There's a couple cards that tell you what's on top of your deck, those are all well and good, but really, the only truly dependable combo for this card, is Norman Withers.

Norman and skill cards go together like water and oil, when the skill cards float to the top of his deck, they blot out his ability.

Written in the Stars solves that issue, removing the skill card while making enhanced use of it. The problem? It's random, when there's a Deduction sitting on top, you might not be in a round where you can grab clues, when there's a Guts, you might not be in a round where you can blast things with your Shrivelling. What this thing needs is mechancis that re-order your cards, like Scrying, and it requires some setup, like looking at your deck to see the skill card, maneuvering into place, entering the round where the skill is on top, and then blasting away. A plan like that has several things that can go wrong.

I dont think Written in the Stars currently warrants a deck slot, even for the apparent, "perfect character", but perhaps there's synergies that I just dont see yet.

EDIT: Due to me failing to notice a key element of one of the cards used in the combo below, this review is effectively irrelevant! Thank you to the commenters who called it out and corrected me. So feel free to ignore, or read on for a brief vignette about the perils of hubris or something.

+++

From Zerogrim's review: "...The last thing to highlight here is you CAN (with some great deal of luck) have 14 doggo's in play at the same time under your control, how you achieve this is left as an exercise for the reader, good luck! (bonus star for anyone who figures out how to get more, no matter how hair brained the method)"

I can getcha 16!

This method works for any 'gator, tho Leo Anderson can skip a step or two via Mitch Brown.

Required: 4P multiplayer.

Each player must have in play:

• P1: Rod Of Animalism, Sled Dogs x 4
• P2: Rod Of Animalism OR Charisma, Sled Dogs x 4
• P3: Rod Of Animalism OR Charisma, Sled Dogs x 4
• You: Relic Hunter x 2, Rod Of Animalism, Charisma, Sled Dogs x 4

At least 1 player must have and be able to play Teamwork.

All gators move to the same location.

Play Teamwork.

P1 gives you their Sled Dogs AND their Rod Of Animalism. (Relic Hunter * 2 = 3 Accessory Slots, so you can hold 3 Rod Of Animalism.)

Base Slot + Charisma + 3 Rod Of Animalism = 8 (creature) Ally Slots = 16 Doggo Slots.

P2 & 3 give you their Sled Dogs.

TA-DA! You now have 16 Sled Dogs!

(At this point, if you have an Expensive Sofa in play, you must immediately discard it.)

Oohhh mama.

On the Hunt is a funky niche that does a bit of good when you want to avoid treacheries like the plague and when dispatching enemies actually helps you get work done, yes, we're talking about Roland Banks here. It's a super-duper niche and the worst part? It can miss!

Well. here we are for round 2! Ding ding!

1) 100% hit rate, so long as you know your mythos deck a bit. You can get that XP enemy you really wanna kill, or some easy chump to trigger benefits from.

2) It's free, and it generates money.

3) It does -most- of what it already did, just better.

4) "Wait. Most, not all? What changed?" When On the Hunt misses, it says you gotta draw a card to replace it, note that this XP variant does not include that text!

So. depending on how you navigate it, This card can get you money, get you beneficial triggers, give you a break on treacheries that hurt you, nail enemies with annoying spawns, dig out bonus XP at an opportune time, or straight up cancel an encounter draw..

This card is WEIRD, but it's got a lot of beneficial vectors going for it, if you hit enough of them then this card goes from a little iffy, to straight up amazing.

Love this card, so much! Oh man, it's gotten me out of some binds already!

First off, a nice big fat attack with what amounts to an average 6, 7 or 8 to hit, that by itself is a great backup move to rely on. 2 Damage deals with lots of troublesome things on it's own.

Second, for the sake of fighting something big and scary (this guy), pre-emptively evading it is often the safest way to go, this card does that really well, you're chunking down the threat at the same time as you control it.

Lastly, it's actions and health saved. Often the guardian needs to run across the map and pull a nasty monster off of the hapless , or else you might be at a location together, and you simply dont have actions to get the both of you free safely. Sweeping Kick lets you pull your friend out of trouble, no matter how big, and keep yourself safe with minimal risks (beware missing the attack and hitting your friend tho).

Obviously, I need to namedrop Rita Young and Nathaniel Cho, bonus damage and evade options ETC ETC.

Automatic stuff is good. Resist the attack with some soak because I'm not actually sure you're allowed to cancel it with cards like Dodge, because that's cancelling the "cost of taking at attack.

You can commit skill cards, Vicious Blow for example, Nathaniel Cho gets a bonus, Daniela Reyes obviously.

Note, this might seem a steep and risky price to pay for one hit, compared to playing Monster Slayer or One-Two Punch, but automatic hits are worth their weight in gold in hard and expert, where the chaos bag is like a coiled snake, full of terrible tokens.

Most incredibly, it's level 0, a whole heap of charactes can sneak this into their decks to reap the benefit.