Hank Samson testing combat at 8 Fight (in his resolute version)? Yes please! Sounds excellent for the hard and Expert chaos bags.
Even therein, testing at 5 for the singular action isn't bad either! We might just have found the investigator that wants to wave this thing into the mythos deck's face.
Deny Existence was recently clarified to not work for this (much like Sister Mary's weakness no longer works with Deny Existence).
This has made this weakness the main difficulty in playing Diana, which is intended. She has a lower than normal horror value for a mystic, and depending on when this card comes out it can be absolute debilitating.
She doesn't have a good way to fish it out, and it is scenario failing to drop all of her willpower off especially if it comes out late. So the best strategy is to build her soak heavy and just hope you see this early. Brother Xavier is very attractive for this purpose, and also boosts her willpower.
After it's drawn you could play "Fool me once", but Diana will typically have low cycling power and it's unlikely you're going to run into this again. If you do find yourself somehow cycling rapidly with her you should consider Fool Me Once, as getting hit with this a second time will probably kill you.
Overall this is a swingy weakness, akin to Wendy's. Draw it early and it's probably just a foot note, Draw it late and you're going to have a bad time if you aren't prepared.
The mystic in my group played Sixth Sense in that scenario and discovered a clue on an adjacent location while being at the Polar Mirage. Do they trigger Polar Mirage or not? Does the "at the attached location" refer to the clue obtained, or the location of the investigator?
In the same campaign we have Kindred Mist using the wording "while you are at the attached location", but we also have Snow Graves using the wording "clue from this location" Neither of them uses the wording "at". So which is it?
Not a review but trivia about art. If you type in Google "Walter Smith 1924" you will find a picture of man who looks exactly like the guy in art. Not a coincidence, no chance. Found about it accidentally going through insta stories.
Parallel Front Jim Culver is what is known as a Jim Culver that has ascended past a Jim Culver.
And Parallel BACK Jim Culver... is to go even FURTHER BEYOND!!
To imperfectly sum up: Parallel Back Jim gets a separate 10 card "spirit deck", full of allies. Every turn he draws one and it enters play, free of charge, requiring no slots. They can't soak (no HP/sanity), but can do just about everything else they could as a regular ally.
You get to put Allies of ANY COLOR into this deck, of L2 or less. This can mean things like a free Leo DeLuca on turn 1.
The downside is reliability- most of the text on The Beyond amounts to "When you put a 4th ghost in play, (probably) discard each ghost." It's based on a token pull for each one, but without chaos bag manipulation, odds are they're gone.
So if you just chuck a bunch of powerful allies into the deck, Jim will ride an erratic wave of powering-up-and-down. With a bit of planning, though, he can instead get a couple high-powered allies in play and keep them there.
Keeping Your Ghosts ... uh... Alive?
This control falls into 2 main categories:
1. Token manipulation
Self-explanatory; when you hit 4 ghosts, you can still use most of the standard tricks to influence what tokens you pull on them, thus protecting the ones you'd like to stick around and allowing the others to move on.
Firstly: Curses in general. Curse tokens keep a ghost alive, and Parallel Front Jim further benefits from Curses, so really you're heavily incentivized to run a curse deck. Consequently...
2. Manual Ghost Removal
Discarding ghosts from play on your own time lets you to avoid the 4-ghost threshold to begin with. Now, there's not a whole lot of tech available to do this externally...
(UPDATE: An official ruling has invalidated the first two options here, see bottom of post.)
... but the best manual removal comes from what's in the Ghost Deck to begin with, thanks to self-discarding allies. Stacking it with allies who's abilities cause them to discard themselves lets Jim aim for a few high-powered ghosts he wants to keep around, and a variety of little guys who give small boosts and then get out of the way.
Ghosts Of Interest To Jim
Self-Discarding Ghosts:
Add these, and use their ability when drawn to stay under the 4-ghost threshold, keeping your Superghosts in play longer.
Superghosts!
Allies with great powers that you can build your deck around, and want to remain in play as long as possible.
Delivery Ghosts
Another angle for building the ghost deck; these are Allies who give you something on arrival and/or over a few turns, and whom you don't mind losing upon hitting the 4 ghost limit.
I'm sure there's others who have potential value to Jim- this ability and his statline are amazingly versatile; it's not hard at all to picture a STR or INT based Jim given all the static boosts available, and base stat replacers from Hound & Servitor.
No matter what you do though, you'll have fun with your personally customized audience that gives even Charlie a run for the money.
(Appendix: At time of writing, there's apparently some debate as to whether the text on The Beyond removes the "Asset" quality from ghosts. If so, some of the methods listed above- such as sacrificing a ghost to bring a Servitor into play- would not work. My interpretation of the card is that this isn't the case, and it only affects italicized text traits, but if an official call comes out to the contrary, I'll modify this review.)
UPDATE: As of Mar 13 2024, @HatfulBob posted on Discord an official response to several questions asked about this card. The full list of questions, and their answers, follows:
For spirits attached to Jim Culver's "The Beyond":
RESPONSE:
Yes, the spirits are still considered assets, but they are not Ally assets, and cannot be removed from play except by the abilities on The Beyond or abilities on the spirits themselves (e.g. Stray Cat). Jim could not discard a spirit from Crypt Chill or Summoned Servitor. And because the Spirit deck “owns” Vengeful Shade, if it entered play and was later defeated, it gets discarded to the bottom of the Spirit deck (per the rules for discarded spirits).