The Ornate bow has to have been one of the most impactful cards in the Forgotten age Cycle, simply because it is the only weapon that straight-up fights via . Here's my experience with it:

Ornate bow is fantastic. But bear in mind that it has severe limitations that drastically change the way you approach combat.

• It has "infinite" uses but only ever one loaded shot at a time.

At once a big problem and incredibly flavourful. As an character sneaking around the periphery taking shots is exactly what you would be doing, the design of the bow achieves this in how carefully you must approach combat. You need to be ready to evade when you fight big threats, you take your time to load and plot shots.

To be effective with a bow, NEVER forego reloading it. The characters who put the bow to the best use need high , but more importantly they need a synergizing cardpool. A 3 character with the right cards is a way better archer then a 4 one without. The cardpools in question are: and .

The bow has a worthy bonus to hit, a 3 character is making shots at +5. The important part is being able to supplement the accuracy with cards that magnify the hit chance or "arrow efficiency". Live and Learn and Lucky! are HUGE backup cards for when you draw a really bad token while Sleight of Hand and Double or Nothing help you get a little more out of your bow. Narrow Escape lets you reload under pressure. Leo De Luca helps you get more shots inbetween evades. Lola Santiago, Peter Sylvestre and Track Shoes all help you net hits, not to mention several skill-pump talents, Cornered or High Roller. If you can play cards then Shrivelling covers you while the bow is empty and Premonition helps land big hits. The bow as an weapon cannot use Vicious Blow but Venturer will keep your bow loaded for you!

Watch out for the resource cost. 4 is quite a lot, but the bow is absolutely worth it. The double hand slot is much more a nuisance because it blocks Lockpicks.

So. Who can use it best?

• Wendy Adams, Silas Marsh and Rita Young all have good cardpools for it and great stats, especially Wendy whose accuracy is unmatched thanks to her ability.
• Agnes Baker has a good cardpool for archery, once you combine the bow, spells and her ability she's easily the strongest combat in the game and very flexible too.
• Sefina Rousseau, "Skids" O'Toole and Finn Edwards all have great cardpools and stats for the bow, it really shines in Sefina who can supplement it with spells and attack events and can afford to land headshots every now and then.
• Rex Murphy, while the cardpool has next to no synergy with the bow, Rex can just borrow some cards, his limitations block Lucky! and Double or Nothing but he can do Track Shoes and Live and Learn. The shoes are pretty great for a .
• "Ashcan" Pete and Jenny Barnes both have nice cardpools for archery but both also have other techniques to fight, bringing in the bow is viable but will result in rather complex decks that double-dip and .

Thats it. I've used the bow to dig through surprisingly densely packed hellholes, now you go do the same! Remember this mantra: Shoot - Evade - Reload.

Interesting that the only review of this card in arkhamdb is so negative. The Bow seems to be great for any investigator with a high base agility and access to rougue cards though. The main points of criticism of the bow are:

• Its action intensiveness.

With Leo De Luca the load-action drawback is mostly mitigated and even without him the bow is still usable. If you really need to be dealing damage you can use ally searchers like Calling in Favors or Flare to maximise your damage output with Leo, an ally which is always good to have anyways. Finding your self engaged with a 4 or even 5 health enemy doesn't always mean you have to use more than 1 arrow on it because you should also be running some event monster-removal cards (like Sneak Attack, Waylay, Coup de Grâce, etc) to support the bow or in case you don't draw the bow from the beginning of the game. And Hatchet Man is also a thing by the way.

• Its use of 2 hand-slots.

The only true important asset you may not be able to play while using the bow are the Lockpicks. This is only impactful if you are the main or only cluegatherer and there are many clues for you to pick. If these is the case ofcourse you can skip the bow. On the other side, If your team needs you to deal damage or in true solo (where there are fewer clues to pick) investigators like Jenny Barnes, Finn Edwards and even Wendy Adams can easily get away with not using lockpicks because they have many other ways to boost their intellect and get clues like for exmaple Streetwise, Dr. Milan Christopher, St. Hubert's Key (in case of Jenny Barnes), Lola Santiago, "Look what I found!", etc. So in conclusion, the importance of those hand-slots is relativ to the the amount of cluegathring you will be doing and based on that you make the decision to get the bow or not.

