Lab Coat

Limited applications, but say Darrell Simmons fails a skills test on a Seeker Asset by 2. Granny Orne intercedes and he’s down only one. He immediately triggers the reaction on his Lab Coat to pass by zero. Could be worth the setup if you’re already recurring Fingerprint Kit, on a higher difficulty, for example.

PJFrigate · 378
How about Granny Orne (0), instead of Granny Orne (3)? With Granny Orne (0), regardless of the value of token except auto-fail currently arguable ruling, the test can be succeed by 0 whenever the difficulty of the test is equal or less than 2. — elkeinkrad · 498
Rex can do the same thing if you're using Granny 0, and given his deckbuilding is arguably *more* likely than Darrell to fail Seeker-based skill tests by simple dint of having more Seeker cards in his deck. Though, Darrell can more easily get tests to difficulty 1 or 2, so... swings and roundabouts? They both sound at least plausible takers? — Prinny_wizzard · 251
I meant to add - Rex can also treat his Elder Sign as the autofail to draw 3 cards. Getting to pass the skill test *as well* seems pretty fun. — Prinny_wizzard · 251
I don't think Granny Orne 0 would work here -- she doesn't change your skill value, only your margine of failure. — OrionAnderson · 125
Oops, nevermind, I'm being silly — OrionAnderson · 125
Shed a Light

A sequel to all the fight/evade reduction cards for Exploit Weakness, lets do the same for Shed a Light:

Guardian

Seeker

Rogue

Survivor

Neutral

A few notes:

Lucaxiom · 4542
Yes, you're correct. Wendy seems ideal to try to abuse Skeleton Key / Shed a Light. — dscarpac · 1231
Actually, The Skeleton Key into Flashlight (3) DOES work. It's The Skeleton Key into Flashlight (0) that doesn't work. — Nenananas · 272
I think Unearth the Ancients(2) could be good to use for Shed the Light. — elkeinkrad · 498
@Nenananas: Oh so it does. I didn't see they changed the language from reduce the shroud to reduce the difficulty between the two flashlights. — Lucaxiom · 4542
There's one more interesting mechanic to add to all this: Automatic successes set the difficulty to 0. I'm trying out a blessed+cursed alternate Wendy Adams with a group and just realized Paradoxical Covenant's auto success should also work with this. — Kejardon · 83
sorry, ignore my last comment, I thought I was on Old Keyring's page — Kejardon · 83
Idol of Xanatos

This card is the best for Patrice Hathaway and makes her nearly invincible since she always gets "heal" back at 5 cards during upkeep phase. Moreover, this card can help her utilize useless cards in her hand every round.

Also, if you don't want to deal with Watcher from Another Dimension and are happy with 4 cards each round then Idol of Xanatos can be extremely helpful.

rongcond · 18
You’d have to be in dire straits to be taking that much damage a round. And the moon gem which can be played for zero actions is an even better pick. — MrGoldbee · 1493
@MrGoldbee what moon gem? — suds · 1
https://arkhamdb.com/card/06203 — MrGoldbee · 1493
Michael Leigh

While Michael was printed in Edge of the Earth, he actually seems like he was (at least partially) designed to work with one of the Scarlet Key investigators: Charlie Kane.

He's not bad in other investigators, see the other reviews for that, but he's well worth consideration in the politician. He gives two static boosts and soaks a ton, plus his first doesn't exhaust, so on turns where you're not fighting he just gives you a nice big bonus.

Additionally, because Charlie is limited to only level 0-2 non-Ally cards, it can be hard to find big pockets of damage for him. Events can be one way, but Michael Leigh offers another solution by turning your 2-damage .45 Thompson into 3-damage Lightning Gun. And using Bonnie Walsh, you can potentially get this bonus damage multiple times in a turn when fighting bosses.

While the 5 XP is certainly an investment, I think that players looking for a "fighter" archetype Charlie could seriously consider Michael.

Veronica212 · 301
Darrell wants him, but can't have him. — MrGoldbee · 1493
Combos great with Summoned Hound too. He bumps your Hounds up to 6 Investigate/Fight and turns them into a free trigger 2 damage attack. — greenmantis55 · 100
Alchemical Distillation

Played this in my latest Harvey Walters deck and it was kinda insane. Since it's a new card, i wanted to test it a bit and see how it is in practice, because i was not very warm about it, but it proved to be very valuable. In the end i had 6xp in it as it was just pure value. I took Refined+Empowered and 5 times i gave my friends 4 cards for 1 action, which is just ridiculous for Guardians or Mystics as they generally do not draw as fast as Seekers or Rogues.

All in all i was very pleased with it, it does bother me a bit that it takes up a hand slot so i could not run my trusted Magnifying Glass + Occult Lexicon, but my group could handle enemies easily so i could swap my lexicon for this, and in the end it proved to be the right choice, since giving my Guardian 4 cards couple of times is enough to make him draw all of his best cards and deal with enemies

Blood&gore · 440
Just making sure - I think with Empowered you should only be able to give three cards for one action, am I missing something? — DjMiniboss · 44
I increase the difficulty to 3 and when i succeed, somebody draws 3 cards, and 1 extra because of Harvey himself, so that would be 4 cards total for 1 action — Blood&gore · 440
I agree. I play Harvey just now using this and even the base version is good for taking three cards for one action (basically Preposterous Sketches but with no conditions) or getting resources for, say, Higher Education. I consider investing into Quickening and Mending, being very cheap but helping with Harvey's rather low health and to move around. — TomLady · 10