Physical Training, Hyperawareness, Hard Knocks, Arcane Studies, Dig Deep - they all have something in common: all these cards give you temporary boosts to individual skill tests at the cost of resources.

The inclusion of these cards is closely related to your investigator's economy! With the new card, Dark Horse, you may plan to stay poor as a church mouse and this asset can help you with that. Or, on the contrary, if you are living the dream, and some investigators proverbial float in resources, you can afford to bundle Hard Knocks+Arcane Studies or Physical Training+Hyperawareness to boost all your skills! In short, keep your hands off if you don't have action-free income!

If you are interested in the discussion, i would recommend this thread to you. If "Skids" O'Toole is going to play one of the beforementioned talents, he is going to play Physical Training. With base 4 and a deck packed with icons, he does not really need to buff his agility, wheras his base willpower of 2 (and a deck mostly bereft of icons) does need some help. Physical Training is said to work well with Zoey Samaras, too, while Roland Banks struggles for the money to use it effectively.

Pros

• Reliant boosting flexibility. Depending on the difficulty level and the test's danger level, you can boost as much as barely is needed (roughly +2 over your baseline) or sink all your money in it.
• Theoretically unlimited uses.
• The asset stays in play. From the moment you play this, you are forearmed.
• It does not need to be slotted.
• Goes well along with Dark Horse. Also combines perfectly with cards that have an additional effect if you overfulfill: List, special mention here goes to the Shotgun.

Cons

• You have to find it in your deck, it lacks the Permanent trait.
• Resource-hungry asset (install and activation).
• Only helps the investigator who plays it.

Recommendations

• There are several tough obstacles in The Devourer Below: spoiler, spoiler.

Physical Training, Hyperawareness, Hard Knocks, Arcane Studies, Dig Deep - they all have something in common: all these cards give you temporary boosts to individual skill tests at the cost of resources.

And as a general rule of thumb apply the following statements:

1. You have cheaper and faster ways of adding small temporary boosts to individual skill tests. E.g. by committing cards to skill tests.
2. You have similarly-costed ways of adding small permanent boosts to skill tests. Just naming Police Badge, Peter Sylvestre, Machete here as examples.
3. Adding large temporary boosts to individual skill tests is prohibitively expensive and in an emergency there are other ways. Because there is this -symbol in the chaos bag, you can never bring your odds above 94%. Arguably, you are better off by pitching multiple cards to life-threatening skill tests.

Rule 3. does not apply if you play on hard/expert difficulty, because there are frequently special chaos token rules that, if you failed, could bring very serious hindrances with them.

The inclusion of these cards is closely related to your investigator's economy. With the new card, Dark Horse, you may plan to stay poor as a church mouse and cards like Dig Deep can help you with that. Or, on the contrary, if you are living the dream, and some investigators proverbial float in resources, you can afford to bundle Hard Knocks+Arcane Studies or Physical Training+Hyperawareness to boost all your skills! In short, keep your hands off if you don't have action-free income!

Sadly, Dig Deep does not have a partner to go with, yet. All in all, you should very carefully plan the inclusion of this asset. One possible reason could be a special scenario with many and tests. It really depends on your playstyle and what you want to achieve.

Pros

• Reliant boosting flexibility. Depending on the difficulty level and the test's danger level, you can boost as much as barely is needed (roughly +2 over your baseline) or sink all your money in it.
• Theoretically unlimited uses.
• The asset stays in play. From the moment you play this, you are forearmed.
• It does not need to be slotted.
• Goes well along with Dark Horse and with "Skids" O'Toole.
• Also combines perfectly with cards that have an additional effect if you overfulfill: List

Cons

• You have to find it in your deck, unlike Scrapper and Blood Pact, Dig Deep lacks the Permanent trait.
• Resource-hungry asset (install and activation).
• Only helps the investigator who plays it.

Recommendations

• There are several tough obstacles in The Devourer Below: spoiler, spoiler.

