So Dexter is the only player card that has a May effect that occurs before a Then effect, so now we enter a curious situation, does choosing "no" on a may effect not count as resolving the effect in full. So do you only draw if you return a card to your hard, or do you only draw if you have an asset to return. (and then choose to return it or not)

Yog leads me to believe choosing 0 still leads to the then effect triggers, the effect resolved successfully, you just choose a minimal value.

mild spoilers, but i'm trying to be subtle

Its a niche case but there could be some utility in one of the scenarios. There is a tricky scenario where some locations get discarded in predictible ways (its towards the end of a cycle)... and it says "when a location is discarded, move each investigator and each enemy at that location to 'location x'". If you know when the location will be discarded, you can get some pretty strong monsters discarded along with their location.

Again, pretty niche. I agree its probably got a bit of a revival with Luke Robinson, but other than that i've never found the space in my deck.

nobody has mentioned Minh Thi Phan, who can set up into a "barricade minh" mode where she helps everyone else with skill tests all around the place. She's not invulnerable but its awesome if her random weakness is The Thing That Follows. :-)

So seems like a nice card that can help dealing with lots of damage, I've got three questions and my thoughts on the answers:

Q1) Does it count as "healing" for Carolyn Fern? Carolyn Fern. Clearly its useful for her to more conveniently heal others and get the resources herself, or remove the pain from others when a timing issue is criticial. But... i don't think this counts as "healing" when it comes to triggering her reaction ability, does it? I think it deliberately doesn't use the word heal, you are moving the hurt. It means she can take the horror off somebody close to defeat, but to get the extra resource from healing, she then has to heal herself (or Peter Sylvestre!)

A1) I think not.

Q2) If you have multiple Solemn Vows in play, can you trigger them all at the same time. (say you have some Fine Clothes, can another investigator with two solemn vows trigger them both to do 1 damage and 1 horror to the Fine Clothes, or would the Fine Clothes be defeated after the first trigger?

A2) I think yes you can.

Q3) In conjunction with a cancelling card like Perseverance, can you move the damage/horror from somebody and then stop the damage transferring across to you? Particularly more relevant if you have all three Solemn Vows out at the same time and can cancel 3 damage with Perseverance or Devil's Luck

A3) So long as the effect says you are cancelling the "horror" or "damage", and not the cancelling it being assigned. (because then you would be cancelling the move, so the original investigator would keep it?)

Understandably, most of the comparisons here are to Fire Axe, as the equivalent of it, and looking at it like that, it comes up a little short. Another interesting comparison would be the Fingerprint Kit. A card that is 4 resources for 3 investigations at +1 that potentially net you six clues. Looking at the compass as a comparable card, it's 1 cheaper to get into play, but making each test at the same bonus will be more expensive, ending up at 6 for the card and three +1 investigations. Of course, it doesn't run out of charges, and you don't have to spend those resources, and can even spend more. So long as you can take advantage of that, using it more than three times, or synergise it with other cards, it gets more value. So if you think Fingerprint Kit is good, it can be better if you can keep it in play and don't mind staying low on resources.

Obviously, this comparison is faulty, too - a seeker tool is always going to be different to a survivor tool. Not that many Survivors have the to really make use of this. Wendy Adams and Calvin Wright are probably the best stat-wise, with Preston Fairmont able to make it up with resource shenanigans. But even the other survivors can make up for their lower stats with survivor tools like Dark Horse or Lucky!

Cross-class, Minh Thi Phan, Rex Murphy and Finn Edwards benefit a lot from this card, though Rex can simply run a Fingerprint Kit build, so he has to build towards it to make it worthwhile. Minh can take as many Survivor cards as she likes, so I think it works best in her. She can stay low-resource in a Dark Horse build without it really hurting her, and all but guarantee the two clues a turn with committed skills and/or Lucky! or Live and Learn in hand. Alternatively, Rex can overcommit on compass tests, pick up three clues with one action and use the rest for things you usually struggle to find time for as a seeker.

I think it's a good card overall, but limited more than a little by its class. If we ever get a Survivor 5/Seeker 2 it might find a place where it really shines.

When I think about cultists in this game, I think about not tremendously tough, not tremendously damaging enemies that treacheries can turn into absolute landmines. The longer they’re around, the tougher they are to fight and the more doom they bring to the table. Diana's the opposite.

Diana, like Gloria, represents a class of mystics that no other class can really replicate. As mystics with guardian access, they can help the party survive with sheer denial. (It’s why both of them are probably bad in improv.) Miss Stanley, the investigator you probably care more about because you’re reading about her, doesn’t really fit into the clue seeker/flexible/fighter archetypes. She can do any of those things, but more than that she can simply ignore bad things that are going to happen. She can play defense in an amazing way.

In fact, putting Diane on the team makes more risky characters viable. Low willpower rogues like her cult buddy Preston, oddities like Calvin...They can spread their wings, knowing that the worst of the encounter deck will be taken care of for them, and that their weakness can be ignored at least once due to dark insight.