OP card. As an first impression, Shed a Light seems to be similar as Exploit Weakness, and both have powerful effect but seems to be hard to play. However, in the game, reducing shroud value of the location is one of the main mechanism beginning with Flashlight, but reducing fight/evade value is not. In general, making 0 difficulty investigation is much easier than that of fight/evade.

Moreover, unlike Exploit Weakness, Shed a Light has good combo parts. We can play 2 Shed a Light (with Double, Double) at ONE investigation to discover total 5 clues (3 from here, 2 from any). We cannot play 2 Exploit Weakness at ONE fight/evade even aganist elite enemy because the second copy has no normal effect to replace which is already replaced by first one. In addition, auto-succcess guarantee you can trigger "succeed by (your )" abilites, such as Scavenging. With proper tool, you can trigger Scavenging robustly, regardless of your stat.

Here are some useful cards to reduce difficulty for investigation:

• : Winging It, Old Keyring(and 3lv), Gumption, Quick Learner
• : Map the Area, Unearth the Ancients(2lv only)
• Flashlight(and 3lv)

This card can reduce a shroud to zero. This means it can be used by a guardian with no enemies to make it to where even ones like Daniela can safely investigate even high shroud locations. It's also thematic. Frustrated you're dumb with an INT of 1? Just break everything.

It does get outplayed by other guardian abilities (lessons learned, evidence) once upgrades are available, but its a decent level 0 mid-tier card.

"Until the end of investigation phase" while this is drawn in Upkeep Phase means the 2 boosted skills and 2 reduced skills could be tested in Mythos Phase, before you can start using boosted skills in Investigation Phase.

I think this card very much needs a taboo of either (max once or twice a round) Because it’s a level 0 card which with the right set up can lead to spiraling combos.

“Inspired by the stars”

I’m sure there are other ways to recur this card, but the one which I think has the largest impact is its synergy with written in the stars. There are ways to facilitate making sure this is the card which you discard off the top of the deck, characters with access to scroll of secrets, rogues with friends in low places, or mystics with scrying. Because the card is committed each test, you can even continue past deck draw as long as you reshuffle while inspiring presence is in the limbo state outlined in the rule book. (And the horror soak doubly encourages this)

From there, it’s just a matter of deciding what ally you want to target with the refresh. The two which I think have immediate potential: Abigail Foreman and Chuck Ferguson as these both give access to fast abilities which give you a chance to take a skill test. It’s not fully infinite but the longer you can keep passing those skill tests the longer you can go.

This is one of the best bruiser cards in recent memory and is required in all bruiser builds that can take it.

The main role of the bruiser character is to keep enemies off of cluers. Most are able to do this with just a weapon up and don't need a whole lot of setup. There is nothing more annoying then, than having your bruiser spend three actions doing functionally nothing, and then the next turn you draw two enemies from mythos. You inevitably probably can't deal with both, and one of them gets to either take a free shot at you, or worse lock down your cluer.

This card does many things a typical bruiser wants to do. It thins the encounter deck of enemies by forcing a spawn now. Those three actions you would have essentially wasted, you get to now take two others doing what you're designed to do.

Honestly, the card would be great if it just did that. But it also has the potential for massive resource gain (if you pick a 3 HP enemy, you basically played an emergency cache) and you even get a clue out of it, which can help thin out particularly high shroud value locations.

It's also one of the only cards that can bypass concealment (concealment procs when you draw an enemy per wording in TSK manual, and this card specifically has you spawn the enemy, not draw it).

The only thing bad about this card is it can whiff the search. But if it does, your enemy frequency was pretty low anyway (or you just got really unlucky).

Tldr this card forces enemies on to your enemy handler, which is something they want anyway, and gives you a clue and a crap ton of resources for one action. Honestly a little too powerful and should be automatically included in any bruiser that can take it.