At first glance the gloomy Stray Cat seems like a premeditated evade which is not particularly great, but there are some nifty tricks you can do on your turn:

1. Exhaust enemies who ready in the Enemy phase. There's a free action player window (between Step 3.2 and 3.3) just before enemies attack, so simply discard the Stray Cat to exhaust them.
2. Exhaust enemies who are engaged with other investigators at your location. Handy to bail them out when you don't have the actions to spare to engage and evade that enemy.
3. As a bonus, combo Stray Cat's evade with cards that have the same triggering condition: Close Call, Pickpocketing

Pros

• Guaranteed evade. This can save you many conventional evasion attempts if the enemy is quicker than you.
• Activated with a free action. You don't lose an action, you only pay for it upfront by playing Stray Cat.
• Decent install cost.
• You should combo Stray Cat with other cards to maximize it's value: Sneak Attack, Close Call, Pickpocketing.
• If William Yorick finds himself engaged with two non-elite enemies, he can kill the weak one, recur Stray Cat with his ability and use Stray Cat's free action to evade the big baddie.

Cons

• Does not work on nasty Elite enemies that you really want to exhaust.
• One-time effect only. Hardly worth on it's own, until you know of a certain enemy you want to avoid. In this case it could easily be swapped in with Adaptable.
• Occupies the Ally slot. You know the darling who wants to take her place! Are you willing to pay 3xp (Charisma) for the company of cat and boyfriend?
• All current survivors have an Agility base value of 3, which is sufficient against most threats.

Recommendations

Instantly parley spoiler on the Midnight Masks scenario.

As of Core + Dunwich through Undimensioned and Unseen this card simply doesn't seem to have a place. 'Add charges to spells' seems like a solid concept, but this card unlike any other in the game is demanding in money, actions AND slots. Money and hand-slot could perhaps be forgiven, but the sheer number of actions required in order to make this card useful are insane. It's 4r + 2 actions + 1 hand to refresh your Shriveling or RotS once.

The card seemingly is meant to bend towards 'hardcore casters' who want more than two spells and want to cast them all a lot, but by the time you've bought this AND three other spells AND burnt one of those spells of it's charges the game had better well be over or you're probably not going to win. You're better off just overwriting one of your original two spells with the third that you need right now. Now, of course, we do have a character who can use Tome actions for free and uses spells! Ah but wait Daisy Walker is a Seeker, and as such doesn't have access to this card outside of Jim teamwork shenanigans...

It's just a huge miss. Maybe one day we'll have someone who can use certain charged spells without using actions, and when that happens this card will probably still be trash tier. It simply is too far removed from viable play in resource cost, action efficiency, and intended function for it to be worth even the deck slot, let alone 3 exp.

The one thing that might change my mind is if in the future we see a big expensive spell with a single, or limited, charges much the way that Shotgun is mad expensive but also dependent on Extra Ammunition

Sounds weird, but this tag is better on easy/standard difficulty than on hard/expert. Sure, the ability triggers more often on tougher skill tests, but the best strategy on a higher difficulty is to do everything you can to minimize the number of skill tests you attempt, or make them auto-successes, with e.g. Flashlight or Will to Survive. When we do attempt skill tests, we want to boost them with sufficient skill cards that we'll actually pass them. So Rabbit's Foot is just going to go a long way to pay off, if it ever does.

Pros

• Good click-compression in decks that are likely to fail repeatedly at certain actions. Like my beloved Wendy at fighting or investigating.
• Synergizes well with other cards with the same triggering condition: List
• Decent install cost.
• 1 -icon to boost skill tests.
• Can form a very clunky combo with Scavenging: Commit Rabbit's Foot from hand to a skill test. If it was an investigation attempt, you are not allowed to retrieve Rabbit's foot after the same test, but in any case after the next successful investigation attempt.

Cons

• The effect is mediocre with the one-time usability restriction per round.
• It takes up a valuable accessory slot.