Overpower

Two draws are significant because not only you are not running out of juice, you get even more (unknown) juice. It is hard to judge on paper, but when I draw into an another neutral skill and some sort of reactive event (e.g. Dodge, "I've had worse…"), I felt powerful and prepared. You'll likely get at least 1 matching icon for whatever you want to do next. It's a card that give you hope going into a fight.

In relation to other skill cards of the same series, fighting could continue and keep you susceptible to AoO for a while, contrasting to investigating or evading the enemy. The 2 draws you get felt powerful and more of a combo than bonuses, as normally you don't get more stuff to work on while fighting but rather having smaller and smaller hand. The high accuracy of can be used for one-shotting 1~2 HP weak enemy out of your clue finders with less chance of friendly fire and get some draws out of it. Or to cover everything-but- on critical Fight to finish the enemy. You can also commit to let base 3 friend without weapon to perform basic Fight to deal 1 damage accurately, though you might not get 2 draws without the weapon's boost.

5argon · 10761
Spectral Razor

For investigators who have access to Mystic (5) or Spell (5), it's hard to find a good reason to upgrade to Spectral Razor (2), Read the Signs (2) and Ethereal Slip.

A single-use event or skill must be stronger than assets that can be used multiple times to be worth including in your deck. The level 0 version of these events compare very favorably to Shrivelling (0) or Rite of Seeking (0), giving you an efficient way of dispatching with 3hp or aloof non-elite enemies, or to reach higher skill test values.

However, once you have some XP in your deck, these level 2 version compare poorly to the likes of Brand of Cthugha (4) or Rite of Seeking (4). They deal 1 less damage to elites and get 1 less clue. They're significantly more expensive than playing spell assets. They require other support cards in play before they can be used*. They can't be used multiple times per turn - if you fail a fight check you're just out of luck.

Alternative explanation using Gru's plan:

  1. Set up Prophetic and Olive Mcbride (2), have Read the Signs (2) in hand.
  2. Play Read the Signs for free using Prophetic, using Olive Mcbride during the skill test to guarantee a symbol draw and recur Read the Signs to your hand at the end of the round.
  3. Discover 1 less clue per round than Rite of Seeking.
  4. Discover 1 less clue per round than Rite of Seeking?

So, why would you take these cards? You take them because you're playing blurse and you want your arcane slots for other uses**, and/or because you don't have access to mystic 4. Kōhaku Narukami is the poster boy here, with strong economy and the being able to take advantage of the extra arcane slots.

Also, these cards are a dark horse on off-class mystics. Anyone who can take these upgraded events can also take Olive McBride, Rod of Carnamagos***, and Robes of Endless Night. Bring your own blurse generation and you have a party going.

Sister Mary gets a much needed buff with XP here, allowing her to properly flex into investigating in ways she couldn't before. She has natural symbol generation, Prophetic access, and can discount repeated plays with Rite of Sanctification. She also often runs other cards that benefit from token manipulation like Blessed Blade or .35 Winchester.

Sefina Rousseau likewise likes these events even though The Painted World doesn't interact properly with the return-to-hand effect. These events are some of the highest action-compression she can get at the time of writing, and competes very favorably with the Rogue events of the same type like Pilfer and Backstab. Rogue access also gives her cool toys like Double, Double, extra actions, the economy to support repeated plays, and lets her double-dip on the stat bonuses from Geas and The Black Fan.

//Front Daisy has better things to do in general, but can run them as a jank deck of sorts, since seeker does have good curse generation and gets acceptable mileage out of curses with Prismatic Spectacles and Gabriel Carillo.


* unless you have to discard the card after use, but why would you do that after paying 2xp for it unless you have no choice?
** e.g. for Spirit of Humanity or Close the Circle
*** despite much hand-wringing about how unintuitive the interaction is, the Rod feels obviously designed to combo with these set of cards

