• Can you use this ability when you draw a treachery weakness card (like Abandoned and Alone)?
• Is the drawn card considered "in hand" when you use this ability? If not, it would allow you to discard agnes's weakness without effect.

After this card is resolved, it's placed in the now empty discard pile. So if this is the last card in your deck, it removes the remaining discard pile from the game when you draw it and when you're required to draw a card again, it's the only card in your new deck. So you take 2 direct horror each turn, because it's the only card to draw each time.

I'm not sure about about Liquid Courage for many of the investigators in the core set/Dunwich legacy. To be honest, the investigators who struggle with Sanity - e.g. Roland Banks, or "Skids" O'Toole - also tend to have low willpower, so this isn't so useful for them.

Zoey Samaras can make pretty good use of it, particularly if she has something to give Willpower a boost, and her sanity is low enough to need a little help.

However, I've found it fantastic for... Agnes Baker. Yes, she can't actually take this card herself - but another investigator can, and then use liquid courage to heal Agnes' horror. This lets her use her ability to inflict damage when she takes horror even more often, which is awesome, and her 5 makes it unlikely that she'll fail the test to heal the second horror very often.

So if you're hunting Great Old Ones with Agnes at your side, embrace sociable investigating! Come 'ere Agnes, and have wee dram for yer nerves...

The ritual candles to me are something that I thought were considerably good at first glance, but started to come around on them after further investigation.

The typical approach that I tend to take for any test that matters to me is to get to the +2 range in a 'standard' scenario. I mention 'standard' because my opinion of ritual candles changes when we start thinking about 'hard' difficulty and beyond. In 'standard' difficulty level play the +2 that I aim for on checks is going to succeed the majority of the time regardless of whether I draw a , , or (less so on the symbol). That means that the ritual candles are doing nothing for me in those situations that I really care about it. In the hard difficulty level you can still aim for a +2 and all of a sudden the candles are now bringing that -3 into the +2 range of success for the investigator and the chances for success go up significantly.

So as far as using it for standard scenario play, I am a little down on the card, but in hard mode play I am feeling positive on the card.

The other way to play when you get the ritual candle when there are several -2 symbols would be to then just provide a +1 to your skill check and possibly get an extra pull of the bag that would be in your favor. You still have a -2 or two in the bag that are now bad for you though. However, you do keep the negative effect of the symbol from affecting you at that point that the -2 didn't. By putting yourself at a +1 with the ritual candle you fail on -2 pull but might pass on a "-1 if you fail, drop a clue at your location" which is a better situation to be in.

If you have no hand-slots in use as is on some characters, the ritual candles can provide some improvements, but on the most part, I am somewhat down on it unless I am playing on harder difficulty levels and then at that point I find it quite beneficial.

This card is a bit hard to quantify. The obvious comparison to it is against the Knife that is available to every other role in a neutral form. At the same cost and strength, there are only 2 factors to consider when deciding which one is better over the other.

Perhaps you don't consider blackjack or Knife, because you prefer to carry .45 and machete as your includes in your deck. For those types of decks, then this isn't even a consideration. But in several cases I have considered machete and Knife/blackjack as it is a considerable cost savings over the .45 and 80% of the time the machete does the job of the .45 anyway.

Also, if you are solo, blackjack isn't for you. In large groups, you may be required to peel monstrosities off of people and help them out. In these situations, with the blackjack you expect to get some action efficiency.

1 health enemy (blackjack) - Action 1 swing 1 health enemy (Knife) - Action 1 swing or Action 1 Engage, Action 2 swing

2 health enemy (blackjack) - Action 1 swing, Action 2 swing 2 health enemy (Knife) - Action 1 sacrifice swing or Action 1 swing, Action 2 swing or Engage, Action 2 swing, Action 3 swing (sacrificing if needed on the second swing if the first missed.

There might be a scenario or two there missed, but that covers the majority of what you are looking for in comparison. The main situation where blackjack is best is obvious in the 1 health enemy category because the blackjack can save you an action and it doesn't make sense to sacrifice the Knife when it is on someone (in most circumstances).

If you don't care what happens to your allies, "swing away" and choose the Knife so you have an option for a burst damage opportunity.

If you do care about your friends (how nice of you), then the majority of the time you are using this weapon you are saving an action for fighting enemies for your allies. That was my thought pattern with using this for a four player campaign. On average over three scenarios so far, this has saved me perhaps 1 action per game. Also, if you wiff on your strong attack with the Knife you are left without a weapon anymore and the blackjack doesn't tempt you with that.

What I do like about the Knife though is that you could save an action with a single attack doing 2 damage when you need. So, this can also save you 1 action per game. Also, when you have that machete out in a situation such as this, the Knife can possibly be useful still for taking out 1 of 2 enemies engaged with you to turn that machete back online.

Is that worth having over the Knife? I tend to think that it is not in practice. The Knife just seems to be a better choice from my perspective. Just in case someone was going through these considerations as well, I thought I would share the experience I have had with the card here.