Old Shotgun

Cleaning Kit Makes this much simpler to use, and opens this up as a semi-reliable primary weapon in any investigator that can take both. ( Venturer did too, but Cleaning Kit's primary advantage is you don't need to exhaust, so you can blow through the ammo much faster on the turns you need to.)

Which is most guardians, but also Joe Diamond, Jenny Barnes, Kymani Jones, "Skids" O'Toole, Diana Stanley, William Yorick and the two neutral investigators.

a +3/+3 per shot weapon is pretty good, even if you need to over-succeed. In Guardian investigators, you could even use Cleaning Kit (3) once per round for an additional +2.

Is this better than just grabbing a giant hammer? Maybe not, but this is more usable than it used to be.

jericho · 443
Great insight. And we have a new Gun investigator coming up. — MrGoldbee · 1461
@ MrGoldbee: alas, Michael cannot take "Cleaning Kit". It does not spell Firearm anywhere on the card. Ammo is not sufficient. — Susumu · 366
Black Market

This card seems like it would be super fun to play. It fits perfectly into my deck for Sefina the Gambler.

I have some questions about the rules. Sefina plays Black Market and draws cards such as:

  1. Elusive. - How many times can this card be used via Black Market? After the first use by any player, does this card go to Sefina discard? Or does it stay on the table until the end of the round and can be used multiple times by players?

  2. Dario El-Amin - Does another player use this card by playing a companion to themselves and that companion a) remains in the this player's area b) is discarded after the round? OR the player just use the action uses the action indicated on the card.

  3. Asset cards like British Bull Dog - Does another player use this card and place it in their play area permanently or does this card have to be played differently (just use the fight action from the card once?

Only set aside cards are shuffled back. — MrGoldbee · 1461
1) Just once. It will go into the discard pile of Sefina after the event has been used. 2) The right answer is a. It will remain in the player's area. 3) Same as 2. The player who plays British Bull Dog will keep control of it. — Droll · 18
Entryway

I have a small issue with this card: both 'your' and 'you' can be seen as plural.

Imagine a drill sergeant pointing at a pile of stuff and yell at some recruits "check your supplies, if you have torches you can X/Y" in this case we imagine multiple torches in the pile and the recruits will spread them. Yet if the drill sergeant yells the exact same at a specific recruit, it's singular. So grammatically speaking: both work but context matters a lot. And considering that you can have 1x torches (plurar torchES, and not torch(es) single OR plural) we can consider this to be a set of torches. As such it would make sense for the investigator to spread the torches around so nobody has to dredge through a possibly pitch black trapped and deadly ruin.

Yet considering how brutal the game is, I'd imagine that this is meant at a single investigator and only if they have it in their supply the can do the action. So unless I missed a rule regarding the supply somewhere, rules as intended vs rules as written is a bit unclear IMO. Maybe saying "if you, or an investigator in your location, has torches in his her supply" or simply "if an investigator has a torch/torches in his/her supply" would be a lot more clear, cause at this point logic could dictates that my buddy gives me one of the torches he has so I can use it in the dangerous, dark ruin xP Anyone know if I'm missing a rule somewhere that would affect this?

Psychotimo · 1
I think it's the general rule on "you" that you want here. That reads "When resolving a triggered ability , "you/your" refers to the investigator triggering the ability." This is a triggered ability , as represented by the action designator, so you in this ability specifically means the person who spent an action to trigger this ability. If they specifically have torches they get to look at encounter cards and if they don't, they don't. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense thematically, but since people without torches are unlikely to trigger it, I guess you could think of it as saying "scouting is the job of the guy who bought the torches" — bee123 · 31
Right, makes sense. — Psychotimo · 1
Wops, clicked 'post' too soon. Anyways, yeah makes sense. Adding this rule to the context of the action it's a lot more clear. We played it like that cause it fits more with the ruthlessness of the game. But it kinda bugged me that it didnt feel 100% clear :) — Psychotimo · 1
Roland Banks

Roland is my favorite character, by far, and it's not close.

