Occult Scraps

Occult Scraps

This is an interesting weakness. It punishes you for keeping it out of play and punishes you slightly less for keeping it IN play.

I assume the goal here is to force Dexter to waste his special ability to get it out of his hand and then use his special ability on another asset to discard it from play?

That's a great way to attack his play style. I really like this design.

DavidRyanAndersson · 54
I agree, the design here is very cool, and also lets him get a bit of value returned in the second turn. If you're willing to use other tricks, you can deal with it even faster - such as putting it in play with Sleight of Hand and immediately using his special ability on it to play another card. "Watch as I make these dangerously incomplete notes disappear!!!" — Death by Chocolate · 1489

Sword Cane

Sword Cane

This is a very good card and only gets better the higher one's willpower stat. While it lacks attack bonuses, damage bonuses and further, requires exhausting to use, its best feature is that it uses a hand slot, instead of an arcane slot. While Wither has a similar function, it does compete with other spells for precious slots.

It is relatively inexpensive and ideal for fighting odd-number health enemies, when an early game Shrivelling or Azure Flame charge would either be overkill, or underkill. Saving a charge to finish off 1/3/5 health enemies will also extend the life of those spells.

It also allows evading, with one's willpower stat, ad infinitum. Great for mystics whose hands aren't already occupied by Trumpets, Statues, Stones or Flashlights. And as if all that wasn't enough, unlike the eldritch equivalents, this mundane weapon has no downsides for drawing special tokens. 5 will investigators like Dexter, Agnes and Akachi, often with further passive bonuses, will get a lot of mileage from this card as a backup weapon/evasion tool. And it doesn't use an arcane slot!

KingsGambit · 15

Haste

Haste

If you didn't already have Leo De Luca, its only 1xp more to take Charisma and 2x Leo (1) over 2x Haste.

Leo costs 2 more resources but also more than pays off that difference by generating more bonus actions reliably as well as being a 2/2 soak. And it's not like anyone who has access to rogue 2 will have problems with paying 5 upfront.

Baring edge cases like having 3 other allies already, I don't think there's any investigators without Leo who would want to take this. While Dexter Drake certainly likes having more spells, he also has better things to do with his arcane slots.

suika · 9506
It makes the bow viable for Wini. — MrGoldbee · 1493
Why not both? =) — Wastekase · 9
There are people with Rogue 2 who don't take Leo De Luca? — NarkasisBroon · 11
Sure, lots of people. Dexter doesn't always take Leo because Arcane Initiate and David Renfield are probably better for him. Leo Anderson might prefer Grete, Guard Dog, or even Gregory Gry. Heck, most Rogues I play don't take Leo because he's too expensive for set up and other allies do more for them- Finn likes Peter Sylvestre, Sefina likes Arcane Initiate, original Skids prefers Gregory, and some Wini, Tony, and Trish builds would likely prefer Greg as well depending on their set up. All of that said, I don't like Haste very much. It turns out even getting three arrows in a row is tough. I tried it in Sefina with the Bow- noting that her ability, Bow, AND Suggestion all have arrows- and it was incredibly rare that it was worthwhile to chain three of those together. You could shoot bow, reload, shoot, but you'd have to evade first to avoid the attack of opportunity- and too often it was more efficient for the scenario to evade and then move away to do something else. Often you want to evade, investigate, and move. And the evades only chain into bow if you have Suggestion out. It's just too much set up to work enough times in a scenario to pay off in my opinion. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
You aren’t suggesting that you’d play 2 Leos for 5 actions are you? Because Leo is Unique. Other than that, I agree with Styx — there are a lot of reasons to not take Leo even if you can, and I haven’t figured out how to make Haste work. I tried it out in Dexter, and it was... meh. Didn’t trigger enough for an Arcane slot that could hold any — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
Number of things. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
Haste and Leo are both amazing in Tony. With his free fight action he frequently has enough actions to chain two of the same type together, and having Leo in play makes it even easier. Haste is pretty much only viable if you're operating with base 4 actions, because that makes it much easier to put two of the same type on a row. When that's happening, you're taking 5 and 6 action turns regularly. Haste is awesome, if you're already taking a lot of actions. — SGPrometheus · 847
Of course they aren’t suggesting playing 2 Leos. The point of Charisma is to draw a comparison with Haste. You buy two copies of Haste (even though you can only have one in play) for increased reliability and it goes in a relatively uncontested slot. Likewise, you get two Leo’s and Charisma for both reliability and an uncontested (previously nonexistent) slot. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
The problem with Haste I found in Tony is you need to have enough enemies to fight. That sounds a bit dumb, sure, but I mean realistically Tony can already chain together 5 fight actions in a row. It's rare he needs a 6th. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
Which is to say, there are situations where it's worthwhile, but generally it's a bit of a waste I think. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
You don’t need 5-6 fight actions for it to be worthwhile - just 3. He can spend the rest of his actions on other things. The most consistent Haste combo is of course with Borrowed Time, since you can almost always tack two ‘click’ actions and Haste a third. Or attack twice with guns and Haste a ‘click’. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
Sure, I agree with Haste+Borrowed Time working well, it's basically just Leo de Luca at that point. He can already chain many actions together if that's what you want to do, so another action adder that's a bit wonky to pull off with any consistency feels like wasted space. What I meant was that, having the continuous fight actions- even just the 3 you need- is actually a bit of an ask, since, if you're efficiently killing as Tony, you don't get as often as you'd think. You often need to move after shooting twice, or need to replay a gun, etc. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
Add the free Garrote attack. 1 attack turns into 3 — MrGoldbee · 1493
Garrote's attack does not contribute to the Haste count. It doesn't cost an action. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
If you have more actions, it's easier to trigger Haste because you're more flexible when you chain 3 actions. So if you're planning haste, also take leo and consider other extra actions like quick thinking, Swift reflexes, borrowed time, ace in the whole, 41 derringer (3),.... — Django · 5163
I played Tony with Haste and Leo through TCU. Occasionally I would get 3 fight actions in a row but a lot of the time I used Haste to grab 3 cards or resources with 2 actions. — OrionJA · 1

