Rod of Animalism

Ok, i saw a lot of people doing this mistake, so: This card is unique, you cant have two of them! Relic hunter won't work, nothing can help you! You can't have 4 dogs in 2 accesory slots. Stop publishing reviews/decks with 2 RoAs. Thanks

Pawiu14 · 196
Unique means you can't have two rods out at the same time, but you certainly can have two in a deck. Also, Rod gives you two extra ally slots for creatures and two dogs take up a single slot, so one rod is enough to have 4 dogs out and you still keep your original ally slot free for a human. — TheNameWasTaken · 3
There are four distinct keyword to limit cards in deck or play: 1) Exceptional cards cost double XP and you can have only one in the deck. 2) "Limit 1 per deck" is the same without the added XP cost. 3) Unique means, that there can never be two copies by name at the same time in play, even among investigators. For example, it is not possible, that one player plays Roland, and another player parallel Roland in the same campaign. Two players might have the same unique ally in the deck, but this is generally not wise, because only one cn play it. You can't even play your second copy to replace the first, because the play action will be aborted in the "Check play restrictions" of Apendix I of the Rules Reference. 4) "Limit 1 per Investigator" cards, like "Dark Horse" or "Lone Wolf" can be twice in any deck, that can take them. And several investigators can play them. They are just restricted, that anybody can have them only once in play. — Susumu · 381
From the RR for Unique: "A card with the (star) symbol before its card title is a unique card. There can be no more than one instance of each unique card, by title, in play at any given time. A player cannot bring into play a unique card if a copy of that card (by title) is already in play. If a unique encounter card that shares a title with a unique player card would enter play, discard the player card simultaneously as the encounter card enters play." "Enter play" and "in play" is independent of how many copies of that card you can have in your deck. You're the one making the mistake here. — toastsushi · 74
I know that you can have 2 RoAs in deck, but you cant have 2 in play. — Pawiu14 · 196
Okay, so why does your review tell people to stop publishing reviews/decks with 2 RoAs? It's still legal to have 1 in play and to commit the other copy to a skill test. — toastsushi · 74
I meant based on 2 RoAs in play — Pawiu14 · 196
There had been one review (of HanoverFist on "Sled Dogs") where this fact was missed, and it's been long corrected. Other than that, I agree with TheNameWasTaken: you likely missed the fact, that "Sled Dog" only takes up half an ally slot, because no other review, I've seen claimed to put two Rods into play. — Susumu · 381
You CAN have 4 sled dog on 1 RoA — ProfS · 1
Jenny Barnes

Jenny is in my top 3 list of Investigators to hand people to get them hooked on Arkham.

Jenny has a ton going for her. Firstly, her theme is awesome: there is a reason she is the 'face' of the Arkham Files universe: she isn't some rich snob, she isn't some femme fatal, she is a woman out to Do What It Takes and is fairly open about it.

Secondly, she has a clear gimmick and playstyle (Use money to replace a power) that isn't too complicated (if you just hand her the classic Jenny "pump to win" combo of Physical Training and Streetwise). Is Jenny ever going to be the most efficient at a task? No. Is a player ever going to flounder to figure out how to get out of a situation or contribute to the team as Jenny? Also no. She is, in many ways, a perfect flex, because once you upgrade Streetwise (Ideally ignoring taboos for your first game and just conveniently leaving elusive in the binder) she can from turn 1 handle basically any issue sufficiently, meaning your entire table (which may also include 2 other scared newbies) has someone who at the very least can keep the baddies exhausted if the first mythos flop womps ya.

Thirdly, and more importantly, Jenny just instantly creates stories at the table if you hand a newbie a beginner deck filled with evocative cards. Is Enchanted Blade the strongest use of your off class card pool? Haha, no. Are people instantly going to be invested in the campaign and Jenny as a character (and likely anyone else in the location with her) after she cuts a Ghoul's head off using it, standing there fencing monsters to death with a magical god damn sword while wearing a dress with pearls... and Track Shoes while Chain Smoking? The picture just paints itself, and the fact you get to punctuate it with 'and then you draw a card' is just pure icing on the cake that makes the player think 'Wow, I feel awesome' juuuust in time for the Ghoul Priest to show up and make everyone wonder how the heck they are going to do 20 damage to him, especially because her sword ran out...

And then, of course, Jenny often is the best gator to either evade tank the priest to save the day, or run over to pick up a new friend.

Pretty much every Jenny game of The Gathering goes the same way if you make a beginner friendly deck, with a built in three act structure to really get your hooks into them, and once you go on longer campaigns Jenny's access to Streetwise alone means she always has a way to contribute, and is almost never helpless or forced to be passive. She may not be the star of every scenario, but she often will get the chance to shine more often than not, and she never is the punching bag of one.

