Chapter 2 review

Favor of Baalshandor is an interesting one. Firstly, it can only be used to discount Spell or Ritual assets and not events. This is quite limiting, as it stands there are only 7 eligible assets for Favor in the Chapter 2 core and Marie starter decks (Dread Curse of Azathoth, and then Second Sight, Cosmic Flame, Shadowmeld or their upgrades). It does also bypass attacks of opportunity but, as most spells can be used without consuming charges in Chapter 2, there's less of a need to play a spell and refuel mid-fight compared to Chapter 1.

It also comes with the cost of damage, which can at least be handled fairly well with Cosmic Guidance and Bloodstone. Lastly, Favor is bereft of icons - so if you don't have an appropriate asset to play it with then it's a dead card in your hand (compare to say Uncage the Soul in Chapter 1, which both icons on it and could be used on events, plus lacked the damage cost).

Favor of Baalshandor is not the only damage-for-resources card introduced in Marie's starter deck. With Offering Bowl you can net 5 resources, and don't need a target asset in hand for it to work, and it has a icon to commit as well. The damage cost for those resources is steeper (3 damage as opposed to 1), but in some ways Marie prefers this to provide easy means to trigger her ability (and if running upgraded Jim Culver, more damage is often better). Regarding Dexter, cards like Out the Door and "Watch this!" mean he doesn't need to run resource economy cards like Favor. So, who's this for?

For me, Favor of Baalshandor is ironically best suited to Mystic-leaning Izzie Barnes. While she has the lowest health of all new Chapter 2 investigators who access the Mystic card pool, she can recur Cosmic Guidance healing with ease (and you will be running other damage soak anyway to better offset Breaking Point). Further, the Survivor card pool has very poor resource generation on the whole (situational cards like Same Old Thing, Hidden Shelter, Pocketknife, and then using Hunter's Instinct to recover Emergency Cache), so any extra source of resources is welcome. While Offering Bowl could be used on Izzie, 3 damage to access its full payout tends to be a bit too much.

Conclusions: Considering the Chapter 2 card pool, Favor of Baalshandor is often outclassed by other less situational resource generators for Marie (Offering Bowl) and Dexter (Out the Door and "Watch this!"), and so may be best suited to Mystic-focused Izzie decks which lack other straightforward resource economy options. The card still remains niche as there are only 7 eligible assets it can target in the Chapter 2 core + starters card pool, with more targets likely to be released as Chapter 2 progresses. Including it in a deck usually is a question of how badly you need any extra source of pseudo-resource economy (for Izzie, the answer is often pretty badly!).