is taking this all day long.