So even though Jenny is never going to be the wild gamebreaker like some of the other rogues, she is still a super worthy addition to the game, because you can toss her into pretty much any campaign and know the person playing them is gunna have a good time. She is supremely newbie friendly even on standard and lets people hit the ground running feeling awesome but not overpowered or overcomplicated.

dezzmont · 222
Her dual pistols as well. I don't think they are that good, but they feel great :-P — NarkasisBroon · 11
Yeah. Part of why Jenny is so iconic is the juxtoposition of her as this classy lady with the dainty gloves being used to grip two handguns with all the rage of a protective sister. It is absolutely fantastic. — dezzmont · 222
Just curious - who are the other two investigators in your top 3? — snacc · 1014
Stella and Finn. While personally the 'want to fail' archetype isn't my favorite in Survivor (I enjoy my survivors being hyper competent child prodigies myself), its hard to deny how joyous it is for a new player to fail an investigation test and realize they get not just an extra clue but extra action and card for the trouble really encourages people to get into the thick of things and be bold, and her 3 copies of her signature mean by the time Ghoul Priest rolls around she is ready to smash some face with a derringer, and it encourages the survivor player to be flexible and look for situations that can only go well for them. Finn is a bit fiddly but if someone is familiar with cardgames he shows you how exciting it can be for a good turn to happen, as his free evade in an event focused deck lets you really naturally and intuitively chain together extremely high damage turns and it just very naturally flows through how he plays. Obviously they may not always work the best together but they are in my opinion 3 really 'safe' characters to hand to someone and KNOW they will have a good time. It helps that all 3 of these characters are very flexy so you can toss them in with experienced players and totally ignore their effect on your comp, which is another extremely attractive quality in a newbie character. — dezzmont · 222
Also the combined 15 points of health/sanity is nothing to sneeze at. — tasman · 1
Mechanic's Wrench

Notably, Mechanic's Wrench does NOT have the Weapon trait, so no finding it with Prepared for the Worst/enchanting it/etc.

200characters200characters200characters200characters200characters200characters

anaphysik · 97
If you're struggling to fill 200 characters, you could try saying something meaningful, or not bothering. — SSW · 216
For instance, "However, as it's still an item you can still make use of the much better searchers Backpack and Tetsuo Mori, or attach something like Reliable to it." — SSW · 216
I think posts like these are a good argument as to why each card page on arkhamdb needs a comment section for the card itself, so that sub-200 reviews can be comments instead. — snacc · 1014
@SSW How exactly do you attach reliable to this? — Magicalwzrd · 8
Hiking Boots

This card's movement ability looks very good at first glance, but it can be surprisingly hard to get value from. Naturally, it depends on the level structure and so on, but some entire campaigns have a lot of levels where it's surprisingly hard to get use out of.

For example, a level like Echoes of the Past has a strip of (mostly) clueless locations across the middle, with clue-filled locations to each side of them. So you can't get rid of the no clues in the middle to move to the unrevealed or clued locations, and once you get rid of the clues on those locations you realise you can't move back to the now-revealed locations without clues either. Barring some shenanigans with Mr. Peabody, this makes it very hard to get even a single move from the shoes across the entire scenario. This is an extreme case, but can expand out to a lot of the campaign. The Last King is similar in its map that needs to be moved through a lot that begins with almost no clues. For The Unspeakable Oath, they're unlikely to help with the necessary back-tracking in that level, unless you leave clues behind, in which case they didn't give you any mobility early - this is their main problem in any level that does require back-tracking, which most of the rest of Carcosa does. In Dim Carcosa the has the unfortunate effect of not leaving a window to flip your location after you drain it of clues, so you either need to leave a friend there, or, in solo, go back there anyway, negating the actual advantage to the move.

Similarly, The Forgotten Age and its explore mechanic mean you will usually move due to the explore, often after getting the clues from the location you're on to begin with - something that's necessitated in a couple of the levels. On those levels, it's very hard to get movement from at all. On the others, it means exploring early and leaving clues scattered is a more viable strategy, and it does open up the board more which can be good. Or bad, sometimes.

Of course, there are plenty of levels where the shoes aren't really hard to get value from at all. I do think they work a lot better on the expansive maps of Innsmouth, for example. But I was very surprised at how limiting the move's requirements could really be, and just wanted to point that out.

