I think this is a pretty interesting card. For starters, automatic success is good, in general, but it's especially good in the Rogue faction. This is because Rogues have a lot of effects that not only care about whether or not you succeed at a test, but also how much you succeed by. Something like "Watch this!" only needs you to succeed by 1 to get a positive effect, and it's not too difficult to get your stats high enough that you're at least very likely to do that, however with something like All In or especially Sawed-Off Shotgun, you really want to be succeeding by a lot more than that to make them worth including in your deck. This can be fairly taxing on your resources, because you might want to be as much as 11-up on a test to make sure that you'll be dealing the full 6 damage with a -5 in the bag (for example), and doing that leaves you extremely vulnerable to the . Enter Justify the Means.

The way that automatic success works is that you don't draw a chaos token and you succeed by your skill value. Now you just need to get your skill value to 6 and you have a guaranteed 6-damage in one action. That's value! You can also trigger whatever other succeed-by effects off of the same test.

Over-success effects are probably the main thing that you want to do, but part of what makes this card good is that it's fairly versatile. Running low on sanity in a scenario with Rotting Remains? Well, you can use this to make sure that you don't die. Get Frozen in Fear? No problem, just add some to get rid of it. Forced to explore from Crumbling Precipice? If you fail the test, you're still safe when you have Justify the Means, and at the low cost of only 2 .

So, what's so interesting about automatically succeeding tests? That sounds boring. Well it isn't. The cost of adding equal to the difficulty of the test actually makes it really interesting. This means that you can't use it if you would have to add in excess of 10 to the bag. This means that if you're using it to succeed high difficulty tests you're going to hit that limit pretty fast. Possibly the best part about this is that, unlike Three Aces, it doesn't really matter how degenerate your deck is. If there's 10 in the bag you just can't use it no matter how fast you can draw it. This also makes it less costly to use on easy tests that you had a good chance to succeed anyway, which can be very relevant when using it for oversuccess purposes or for must-pass tests. It also means that it combos with one of my favorite Rogue skills, Momentum. There's actually no cost to succeed at a 0-difficulty test.

The other thing that makes it a bit more interesting is that, unlike Three Aces, it gives no skill boost of its own. If you need to hit a succeed-by-6 threshold, and you only have a stat of 3, for example, you need to find some way to close that gap.

I did test it a bit in TTS, myself, and was able to make a really fun solo Wini deck that had a single Sawed-Off Shotgun as the only source of damage. It had Justify, Three Aces, and Daring Maneuver (2) to make sure that I could always hit the requisite threshold to kill 3-health enemies regardless of the number of cards in hand. In spite of the aforementioned drawbacks of Justify, it actually still felt pretty busted, but that's honestly hard to avoid with Wini, regardless of the deck. Looking forward to actually having the physical card. So long to wait X_x

Should I run Safeguard, you ask? Well, would you run a 2-cost, slotless Leo De Luca?

OK, so maybe that comparison is a little bit flippant, but I do think this card is quite pushed and is probably the best level 0 Guardian card we've seen since the Core Set. This thing does a very respectable Pathfinder imitation, while being cheaper and not costing XP.

Note all the tricks you can do with this card and enemies. You can still activate Safeguard if you have an enemy on you. This allows you to drag enemies across locations without attacks of opportunity. This has cool applications for investigators like Roland and cards like Grete Wagner. Even outside of that, I've found that this comes in handy surprisingly often. For example, does your location have some nasty text that makes it unpleasant to stay and fight there? Just Safeguard your way to a nicer spot, action-free. With Safeguard II my Guardians have found themselves dragging enemies across the map in frankly ridiculous fashion.

Note that, unlike with Safeguard II, if another investigator moves into a location with an enemy, this version of Safeguard does not allow you to swoop in to preemptively engage that enemy (since you move "after" the other investigator). This is one of several reasons why I would recommend Safeguard II as a strong upgrade to an already great card.

Another benefit you'll notice from Safeguard, beyond the obvious one of saving you a ton of actions, is that you'll much more often be able to end your turn at the same location as the rest of the team. This is usually a really good thing. Investigators will more often be able to support each other with commits during the Mythos phase, for example.

Finally, Safeguard gets even better if other investigators are running the movement cards of their own faction. It's so strong with another investigator's Pathfinder or Shortcut. If you haven't tried a multiplayer group where one player takes two Pathfinders and everyone else takes two Safeguard IIs, well, you really should. It's pretty sweet.

IMO this is a great card for the battle version of Sister Mary, so she can have her Body slot free for Bandolier and hands for a Rifle or two....her squishy factor drops considerably with 3 copies of this sucker at the ready in her deck.

This card would be perfect if it did not cause the agenda to advance. You would have to take 2 horrors every turn untill the agenda is about to advance and then play this card to avoid the extra doom. Playing this weakness also costs one action and 2 resources. If you play Agnes solo this is okay weakness, but it is absolutely brutal on 4 player games, making Agnes unplayable.

Cryptic Writing, Crack the Case, and Burning the Midnight Oil all fulfill very similar roles: actionlessly turning cards into resources.

Of the three, Crack the Case has the highest resource potential and the ability to support your allies, at the cost of not being always available when you need it. Burning the Midnight Oil is more reliable and only asks that you be able to make a basic investigate action, which any Seeker should be able to do. Where does that leave Cryptic Writings?

Cryptic Writings will far less reliably give resources actionlessly (especially at lower XP), but it does have icons. This means if you don't need the resources, you can simply treat it as a skill card , and it makes for good Crystallizer of Dreams fodder for Ursula and Trish. With a bit of XP, seekers will draw far more cards on their turns than during Upkeep so its reliability in coughing up resources will improve. It also has a slight edge in speed over Crack the Case or Burning the Midnight Oil it'll due to not having to wait for the right timing, again assuming you can reliably draw it on your turn.

If you're running Higher Education, you'll most likely be looking at one or both of the other cards. If you're running a heavy card draw or cycle engine, Cryptic Writings could merit a second glance, although most likely Astounding Revelation would be all the resource you need unless you're hoarding cash for some reason or have really good resource sinks not named Higher Education.