This card is for Daisy Walker - bookish girl, not good at sports - until you play this card and she becomes "Xena - Warrior Princess".

It turns her poor 2 strength and 2 agility into 5 for the turn! That's monstrous! Tack on Dr. Milan Christopher and you've got 6 strength and 6 agility. It's fast, too, so you've the full 3 actions still to use (plus a tome).

It's main disadvantage is it's brief effect. It only lasts for your investigator phase, so save it until you really need to evade or clobber something.

"I've got a plan" does do something similar - but only for a single Fight, and it costs a lot more. If you don't need to deal that much damage, or you're looking to run away, Mind Over Matter is the card for you.

Rex Murphy, with his lower intellect and higher agility, doesn't gain as much from this card. To be honest, I'm a lot more ambivalent about it in a Rex deck.

And yes, for most other investigators so far, it offers nothing. But still, for me, this is the first card I add to a Daisy deck.

For added giggles, look for any other items that can boost intellect too.

He might seem like he's looking up a recipe for cockroach soup, but Dr. Milan Christopher is by a country mile the best Seeker ally.

Sure, he's fairly expensive. Sure, one icon to commit to a test is weak. But here is an ally who will improve your investigation, and then pay you for investigating. +1 ! Brilliant! He'll soon repay his cost, provided you're investigating enough. And let's not forget, clues are how you win.

He turns Daisy Walker into an intellect 6 clue-hoover - and lets her earn resources for doing it! And Mind over Matter or I've Got a plan become even more awesome.

He turns Rex Murphy into a great investigator, and combos nicely with Burglary and Scavenging. Find a low shroud location to burgle for +4 resources, and retrieve a discarded item! Neat! Or more regularly manage to grab 2 clues at once!

And he can turn a reasonable, normal investigator into a good one. Jenny Barnes, Roland Banks and Jim Culver can all reach 4 intellect and become solid investigators in their own right - though for Roland, I still think battering monsters and collecting clues from them make Beat Cop a better option.

For Seekers though, so far, he's the best available ally.

Fundamentally, this card increases your hand size. So far, there's only 2 investigators where I've found the 8 card limit becomes a problem; Daisy Walker when she's using the Old Book of Lore each turn, and Rex Murphy when choosing to fail elder-sign tests, or using Search for the Truth.

For them, this card could be really useful. However, both can also take Dr. Milan Christopher, whose +1 and paying resources for investigating is probably preferable. He's a much stronger card.

However, at the right time, and with those investigators, this could be a useful ally for a part of the game. I think you have to see this as an ally you might want late in a game, similarly to how a Research Librarian is most useful at the start.

So, in short - possibly useful, but highly situational, and I'd only bother for investigators who can draw a lot of cards.

It's worth noting that in the Dunwich campaign you sometimes don't want to get too far through your deck, so getting a third of your deck into your hand is maybe not the best idea.

This card always seems to appear right when it is extremely inconvenient for me. The fact that doom is placed directly on the agenda is just so devastating to your game tempo. The 2 fight is not much of a challenge but the fact that Silver Twilight Acolyte has 3 health means most investigators will have to use at least 2 actions to take care of this card unless you have some special effect at your disposal like Agnes's special ability or vicious blow. To summarize, a kind of annoying reflecting the itch in the middle of your foot.

To consider the humble magnifying glass, in this or its level 0 form, one should keep in mind the way in which most act decks progress: the collection and spending of clues. Clues, barring a few tricks of a persuasion, or some exceptional luck, are found through successful investigation actions, using . And the magnifying glass provides a static +1 for those - and only those - actions. As such, it's a lovely card.

In its level 1 form, it costs 0 (a bargain!), can be played without spending an action because it's fast (double bargain!!) and boosts one of the core actions many investigators will be attempting (...triple bargain?!). While not as showy as some of the alternative clue-gathering techniques, such as those outlined above, or as potent as a Flashlight, which can reduce the shroud of some locations to 0, effectively ensuring success on any chaos token but , the magnifying glass is nonetheless reliable and inexhaustible - no charges, no uses, just steady +1 .

There's more: the upgraded version of this card comes with a which allows for quick pocketing of the glass. Given that it's free in resource- and action-cost to play, and then to return to hand, that's quite the boon. Why might one want to do that though? Perhaps hands are getting full and an investigator wants to bring out a gun, sword or book; perhaps there's a big test ahead, such as a parley action, in which you'd prefer to commit the magnifying glass for its icon; perhaps you're worried about being made to discard assets - there are plenty of such effects - and you'd rather hold on to the glass. More than anything else, it provides options: it may take up a hand slot, but it doesn't do so permanently, and if your investigator finds their role in the scenario shifting from combat to clues or vice versa, bingo, out/in comes the magnifying glass. Tip top.