Righteous Hunt

Fantasy Flight Games finally seem committed to giving each class its own flavor of movement action economy - gone are the days of Shortcut being a card for other factions to envy. Guardian movement cards are so far largely themed around protecting teammates and moving to engage enemies, and Righteous Hunt fits in right next to both "Get over here!" (0) and (2). All three of these cards allow you to engage a nearby enemy and can often save you actions doing so, typically by crossing a location gap, and they span levels zero to two. Righteous Hunt being half the experience and resource cost of "Get over here!" (2) is noteable should you realise halfway through a campaign that you want to squeeze an effect like this into your deck for cheap, but looking more closely at each card will help us determine when Righteous Hunt will shine.

Righteous Hunt moves you, while both "Get over here!"s move the chosen enemy. Which of these effects is better will vary a lot. If an enemy is between you and your objective, then moving toward it is better. If you are already at your objective and a distant enemy is threatening you, moving it to you is better. The latter is common when cultists such as Acolytes show up, but sometimes you may also be able to spawn those enemies such that moving toward them is moving toward your objective. I think the "Get over here!"s have the edge in this regard, but The Midnight Masks and The Unspeakable Oath occur to me as noteworthy scenarios where enemies are likely to spawn at or between you and your objective.

Righteous Hunt works against Elite enemies and can grant you some Bless tokens. Neither "Get over here!" can choose an Elite enemy, but both grant you a Fight. Which of these bonuses is better will again vary a lot. An extra fight is fantastic because you were probably going to do that with an enemy you wanted to engage anyway and it can round out the damage from your weapon to save actions and precious ammunition. Bless tokens will be great if your deck rewards you for playing them, but otherwise this is fairly weak. Righteous Hunt's best advantage here is allowing you to close the gap between you and an Elite enemy.

Okay, with that out the way, assuming we do want an efficient way to engage enemies, which of these cards is better? I think that both "Get over here!"s are some of the most straightforwardly powerful cards that enable engaging, potentially saving you both move and fight actions, and in the level two version's case, allowing for some finnicky timing tricks, such as moving enemies during other players turns and the Mythos and Enemy phases. If you're playing Nathaniel Cho, it is easy choice between "Get over here!" and Righteous Hunt because the former actually deals damage, and you can exploit the fast nature of "Get over here!" (2) even more with an extra trigger of your reaction. Additionally, "Get over here!" is Spirit traited, meaning you can find it with your Boxing Gloves.

Where does this leave Righteous Hunt? Who is this card particularly good for? I think to justify spending the experience on Righteous Hunt rather than being satisfied with "Get over here!" (0), you have to really want at least one of the following: the Bless tokens, to move your investigator rather than the enemy you engage, or to be able to target Elite enemies. The problem with wanting the Bless tokens is that you need an enemy with a high horror value to target, and enemies that deal no horror will grant you no Bless tokens, so this is not particularly reliable. I think one key to really using this card well will be setting up situations where the moves it grants you are particularly valuable. You really want to move toward your objective rather than away from it, such as toward some Elite enemy you need to kill to progress rather than toward a remote cultist that you'd be better off bringing to you.

One plausible use for Righteous Hunt is in an evasion-focused investigator. If your intentions with closing the distance between you and an enemy are to then evade it, the extra fight granted by "Get over here!" is likely superfluous. In this case, extra Bless tokens and the ability to target Elite enemies might take the edge. However, the problem with this is that, if you spend the action on Righteous Hunt to move and engage an enemy, and then another action to evade, you have only a single action in your turn remaining to take advantage of the fact you've exhausted the enemy. If you want to investigate at your location or complete some other objective using an action, the evaded enemy will ready and engage you again in the enemy phase. Moving through the location is slightly more promising, as you can evade and move off, which really drives home how good Righteous Hunt is if the enemy in question is between you and your objective at the start of your turn. On top of all that though, there are scant few investigators with access to Guardian cards that are evasion focused, with "Skids" O'Toole being the only particularly plausible example.

So far so narrow, but one silver lining for Righteous Hunt is its Blessed trait, which puts it in the cardpool of Father Mateo. For Mateo's narrower card pool, this card is pretty good, and I might even go so far as to say it's the best single card movement trick available to the priest. Open Gate is certainly powerfull too and has great potential, but it'll take up more than one slot in your deck to be effective, and you have to draw and play multiple copies. You may even wish to play both, although as far as I can tell, Righteous Hunt's " up to 2 locations away" "range" will not benefit from any Open Gates in play due to the wording. Low combat Mystics in general may be the most plausible candidates for Righteous Hunt because they may want to engage a far away enemy to fight it with one of their various spells but wouldn't benefit from "Get over here!"'s free fight action due to a low base stat. As of writing this could include Diana Stanley, Sister Mary, and the novella-exclusive Gloria Goldberg, all of whom are liable to fail a combat test without further assistance. This may also go for the 4 combat Guardians if you aren't including static boosters such as Beat Cop, and particularly on harder difficulties, so if you often fail your "Get over here!" skill test, you could definitely do worse than try this card.

