Straitjacket

It is but a short step between the time this card hits you and when your permanent stay at an asylum begins. You better hope you have a Ward of Protection or Forewarned in your hand. Not only will this cost you two actions but you'll have to pay actions and resources to put out any hand and body items that were forced back in your hand.

GeneralXy · 40
You are quoting Daisy here, aren't you? Most other casters of "Ward of Protection" rather save it for "Sign of Hastur", "Corrosion" or (if they have level 2) another players "Straitjacket". — Susumu · 366
Or be a mage. — MrGoldbee · 1456
I tech against this card by not using my hand slot assets in Unspeakable Oath. Instead, I use arcane assets, events and skills for enemy handling and clue here. Also, evasion is entirely viable for enemy handling in this scenario. There aren't many hunters here (except for the Monsters that show up extremely late in the scenario) and the Humanoid enemies only have 1 or 2 evades. Sometimes I end up playing Hand slot assets, but I usually only play low cost ones, or ones with limited uses (flashlight/old keyring/scroll of secrets), of which I'm usually not sad if they get bounced. — PowLee · 20
That's what I meant to say: while a Mystic can use good cards in their hand (and body) slot as well, they are the easiest to get away without playing any cards in these slots. In particular with knowledge of the campaign, you unlikely will make "True Magick" or the like your priority upgrade before TUO. In a multiplayer run, you might actually want to wear the jacket till the end. There are several occasions, when the encounter discard gets reshuffled into the deck, and others will likely be hit much more severe by this card. — Susumu · 366
Yes, but I think that the effect of this treachery is strongly overestimated. Especially when one assumes the current cardpool. It can catch you off-guard on your blind run. but even investgators without treachery mitigation can afford going through UO without hand slot items. — PowLee · 20
There are sure investigators, who are severely handycapped by this card. Sure you can build around it. But lets not forget, it's a center scenario in a campaign. You won't change your whole deck after EotP for it. Rogues might swap a couple of level 0 cards with Adaptable, Guardians delay their big guns for SttP, BC (2) and a few other great cards. But the fact, that you take it into account for your deck building, shows, that it's NOT overestimated, except for purple of course. — Susumu · 366
Most decks can't just choose not to play Hand slot items for the entire game. Guardians need guns, Rogues need lockpicks, Seekers want magnifying glasses and such... it's impractical to say "just don't play hand items". Some team compositions can get away with that, if your decks are mostly based on events/skills or you're a Mystic and/or you have a good evader, but most will have to play some. It's good to limit the amount you play out, but this is still going to hurt even if it "just" hits your Lockpicks or Machete. That's costing you 2 actions to get rid of this, an action to play back your card, and however many resources it costs. Or maybe you do hold off until you absolutely need to play your weapon, then you draw this in the middle of a fight or as your teammates draw a big monster - it's debilitating. You can play around it, but Straitjacket is quite a bit more damaging than the average encounter card. Just the fact that you consider playing around it, both during the scenario AND during deckbuilding shows how scary it is. — Soul_Turtle · 454
UO is a very low combat scenario if you are clearing it rapidly, and its designed so that you tend to get the maniacs in a cluster and then it is quiet till monsters, so losing a weapon as guardian is NBD (especially as beat cop is super strong vs the maniacs). Straightjacket's main issue is its an action tax in a scenario with a lot of movement based action taxes if you really want to get it off. But if you split up suddenly you have all the time in the world, and you will get out well before the monsters even show up. I have seen guardians just decide to keep it on for half the scenario just because you really want to spend your early time as guardian clearing the low shroud 'remember' locations. — dezzmont · 213
Dans un premier temps et dans mes souvenirs, je trouvais cette carte vraiment dangereuse...mais aujourd'hui, si je suis un combattant, j'ai mes soutiens arme pour faire la majorité des combats mais je complète avec des événements...je pense notamment à lame spectrale (mais d'autres événements sont intéressants)...lame spectrale compléte bien les decks combattants car elle permet d'engager un ennemi distant, c'est un sort et donc permet de gérer des spectres...et peut dans ce cas là, gérer des combats le temps de remettre ses soutiens en jeu (car ils sont remis en main et pas défausser!!)..ce que je veux dire, c'est qu'il ne faut ni compter que sur des soutiens, ni que sur des événements car il y a plein de traitrises qui peuvent nous neutraliser un jour ou l'autre... — Toto1687 · 1
Cheat the System

Many characters can start a game with 2 classes only with their permanents. But if you plan your assets accordingly (for example if you are going rich Unscrupulous Loan will cover ), this card replace way more effectively Hot Streak (even it's upgraded version because it's fast and free, meaning you can play it whenever you want).

I think Rogues could be the best class to go down the Synergy road, because you can Double, Double Call for Backup for maximum efficiency.

Emmental · 129
DD CfB is neat. — MrGoldbee · 1456
Solemn Vow

Great card for a supporter to run when you have Dexter Drake in your team. It essentially grants him a free resource and play action. Additionally you might use it to boost Dexter's main ability by committing this card for the double pips.

PowLee · 20
Jim Culver

Jim Culver is an investigator whose power level varies wildly depending on which difficulty settings you play with, and that's a big reason why Jim tends to vary so much in tier lists.

For most play groups on Easy or Standard difficulty, Jim is a Mystic investigator with a mediocre stat line and strong synergy with card interactions that involve skulls. Outside of Jim's 4 Will, none of his stats are particularly noteworthy, his signature Jim's Trumpet is a mediocre source of sanity healing, and Jim's primary appeal will probably be 5 level 0 cards outside his class. The ability to treat Skulls as "0"s isn't that attractive when the worst modifiers in the token bag usually cap at "-3" or "-4".

For play groups that play frequently at Hard/Expert difficulty, Jim becomes a functional god of the token bag. Skull tokens are relatively mild in most Standard/Easy Scenarios, but Skulls scale upwards at high difficulties until they're functionally auto-fail tokens, so Jim becomes one of the few investigators who can consistently pass skill test by fishing "0" tokens or skulls out of the bag (with cards like Dark Prophecy, Nksoi Mabati, or Grotesque Statue. When the token bag is full of modifiers like -5 or -8 and you have to overcommit by 2-3 cards to guarantee a success, Jim becomes a godsend. Jim doesn't need a great stat line or level 1-2 cards from other classes if he can near-guarantee drawing a "0" modifier on important skill tests.

Telosa · 53
The chance for Dark Prophesy to pull a skull out of the starting Night of the Zealot bag on hard is 35 out of 68 (or 51% for those of you who like percentages). That's pretty good for a desperate bid to pass on a weak skill, especially since there is a small but significant chance to reveal no face tokens at all, but it's not good compared to actually having and testing a strong skill. A 5 Will Mystic with a Holy Rosary and a committed Guts is testing at 5 above a typical difficulty of 3, which beats much of the contents of even a quite hostile chaos bag, usually INCLUDING SKULLS. Because as memorable as hard/expert -10 skulls are, a majority of scenarios don't have uncapped scaling skulls, and those that do normally only push them below -5 for a handful of rounds. — Spritz · 69
By all means play Jim. Build cool taboo-Winchester, Nkosi Mabati decks. Laugh at the chaos bag's failed attempt to kill you with two consecutive Elder Signs while you were fighting with Azure Flame (5). But it seems to me that telling people Jim is a strong investigator for Hard/Expert or that you'll find consistent success on those difficulties by leaning on his ability will ultimately just frustrate them. — Spritz · 69
Or to put this more viscerally, it's not that he gets better on hard/expert. It's that he gets less worse on hard/expert than other people do :-P — NarkasisBroon · 10