The strenghts of the bow on the other hand outweight it's drawbacks.

1. It's very reliable.

The fact that rougues and rougish characters like Wendy come with a base agility of 4 and the ease with which they can boost that agility make the bow super effective. Staple cards like Streetwise, Lola Santiago or Peter Sylvestre boost agility and don't even represent an opportunity cost because you will be gettingt them anyways. The new Track Shoes and The Moon • XVIII can further increase your agility menaing you can consistently loose your arrows like Legolas with 9+ agility. Considering this and taking into account how ineffective it is to boost combat with rougue and/or survivor cards (I am looking at you Hired Muscle) means that the bow is for the moment more efficient than the Chicago Typewriter. I personally prefer to shoot 2 times per round with 9-12 skillvalue than shoot 4 times per round but with only 5-6 skillvalue...

2. It has infinite ammo.

This is also important to consider when comparing the bow to other weapons with ammo. With the bow you just drop it and forget about it for the rest of the game. No last bullet anxiety or need to bring expensive support cards like Contraband.

3. It deals 3 damage.

This is very relevant because the new base health of enemies is 3. Been able to oneshot those pesky swarmy 3 health enemies feels good and because they now usually have hunter it's even more fficient than just evading them. Piercing the hearth of those annoying snake-people and 3 health cultist with an arrow is priceless.

4. It only cost 3 XP.

Besides the bow only the Old Hunting Rifle and under certain conditions Lupara can deal 3 damage with one shot. I won't discuss here why the bow is superior to these two but limit myself to mention that as a rougue you can get the bow relatively early in the campaign supported by other staple cards that you normally get early. This means you will reach your max. damage output way earlier than guardians, which have to expend allot more XP for their big game weapons and support cards.

5. It is flexible.

Because you are so invested in agility you can always decide to evade instead of attack. Using the bow doesn't prevents you to play an evade heavy strategy with the added benefit that when an enemy that must be killed in order to get some juicy Xp or advance the story appears, you alway have the damage to take him down.

That's it from my side. If you agree/disagree leave a comment.

This card has generated a lot of hype. And why not? It unlocks an entirely new playing style by allowing investigators to fight with Agility, and the +2 damage is quite impressive. Plus, anyone can take it!

I'm going to argue, though, that Ornate Bow is not actually that good and probably not worth the 3 XP, 4 resources, and 2 hand slots.

First, the action efficiency on Ornate Bow is really poor for an XP card. If you play the Bow and use it once, it's clearly way inferior to just using something like Backstab or "I've got a plan!" or Waylay. If you use it twice, you're dealing 6 damage over 4 actions. That's the same as a level 0 weapon can do! And the more you use it, the worse the action efficiency gets. Use it four times for (optimally) 12 damage over 8 actions. A standard +damage level 0 weapon can deal 14 damage over 8 actions. The more you use the Bow, the less efficient it is compared to the game's level 0 weapons. That's not great for a 3 XP card.

The Bow does have the advantage that you need to pass fewer skill checks. In the above example, 12 damage from the Bow would take 4 successful skill checks, where it would take 6 from the weapons. That's a considerable advantage. But then there's the big disadvantage that a lot of enemies have more than 3 health, and reloading the bow during combat is a huge pain. You either have to swallow attacks of opportunity or you have to evade, and either is wasteful. Even if you're facing 3-health enemies, obviously the optimal situation for the Bow, if/when you miss with the Bow, you suddenly find yourself in an awful spot. If you miss with other weapons, it's not nearly as bad. (Finn can get around this, but I don't think the Bow is that great for him--see below.)

So the Bow is not looking so great for a 3 XP weapon. And indeed, I think anyone with half-decent Combat (and this would include Finn, Jenny, Silas, and Skids) should just use weapons that use Combat instead, because these are way better. Even if your to-hit bonus is a little lower, even the level 0 weapons are more efficient in terms of actions, and the XP weapons available to these investigators are way more efficient. (Not to mention Rogues have a nice set of cards that synergize well with a big gun, like Sleight of Hand and Contraband, but are really terrible with the Bow.)

But what about those high-Agility investigators who have really low Combat but high Agility, like Ursula, Wendy, and Sefina? Doesn't the Bow find a home here?

