The devious nature of this card cant be overstated.

-The "surge" effect is not applied to the revelation effect and is instead applied to the card itself. Therefore, Ward of Protection or radiance wool not cancel the surge.

-The encounter deck, unlike weaknesses, is not standardized. Most weaknesses will net you a loss of two actions. The encounter deck can range from mild inconveniences to game ending debuffs. This card insures you will draw 2, essentially guaranteeing at least 1 will be more detrimental than the standard loss of 2 actions

Not sure if this or doomed is worse.

Okay, it's been 5 years and I've gotta ask because it's driving me nuts:

What is happening in the picture for this card?

It's a dude in a room full of children's pictures, I get that, but is he...

... mopping a bloodstain? ... holding off a floating urchin-monster-thing with a really long toilet plunger? ... leaning on a pipe that some urchin-monster-thing is coming out the end? ... trying to pull a spear with a bunch of blood and guts on one end out of the wall?

I feel like I'm looking at a magic-eye-sailboat or something and just can't see what's supposed to be going on here! The mop seems most likely, but... why's he doing it in the dark in a kindergarten and why is the mop sort of spiky and what does cleaning the floor have to do with surviving willfully?

The name of this card, "Unrelenting", obviously refers to when your secretary absolutely WILL NOT put down the fantastic Broadway script she's reading.

• When she's caught reading, she'll lose a lot of paperwork, but that also means she's not likely to miss those 0s & 1s, and the card draw on success helps her catch up on that lost paperwork.

• Good for any job your manager needs you to Get Back To Work on... running errands, taking out the trash, telling visitors who don't have appointments that "He's not in right now...", even staying on hold when you're trying to get something cancelled.

• As anybody who's had to look busy when the manager is around knows, you get good at it after a while.

• Another thing she may have been perfecting is... uh... crucis... ing. ...Sorry, can't think of a joke here (also surprised-but-pleased that Signum is Practiced)... Anyway! It means there may be bless tokens floating around, which are ideal for sealing as doing so won't increase autofail chance.

Look, some folks just like kicking back with a good book on Thursday afternoon when there's not a lot of people coming in to the office, but sometimes the boss really needs you to set aside your penny-dreadful and shove a merman off a boat before you clock out at 5.

+++

TL;DR: I didn't see it mentioned above, so I figured I'd mention this is a fantastic counter to Minh's signature weakness. ? makes it always usable, the +6 pip requirement means you're probably succeeding, & the card-draw cancels the 3-skill tempo-loss. PMP existing is just icing on the cake.

Brand of Cthugha is good fight spell for mystics, and great alternative of Shrivelling. In my opinion, it's fine to get BoC only if your role is flexible, or BoC + Shrivelling if your role is fighter.

Then, what's difference between Shrivelling and Brand of Cthugha?

• Net-damage is similar in most case: Shrivelling(5) has 12 net-damage as maximum, and BoC(4) has 9 net-damage. However, you can control charge for BoC; if you attack 2-health enemies or 4-health enemies, BoC is better. In most case, net-damage is almost same except boss raid case.
• Backfire effect is controllable: BoC has terrible backfire effect, which make you lose 2 action which cannot be prevented by Deny Existence. However, you can control backfire unlike Shrivelling. For standard difficulty, chaos bag contains lots of -1 and -2, and single -3, -4, or -5. To avoid backfire effect, you just boost your skill value as "failure only if " or 4 more which only 1 token generates backfire. If you perform attack as last action, you don't need to consider backfire since you have no action to lose.
• Failure penalty is really small: When you fail a skill test, you have no backfire effect of spell and no charge is spent. Moreover, it's burdenless to attack the enemy engaged with another investigator unlike Shrivelling because they take only 1 damage(or zero? it's arguable) even if you fail the attack test.
• No synergy with charge-based card, so durability is not good: Since BoC(4) spend lots of charges, it's bad to use charge-based combo such as Book of Shadows, Recharge, Twila Katherine Price, or True Magick. Additionally, it's not good to choose BoC as the target of Knowledge is Power, since you should spend charge even if you play KiP. Thus, if you want to use BoC continual, you should find another method like Spirit-Speaker, Prescient or cycling your deck.

I think this compares somewhat poorly to Leather Coat coat and I'd rather take that if I can. Waiting for 3+ spells over 3+ turns to just breakeven makes this a hard sell. Sometimes you draw it late and you arent playing any more spells. Even early on, it feels slow to play this, gather more resources and play your main spells.

But not every can take leather coat. Robes of endless night does however compare favorably to the neutral Trench Coat and decently to Heavy Furs. Only Sefina has enough agility to even think about evading but she is even more heavy on spells.

Heavy furs might be useful in Diana Stanley and maybe Jim Culver but for the most part, the economy is better than an extra reroll because mystics usually do want the health soak for themselves. The reroll on symbols is occasionally useful to avoid the downsides of your spells but mystics have other avenues to avoid that.

It's generally obvious when you'll take this, a mystic with low (5) health and lots of spells (maybe around 10 spells). With around 10 spells, you should be able to play 1 every 2 turns and make back your cost after 6 turns (about 1/3 of the scenario).