yinwhite · 17
People with access to Mystic 5 have a lot more token control than people who only have it to two, so can more reliably recur this stuff. They also have access to things like the Astronomical Atlas, which takes massive advantage of the new symbols and can cycle through your deck fast. Also worth noting literally every Mystic has access to Prophetic, which imo is the thing that makes these worth running. It's probably also worth pointing out specific synergies with Marie, Jacqueline, Luke, Mateo and even Jim. — SSW · 214
While I don't think Spectral Razor 2 is amazing, I think it's quite a bit better than this review suggests. Spectral Razor has always been a strong event, and recurring it is quite powerful. I would also suggest that comparing a level 2 event to level 4 assets is overlooking a lot of the nuance of deck building. It's not a must-have upgrade for any deck, but at a minimum this card certainly has way better homes than Daisy Walker and her 5 skill value. — Pseudo Nymh · 61
Spectral Razor is a strong event for a 0xp card, when compared to other 0xp cards. They fall short when compared to XP spell cards, with their only advantage being that they're slotless. — suika · 9485
@SSW sure, you can play them in other mystics, the deck won't not work. I just think don't there's a compelling reason to, they're pretty much just worse than just playing spell assets. — yinwhite · 17
Spell assets with finite uses, action costs for playing them and in many cases detrimental effects on certain token pulls… — niklas1meyer · 1
Yeah, I agree with this review--on the majority of Mystics I don't want to be spending actions playing Read the Signs / Spectral Razor by the late campaign, which makes these upgrades less-than-compelling. That said, the Razor is more competitive with the combat assets than Read the Signs is with the cluefinding assets. — CaiusDrewart · 3189
I'm a bit surprised that none of the mystics, who have event mechanics are mentioned. These are Luke and parallel Agnes. I've only played the first but the razor and read the sign are staples in my decks for him. Killing an enemy engaged with your friend otw through the Dreamlands is great. I suppose the upgrade can be useful for Luke especially if he use the curse mechanic of his seeker splash. — Tharzax · 1
Luke maybe, but for || Agnes the upgrade is a nonbo with her ability. — Susumu · 371
Can confirm that this is a treat to play with a cursey Luke and LOLive deck. — HanoverFist · 740
Somehow people keep forgetting that arcane research is still a thing so basically you can have those spells like for 0xp — Drostt · 116
"Devil"

Black Phillip, Black Phillip

A crown grows out his head,

Black Phillip, Black Phillip

To nanny queen is wed.

Jump to the fence post,

Running in the stall.

Black Phillip, Black Phillip

King of all.

Black Phillip, Black Phillip

King of sky and land,

Black Phillip, Black Phillip

King of sea and sand.

We are ye servants,

We are ye men.

Black Phillip eats the lions

From the lions' den

vCrimson · 7
Ok. — MrGoldbee · 1472
MrGoldbee, it's a song from the 2015 film The Witch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m43QIjXIQB4 — Desiderata · 1
That movie was so awesome <3 — Wolf · 86
idk if I'm stating the obvious, but this card must be an homage to that movie. The image of both the goat and the backdrop are spot on, and the flavor text is a direct quote from the Witch. Not personally the biggest fan of song reviews, but I'll gladly take tidbits about the card. — jetjet96 · 1
In the Know

I thought that I would add a review of this card because it has one particularly noteworthy use I didn't see mentioned. If someone wrote this already I apologize!

One of its best uses is in the Scarlet Keys when trying to expose concealed mini-cards at other locations. Sometimes the actions spent moving from location to location to try to find an enemy are really draining. With this card, you can sit tight at one location and expose concealed mini-cards from a variety of different locations without having to move to each of them. This can be a real action saver. In addition, if you successfully expose an enemy at a different location, it will not spawn with you, which reduces the risk of exposing at the end of your turn!

Sadly Pathfinder exists and does almost same thing but is more generally useful, up to and including the investigation without risking an enemy spawn (by moving during the player window during the test) — suika · 9485
That doesn't make sense. Why would you move before determining success/failure of the test? Also, Pathfinder only moves you one location. I think for this use-case, jesse.acaro has a point. — AlderSign · 310
Hello Suika. Yes, there are other movement tech cards and clue at range cards that can at times achieve the same result, but I would argue not in all circumstances needing no combos or help. Let's say there are concealed cards in many different directions so you couldn't pathfind your way to all of them in a turn, and perhaps some mini-cards are many locations away. This is the only card I can think of that can expose cards from all over the board in such a simple way, requiring no combos or using any other card or ability at all. I suppose Hyperphysical Shotcaster with the Telescanner upgrade could do this, but this does take a contested slot and cost more XP and resources. I think this is a decent one-off to offer a nice solution to a not at all uncommon occurrence in this campaign. — jesse.acaro · 2
Elaborate Distraction

This card is bananas for Carson. You play it, then give two actions to other players and go check if the washing machine has finished. Let the fierce ones handle the probability calculations and drawing tokens while you enjoy the pleasures of servitude.

Fluxway · 151
Made me laugh. — AlderSign · 310