I'm very late to this, but I wanted to add my 2c.

On a blind playthrough, this card can easily be a full bottleneck. If your clue getting strategy is event based, or commit based, you just can't get past this.

Our blind run was particularly nasty. We had an event based mystic cluever (who was surprisingly good at recycling read the signs 1-2 times every single round) and Nathaniel Cho as our fighter. Without events or committing, neither could get their score above 3, so we were literally digging for 2 tokens while sitting on a place that let us play no events to deal with the mythos deck.

We had to sit on this single location for 6 rounds, ducking in and out of it to play events just to not die to the build up of mythos cards and carefully managing health/sanity. Eventually, we managed to pull a +1 with Agnes (no rite of seeking) while Nathaniel managed to kill an enemy with basic attack actions and trigger Grete Wagner for the other clue.

I'm personally not a massive fan of cards that turn off your deck with no way to counter them. Sometimes the game will turn off committing cards 'or' playing events 'or' assets, but usually not for more than 1 round (or 2 actions to discard the problem). This card is particularly nasty for the fact that it turns off 2 of your potential 3 options and gives you no way to get access to those options again. Really, the way to deal with it is 'play an investigator with 4 or 5 lore'.

Can only review this from the perspective of playing ||Agnes, but boy, is this card a doozy for her!

First, lets break down what this card does.

• It helps with the actual test numbers. I don't need to wax lyrical on why this is useful. Bigger numbers = better tests. It's a little more narrow, in that it only helps with Spell event tests, but given they're typically higher impact, getting them to 'go off' more reliably is always a bonus.
• It helps beat the Chaos bag. Sometimes, this is just making sure you don't draw the auto-fail. Sometimes it's two bites at the apple for your Hail Mary. Spell events are generally costly, and for the low price of one horror, you can turn off the swingiest token in the bag, ensuring you get the bang for your buck.
• It helps maximise your and minimise your . We've all been there. I need two clues with my Read the Signs, and I'm testing 7 vs 1. Draw 3 Bless tokens and a +1. Almost feels as bad as drawing . Flipside, when you're making these huge tests, you can deliberately fish for Curse tokens to try and 'purge the bag'.
• You can use it to fish for bonus effects. This is, for the most part, limited to Spectral Razor, Ethereal Form, Read the Signs and Banish within spell effects, but can be useful for triggering your other assets, like Ritual Candles or Paradoxical Covenant, or even just fishing for the .

So, it boils down to an amalgam of Holy Rosary and Grotesque Statue, without the soak, and strictly only for spell events. In other decks, this would be a little limiting, as your spell events deplete. For ||Agnes, this just doubles down on what you're already good at. You're already needing to set up to weather the damage you take from your own ability, and potentially having to soak Dark Memory.

For ||Agnes, I think that Sutra has a very strong and positive effect on how your deck functions. Are there better cards? Certainly, but for 2 XP, you get a lot of slot compression, particularly around your neck slot, which is heavily contested between Hallowed Mirror and Heirloom of Hyperborea. Bonus points when paired up with Prophetic so you can bump your spells even more!

I've had a lot of fun with this card, and I think it is a slodi include in decks that can handle drawing it early. This is now easier to do with access to red, as the Survivor card pool has a very fledged out "Discard" archetype. It also has two relevant traits in Insight and Spirit, which are constantly getting more support.

However, I have also come to like this card in general in lower player counts where additional actoins are more valuable. I do think it is able to pull its weight, and more people should try it out.

You can use Robert's ability to shot and then put .32 Colt into play. Shot couple more times and use .32 Colt's ability (by paying 1 resource) to take it back to hand, where it's ready to be used by Robert next turn.

It's possible but costly to repeat it each turn. This could be mitigated by shooting Colt at least once before returning it to hand, if you're [Michael McGlen that gives 1 resource (2 if combined with [Stylish Coat).

I'm surprised there isn't a review for this.

It's good. It's really damn good. I've played Hank Samson once in a Standard Dunwich campaign and this card was often really useful, but I played it before I realised I couldn't use it against that one enemy we all hate, so I would probably play him again in a different campaign. Testless damage is something that gets much better in Hard / Expert, but is still great in Standard / Easy.

It's best to save Stouthearted for when you flip as it is functionally some of the only healing you have. (Note that you still have soak and whatnot. Cards like Wrong Place, Right Time and "Devil" work too, but Stouthearted does it the most reliably and efficient way in my opinion. Peter Sylvestre / Peter Sylvestre(2XP) + Jessica Hyde, Perseverance, shit like that.)

Since Stouthearted is fast, it lets you put out a burst of extra damage in a turn without sinking an action on it.

However, there are four minor caveats to Stouthearted. The first is the timing restriction, which is probably the most frustrating part of the card. You can't just play it any time and get value out of it, you either have to draw an enemy or engage an enemy that's engaged with another investigator to play it. Normally, engaging is a loss of tempo, but with Stouthearted you mitigate that loss by dealing 2 damage, which is generally an average amount for fighters. To combat this, what I usually do is run separate engage cards such as "Get behind me!", "Get over here!" / "Get over here!" (2XP), and Heroic Rescue / Heroic Rescue(2XP). Personally, I think "Get over here!" (2XP) is the best card to pair with this as it potentially lets you do upwards of 3-4 damage fast(Stouthearted + 1 damage from successful fight + any other potential damage boosts).

Second of all, you need to have damage/horror on you. This really isn't a problem as the mythos is more than happy to dish out damage/horror and you can always take damage/horror through beneficial card effects such as Blood Will Have Blood and Fend Off.

Thirdly, you cannot recurr it without looping for your deck. It's not a card and it doesn't have a level, so there's no way to get it back. And that's okay. Just using this once is beneficial.

And lastly, this doesn't work against Elite enemies. I'm not surprised. You'll still have plenty of applicable targets to use this.

For two resources, a card, and some awkward timing restrictions, you have a pretty damn good signature card that makes you feel like you're a powerhouse of a tank.