Trinity_ · 203
TONY BAYBEEEEEEEE — ironbrw · 17
TELL YOUR QUARRY TO FUCK OFF AND GRAB BLESSED TOKENS AS WELL, MAKE YOUR TEAM TEMPORARILY FORGET THAT YOU LAID THE CHAOS BAG FULL OF CURSE TOKENS JUST TWO SECONDS AGO — ironbrw · 17
Or Zoey. Could do fun stuff on the Essex Express... — MrGoldbee · 1483
This card also allows you to pick up unengaged non aloof ready enemies at the location in between you and your target without OA, as only the action when you play it as "engage" provokes. However it does provoke if you're engaged when you play it. — crayne · 3
I think the fact, that it can target an elite enemy might give it an edge over "Get Over Here" in Carcosa. "The Man" is also aloof and spawns farthest from everybody, so this reliably should save 2 actions. — Susumu · 381
This also works with the riot whistle to make it essentially fast, pretty good if running both. — Fishfreeek · 2
Sure, but "Get Over Here" (0) does so, too. Only in the level 2 version, the whistle is wasted, because it's fast anyway. — Susumu · 381
For enemies one location away, there's already a great way to go to their location: Ye Olde Basike Move Action. Actually if you're the kind of investigator that's gonna end up clicking for either cards or supplies, this card is probably more expensive than two move actions. The burst action compression is maybe important to you. — MrWeasely · 42
Lockpicks

If investigating Arkham Woods, I assume Lockpicks would essentially double your skill value for the investigation test? Admittedly for this location it’s overkill with most Rogues’ evade values, but it’s useful for clarification.

RollanPyro · 91
Yup! You add it again. — MrGoldbee · 1483
Thanks for the confirmation! I noted the wording of “skill value” and thought I’d better check. — RollanPyro · 91
i wouldn't necessarily say it's overkill to be able to test 8 vs 2. on hard or expert difficulty 4 vs 2 has a realistisch chance of failure, while 8 vs 2 is still likely to succeed. — PowLee · 15
Lockpicks is one of the best cards in the game imo because of the overkill that it provides. But it should be noted that it can only be used once per round, it loses supplies if you don't have oversuccess and the overkill combos well with other Rogue cards like Lucky Cigarette Case (succeed by 2 and draw a card). — The Lynx · 992
Breaking and Entering

Breaking and Entering, an interesting card. Consider this:

Some nice action compression - it’s combining an investigate and an evade into one almost guaranteed action. Though if you are the clue-finder, this one use card can’t be your only means of discovering clues.

You can auto-evade any one (elite) enemy at your location without having to be engaged with them. This can help out another investigator at your location without wasting actions having to engage and evade a strong enemy yourself. This can also target Aloof enemies to turn off that annoying keyword and set up for an attack.

If an (elite) enemy is guarding a location with multiple clues, play this card to: auto-evade the enemy, make a start on gathering the clues (without tanking an Attack of Opportunity) and ensuring that further investigation checks don’t provoke AoO’s. During the Enemy Phase, the evaded enemy can do nothing - only ready and re-engage you in the Upkeep Phase. In the second round, you can evade the enemy normally (making card draw and/or resources off of the success if you have the relevant cards) and skip out of the location towards the next bundle of clues.

While not ideal, it can still be used on a location with no clues to essentially supercharge an evasion attempt. This is useful if the Shroud value is lower than the enemy’s evade value or if the enemy has the Alert keyword. Do bear in mind that a failed investigate check will activate the Haunted keyword on locations in TCU (currently the only relevant cycle).

Activates typical Rogue “succeeds by” mechanics, (though Pickpocketing will only trigger the base reaction, not the succeed by 2 reaction, as you still have evaded an enemy but without the associated skill test) as well as other investigator abilities that care about evading an enemy.

Can be combined with Chuck Fergus to make it fast, free or give a likely unnecessary boost to the skill test.

TLDR; A one use Lockpicks supply and an upgraded Stray Cat, all rolled into a reasonably affordable, level 0 Rogue event card.

