Surely this card is misprinted. If Randall's ability is truly a trigger like it says, and not a , he can do it an infinite number of times upon entering play. Needless to say, that's pretty good. But the icon is certainly wrong, no?

Assuming so, my assessment would be that Randall is still a good, simple ally. Nathaniel's worried about sanity for sure, and the closest comparable horror soak available to him at level zero would be Something Worth Fighting For, which doesn't really do much else. But the real value in Randall is of course his ability, which even assuming it's meant to be a reaction, ranks him ahead of comparable cards (Tetsuo Mori and Prepared for the Worst) for two reasons: 1) Randall searches the entire deck for the item, and 2) he immediately plays the thing. This is pretty economical.

A fun and relatively simple side quest (appropriate to a starter desk), although 5 actions is a lot. Few Seekers are going to want to a third of 5 turns doing Draw actions to get a shot at an upgrade that will be useful only to Big Hand decks. Eldritch Sophist will helps you pull secrets off it, but that's a pretty thin combo.

More urgently, what happens if you do your last draw, have no secrets left, but don't have 10 cards in hand? Do you hang onto the tome until you hit 5 cards in hand? Have you missed your chance to translate it?

I'm a little surprised this card hasn't received better, or I guess more, fanfare. This is essentially 3 resources for 4 Premonitions which is incredibly powerful. The big drawback is that you have to decide the action you're going to take in advance rather than playing Premonition and deciding what action would be best to use the sealed token on. Generally speaking though, you'd only use a premonition on an important skill test (i.e. where the stakes are high), but the same is true here since you only get 4 secrets (but that is rechargeable through a number of cards, Enraptured in and Truth from Fiction and Eldritch Sophist if you've got access to ).

The ability to know EXACTLY what token you'll be resolving is strong, more so if you have anything that can draw multiple tokens (McBride, Jacqueline). If you're going to be just a little bit short, you now know if you need to commit a card from your hand that you were hoping to play. But obviously, that's just some useful knowledge that helps keep you from over or under committing. The real strength of the card is when you're committing skills to the test.

Unfortunately, most skills don't really need this. Enraptured will simply replace it's own secret (though you can use it to charge a spell instead), while skills like Prophesy and Torrent of Power are generally strong enough that it'd be a bit of a wasted use. It doesn't work with Defiance since you have to pick a symbol before you reveal, and even though it does combo with Defiance lvl 2, I'm not sure how useful that would be. Jacqueline's favorite augury is a great target since the effect is quite powerful, but you already have good odds of getting that to trigger so long as you're drawing multiple tokens.

Given this, probably the best thing about the card is it's lvl 0 rank, allowing it to be taken in off class s, Dunwich gators and anyone who's versatile enough. In faction it's a good little luxury/tool, but off class it's quite powerful. s like Silas Marsh and "Ashcan" Pete would appreciate it. s with Shotguns would like it, especially Zoey Samaras and the upcoming Sister Mary (which is exactly how I intend to play the nun with a gun). And Dexter Drake and especially Sefina Rousseau can abuse the crap out of all those delicious skills.

Aside from it's use in solo (which is good if a tad expensive), it's really going to shine in multiplayer where you'll be everyone's best friend. Remember that other investigators at your location can get in on the fun and commit their own cards to compound the effects. You could even double up those tokens with Take Heart and Self-Sacrifice.

I've used the upgrade successfully in a speedy Ursula deck that sometimes struggles to get all its cards at the right time. Compared to Preposterous Sketches, which gives you 9 cards for 6 Resources and 3 actions (as long as there is a clue at your location, and assuming you can get one of them back into your hand), this is up to 9 cards for 3 Resources and 4 actions, assuming you can beat a (1) test by 3, which isn't that hard, especially if your seeker has some sort of static boost. Other Seekers more covetous of their Arcane slots might feel differently.

This would probably be a stepping stone on the way to the upgrade, but it's OK as a beginning card.

Hmmm. You can use this card to translate Forbidden Tome a couple of turns quicker, all while refilling Mr. "Rook", Encyclopedia, Esoteric Atlas, etc. Can you use it to translate Archaic Glyphs faster? It say so put a Resource on it "as a secret."

It's a pity that it's pretty hard to get ES in a deck with Quick Learner. I'd like the chess motif....