1- An incredibly fun gameplay loop of "I did a thing, so now another thing happens, and another thing, and another thing". This starts off with his initial ability to get a clue off of killing something, but thanks to cards like Glory, Runic Axe, Grete, and Evidence, this just keeps going.

2- He gets access to strong seeker cards like Empirical Evidence, Pathfinder, Shortcut, Crack the Case. Huge shout out to Crack the Case, as you will typically want to use Roland's ability at difficult-to-investigate locations, like shroud 5. Actionless resources? Huge plus, and Roland is a resource vacuum.

3- Roland does struggle with horror, sure. You are constantly two bad horror things happening to you from dying. I typically play in groups, and inevitably someone needs to come to my rescue with some horror healing. Make sure you have a plan, either someone willing to heal you or your own horror healing. Due to your hybrid role as both cluever and monster hunter, it's easier for a friend to justify taking a bit more healing than they otherwise would. Physical trauma and physical soak is much easier for Roland, I never play without taking In the Thick of It. Shout out to my homie Second Wind for making physical healing easy as a guardian. Can't wait for a particular card that's coming in Drowned City that should also help with horror.

4- As the game has matured, guardians have gotten access to more and more card draw. This means it is much easier to get your weakness before the game ends, and unlike so many other weaknesses, it stays on the board. This is incredible for subsequent cycles through your deck. And if you happen to have a monster basic weakness, all the better, we want more of those anyway. 3 clues is a lot especially at lower player counts, but the fact that this is a one-and-done weakness makes it hardly a factor at all unless you have poor card draw and pull it near the end of a scenario.

5-The game also revolves around more monsters than it ever did before. I recently played Feast of Hemlock Vale and then played Dunwitch, and the amount of monsters is not comparable. You are far more likely to have things to kill in today's gameplay.

Kill monsters, get clues, pray the mythos doesn't one shot you (or find a cutie who enjoys playing Diana Stanley and let them rescue you from Horror treacheries by spamming Ward of Protection (2). 10/10 strategy, would recommend). Have endless fun.

aNRana · 3
Happy to see some love for good ol OG Roland. I really like him and his deckbuilding too, and he's always a pleasure to come back to! — Valentin1331 · 70981
Prophesy

Okay, maybe this is not an amazing card, but I wouldn't say its anywhere near as bad as people describe it to be.

The main downside about this is that it can be sometimes hard to time it correctly to get the most out of it, but the thing is, the ??? icons will be most useful and important precisely toward the end of the act/scenario, and by that time there is usually 6 or more doom in play. And if not, it can usually safely give you two ?? icons, just like Unexpected Courage. With the amount of luck/gamble reliant cards, and the newer Dilemma cards I think Prophesy fares pretty good, compared to other cards that are situational or require luck.

So most of the time you'll be running it with ??. The card's single ? might be a bit of a pain especially early on, but it's ??? might also save you at times, especially later on. In particular, if you have access to Practice Makes Perfect then Prophesy changes from average to a pretty good card. On the other side though, you also have practiced cards like Promise of Power which outshines both Prophesy and Unexpected Courage combined.

It's the second campaign (almost at the end now) I'm playing with these cards instead of UC and there were only two times where the situation was sticky because of a single ? instead of ??. I know this might not be statistically significant, and I admit I didn't run the numbers on this card, but ultimately I had fun having it in my deck and i think this matters the most.

So ultimately that's what it boils down to, having fun. And gambling. Generally having this in a deck is a bit of a gain or a bit of a risk, so if you want more stability and predictability you should probably aim for the safer Unexpected Courage. If you want to take the chance of losing one ? for the additional ? and try to time it and just gamble it, Prophesy will work just fine.

shaagal · 5
Good review! In its favour is the very fact that it is NOT UC. For anyone who's been playing the game a long time, it's nice to use these cards for some variety. You might sacrifice a teeny bit of "efficiency" but you gain more in trying out different play styles. — acotgreave · 855
My friend used Prophesy in a Daisy deck with Guiding Stones (and of course Practice Makes Perfect) and it really shined. The more targets for PmP that can boost Guiding Stones, the better. — Ramun · 599