RollanPyro · 91
One more card for my Jenny and Alice Luxley deck. Fantastic — The Lynx · 992
Ths card can save your butt against a certain boss, who has the (potential) ability to treat all tokens of -1 or better as autofails, if you fight or evade him. — Susumu · 381
Unfortunately you're not "turning off" Aloof and setting up an attack by evading an Aloof enemy, because they can only be attacked when they're engaged with an investigator. — Pinchers · 132
Kymani finds this card very useful — Amante · 10
I would also consider it in Rex Murphy since he benefits from the investigate oversucceed. — AlderSign · 375
Stirring Up Trouble

YIKES. I'm sure your first thought is "Well, it IS two free clues," but there are MUUUUUCH less expensive ways of getting clues. The XP cost is just the sewer icing on this giant cake of crap, built from the mound of curses you just dumped into your bag. This would be a fantastic card to add IF you're really diving into a curse-heavy build, but with that specific exception out of the way, it's reeeally not good.

This card costs an action to play, so right there it's already netting you no more than any other card that discovers an additional clue in an investigation attempt like Deduction, most Mystic investigative spells, Sharp Vision, those are just off the top of my head and either cost one XP OR a reasonable amount of resources for the use you get out of them (and that's not counting Deduction). But I hear you: testless clues are more valuable than you'd think on paper. There are plenty of ways to get testless clues (Working a Hunch, arguably "Look what I found!") that cost you a reasonable amount of resources while still completely bypassing the need for success. But this card is just 1 XP and 0 resources, right?......right?

No. Determining how bad this card is in normal play just boils down to understanding how expensive putting a curse token in the bag is, so let's compare this card to one I actually like: Faustian Bargain. Let's assume you play this on a 2 shroud location, costing the same as FB. FB gives you 5 resources to distribute among players, making it provide virtually the same number of resources as a Lvl. 2 Hot Streak, except 1.) you don't require the overhead of 5 resources, 2.) you can distribute to other players, and 3.) It's a Lvl. 0 card, all massive, massive boons (lol sorry, didn't mean this to veer into a FB review). The difference is that it adds two curse tokens, and with all things considered, I STILL hesitate and consult my friend before playing this card sometimes (I usually end up playing it) because curse tokens strengthen the chaos bag in a game that's already very unforgiving.

Stirring up Trouble gives you a very, very mild advantage over other clue-granting cards, and it costs 2 curse tokens AT A 2 SHROUD, a shroud that you'd likely rather just investigate yourself. When you get to shroud 4 or higher (or even 3 on harder difficulties), that's way too many curse tokens to even CONSIDER adding. I think........you could maaaaaybe argue using this on 1-2 shroud in expert because testless cards are......just really, REALLY good in expert, and you're kinda expecting to fail many of the tests there anyways, so 1-2 curse tokens could be passable in a bag with -7 and -8. Even on expert, though, it doesn't change the fact that there's going to be many tests where you're already struggling to succeed against the average token pull, only to be kicked down the stairs by a curse token. Personally, I'd be getting nervous even at 2.

I hope you've been noticing that I've been reviewing this card primarily at 2 shroud; I would never dream of playing it on a shroud higher than that. The only good use of this card is at, like a 5 shroud or something with Cryptic Grimoire, Tides of Fate, etc. in hand, and at that point, you're not planning on playing with those tokens in the bag for long. As far as paying the cost in curse tokens go, this card is way too rich for my blood.

tl;dr, if you were just scrolling through cards that might look interesting to add to your deck and didn't have a curse token-fueled plan in mind, PLEASE do your chaos bag a favor and skip RIGHT over this one.

TheDoc37 · 468
The proper way to read this card is that this is the fastest curse generator in the game with the clue gained as a side effect — suika · 9497
Crisis of Faith

This is a rough one, and you want to draw it as early as possible--or have an insurance policy that NEVER leaves your hand. There's been a couple of times where I had almost a full bag of bless tokens, and got hit for 4 horror AND 4 blessings changed to curses right about the time you're gearing up for that boss fight at the end of the scenario. Yeah, I powered through it, but it doesn't feel too good. And for that reason, thematically, I love this weakness.

Pinchers · 132
Always Deny the Existence of your Crisis of Faith and then it's as though it never happened ^_^ — NarkasisBroon · 10
Yeah, that's the best tack. I'm playing with Diana Stanley, though, who's using those Denials for her own purposes. Lesson learned! — Pinchers · 132
Deny Existence only works vs encounter cards. — Maylick · 1
Good thing then that treachery weaknesses are considered to be encounter cards while they are being resolved. (second bullet point under "Weaknesses" in the Rules page). — Voltgloss · 386
Worth noting that Deny Existence is no longer a great counter to this card. Because a choice is involved, each horror/curse are separate instances. Deny Existance can only cancel one of those instances. — AvatarRubix · 1