The answer is: sort of. Yes, these would be the most viable candidates to use the Bow. But I have real doubts here. For one, like I said, you're still not reaching very good efficiency. You're still doing worse, action-wise, than other investigators do using level 0 weapons. Since you have to invest a lot into the Bow in terms of XP, resources, and hand slots, I'm really skeptical when the final result ends up being not very efficient compared to how other investigators can fight.

Besides, these investigators all have really important things to be doing with their hands. Ursula is simply a far better investigator when she's got a Magnifying Glass or two in hand than when she doesn't. Ditto for Sefina with Lockpicks or Spirit Athame or Wendy with Lockpicks. By playing the Bow you are seriously compromising your ability to investigate. I think someone like Sefina or Wendy is better off not fighting very much, and using events like Backstab, Sneak Attack, or Waylay on the rare occasions that they really want to kill something, rather than investing a ton into the Bow for a pretty unspectacular payoff. (Plus, focusing more on events synergizes really well with these characters anyway.)

And yes, Ursula has a possible combo with Dr. Elli Horowitz to get around the Bow's hand slots. But not only is that unreliable (the Bow needs to be in the top 9 cards of your deck), you're just using up a different super-valuable slot instead. More to the point, Ursula can just take Acidic Ichor, which is not only far more efficient than the Bow and attacks at the same base value, it's also far cheaper and doesn't take up any slots at all. She should just do that.

I'm not trying to say the Bow is unplayable. If you really want to make it work, I'm sure it's possible. But I do think the efficiency is not very good and the Bow is not nearly as profitable as it seems at first glance, even for those investigators who seem like the best fits.

(Update form The Feast of Hemlock Vale Investigator Expansion) Cleaning Kit + Emergency Cache (3) = Unlimited Arrow Works. Especially for Skids who can double it and got a good . Good to see this old cards being useful once more.

I'm going to expand on a comment posted earlier.

"The bow gets much better if the user or another player us venturer and e.cache3 to reload it. — Django 1177 2 days ago"

This card is (can be) baller for Skids, Ashcan or Rex (And I suppose Jenny but she has her guns). Now, keep in mind that Skids has a decent Combat as it is at 3, so it makes it slightly more challenging when comparing to +combat weapons for him, though the others are base 2.

If we break down the efficiency of this vs other weapons usable by Skids, it makes it slightly less valuable, but still in the running. Rex has access to Acidic Ichor and Ashcan has all re-usable weapons to choose from, making this harder to justify. The biggest issue is that it requires you to have Venturer out to re-ammo the bow for a instead of an . Let's break it down.

Ornate Bow - To hit: 6 | Damage: 3 | Both Hands | 4 cost | 3 XP -- Can be stacked with Venturer to attack twice using only two actions

Chicago Typewriter - To hit: 5 | Damage: 3 | Both Hands | 5 cost | 4 XP -- Can be stacked with Leo De Luca to deplete ammo in a single round

Lupara - To hit: 4 (5 if new) | Damage: 2 (3 if new) | Single Hand | 3 cost | 3 XP -- Can be stacked with Sleight of Hand to grant bonus to hit and damage without using an action to play it

Let's assume all combos available and all attacks hit. Over 4 attacks, which would deplete all ammo for each weapon:

Ornate Bow: 12 damage using 4 actions, two rounds, 8 total resources, 3 total XP -- Pro: Still offers 1 action per round to do other things -- Cons: Relatively resource costly, requires two rounds

Chicago Typewriter: 12 damage using 4 actions, one round, 10 total resources, 6 total XP -- Pro: Only uses one round opposed to the others' two -- Cons: Very expensive, both in resources and XP

Lupara: 12 damage using 5 actions, two rounds, 4 total resources, 3 total XP -- Pros: Very cheap to play, only uses a single hand slot -- Cons: Requires two rounds, only offers 1 spare action.

Where this starts to break down is the introduction of Emergency Cache to re-supply Venturer. This allows you to keep up the pace of Venturer being your caddy for an additional 4 shots, where it does nothing for Chicago Typewriter or Lupara directly. Those would require Contraband or Extra Ammunition, both of which are resource heavy. The moral of the story is that for Skids (and pretty much only him) this card is right there with the rest of them, so long as you have Venturer.