So over all, I think the movement ability itself is less consistent than even the test on Track Shoes, and certainly isn't the Pathfinder replacement I initially thought it might be. That said, it has its upsides. Having the item trait means it interacts with a number of abilities, including William Webb, can easily be traded around, or discounted. It also gives a stat upgrade, which is certainly significant, and probably worth a slot for anyone who actually wants to make use of . It's build-depenant of course, but the people who most likely want to use that stat are the people who also like either movement or to leave clues scattered around the map, Ursula Downs, Monterey Jack and Trish Scarborough, who it was the obvious fit for anyway.

SSW · 216
You can make it much easier to exploit by pairing these with Gene Beauregard. — OrionJA · 1
Medical Texts

Healing or specifically getting soak out for its own sake tends to be anti-tempo and thus is relegated to investigators who can get special benefits (ex: Carolyn, Tommy), who desperately need extra effective health (Mark), or who can do special things to make it more efficient (Yorick). And maybe if you don't have anything better to do early campaign (say... Sister Mary in a 4 player game where she is sitting fairly hard in support).

However EOTE is amping up how good healing gets, and we are starting to get 'conditional' efficient heals that are worth using for their own sake to let decks run a bit more 'hot' on damage.

This is not one of them.

Firstly, on standard difficulty, you need to get to 6 lore on non-investigate lore tests to have good odds of actually healing 2. Otherwise this is just as inefficient in most characters as First Aid, probably the shining example of 'holy crud healing is generally bad in Arkham!'

6 investigate isn't too hard in pure seeker, but it isn't trivial either: you can do it, but seekers have a lot of ways to boost lore actively now and if your actively boosting lore to power this, it becomes more expensive and thus less action efficient. So this wants to be in a passive lore booster setup. That isn't too big a hurdle, but it should be noted your looking at spending XP on stuff like Death and not stuff like Higher Education.

Secondly, it is slow. A 'good' heal or soak card will heal something like 3 health in 1 card, 3 resources, 1 action, or just heal you 2 at the cost of only a card and an action. This card is healing you 2 HP for 2 resources, a card, and two actions, which is extremely expensive, but every heal after that becomes a 'good' heal assuming you always hit the mark. But that 1 action 2 resource tax is generally worth about 2 actions, meaning you need to heal with this 3 times for 2 HP to really make use of it as a healing effect at an efficient level, which isn't really ideal when you compare this to something like Earthly Serenity which is also a somewhat action intense heal that just lets you rocket up someone to 4 in 2 actions, instead of 3. Unless your healing a truly insane amount of HP, you generally won't heal enough to get more value out of this than the 'burst' healing or good soak assets that exist.

The main value of this card is that it is infinite healing. This isn't generally high value, but there are some things you can do with it. For example, with a guardian ally, this lets you convert a very simple lore test into 2 actionless damage with Beat Cop or 2 clues with Grete. A very basic lore test to 'bank' two clues in the future isn't terrible, especially if you are Daisy, because it lets you eat up 'in between' turns setting up allies, but this is still fairly questionable at this time. As we see more 'ally pain' engines, we might see this become a good way to support those allies, but for now its just really way too slow, even though it is basically a straight upgrade on first aid in the right deck.

Now obviously you can run it in 'actionless book' strategies like Daisy or Abigail but this doesn't make the actions really free: opportunity cost is a thing, and you almost always can be doing better stuff both with your free book actions, and with the action and resources it takes to draw and play the book, than gain some HP over a few turns, unless the scenario REALLY is trying to grind away at your team purely through HP damage to the point your literally struggling to survive without gaining 6+ HP a scenario, which is... unlikely.

Until seekers have good options to turn health into some sort of tempo advantage like guardians (and some rare mystics) can, this just doesn't make a ton of sense to run. While we may be seeing more healing from Arkham, Seeker is gunna have to keep its greedy little paws off yet another very broad design space and let the Survivors, Guardians, and Mystics have their fun.

But do keep an eye on this card, especially if our good friend Vincent Lee shows up some day. It is bad in the context of what it is good at being unnecessary right now. Not in the sense it isn't good at what it does.

EDIT: Curses, foiled again! This can't heal allies, relegating it pretty hard towards just being a good tool for you to 'pocket' a Mark with if you want to give them +2 to two tests and a card every round for an action, which can stack with encyclopedia. Not exactly terrible functionality, but this is still extremely niche without further 'pain on investigator' or 'reward for healing' support.

dezzmont · 222
This only heals investigators, so it can’t heal Beat Cop. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
Also there’s better Hand assets like magnifying glass — Django · 5154
The magnifying glass serves a very different purpose than healing, so its more important to ask if this is good at its purpose. The lack of ally healing was a thing I missed, and definitely reduces the use scope of this to 'act as a super encyclopedia on a very gung ho Mark.' — dezzmont · 222