Night Terrors

Night Terrors

Ugh. This thing. It’s just high enough difficulty to eat your skill icons, and the effect is immensely punishing. Losing 10% of your deck is no fun, and the “draw each weakness” is just icing on the cake. Screw you, Merging Realities!

LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
Is it tho? Unless you’re a heavy draw/search deck, most decks don’t hit every card in their deck during a scenario, so losing three cards is often functionally the same is those cards just being in the bottom of their deck. Take it on the nose and save your icons. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
Agreed with DbC, losing your deck is fundamentally not a big deal unless your deck is heavily dependent on a few cards. It's no different realistically than just having a different shuffle of your deck where those three cards ended up at the bottom- in fact, its a bit better than that since it's like you got to see those 3 cards on the bottom (ie you know not to expect them, which is helpful). It could even hit a weakness. Since getting rid of the card doesn't require that you pass the test, I say it's a bad card to commit to. Eat the action, learn a little more about your deck in the process, and then move on. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
Losing your cards* — StyxTBeuford · 13050
I should clarify that it hitting a weakness is generally a good thing, as it means you didn't waste a draw on it. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
Just sayin’, it always eats something important. That’s Arkham. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
Sure, but so do most treacheries. Whatever cards it eats are no different than just never seeing those cards because they shuffled low. It costs 1 action, with the slight potential that the action is kind of refunded if it hits a weakness (that is in the top 3 so you most likely would've lost a draw to it), makes this an incredibly tame treachery relatively speaking. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
I also think it's pretty mild cause other investigators can resolve this card but don't have to discard from their deck if they fail, see rules Triggered Abilities. — crayne · 3
@crayne Other players can't activate it; it's not in their threat area (as per the text after the action icon). — SGPrometheus · 847
Maybe this is just a personal thing -- damage, horror, resources, and even polayed cards come and go, and I'm OK with it; it's nothing personal, just Arkham. For some reason, however, milling my deck just seems... rude. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
Much like the autofail, it’s the kind of thing that feels much worse than it actually is. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
Yeah, it's a common thing with a lot of card games that milling always, *always* feels worse than it actually is, and it takes almost everyone a long time to adjust to this fact. — Thatwasademo · 58
The scariest thing about this card is how it combines with swarm to make you shuffle/horror more often than expected. Otherwise nbd. — Yenreb · 15
I think that RFG is considerably worse than milling. If you get it early enough it can get kind of dangerous (provoking frequent reshuffles that you might not be prepared for, also potentially removing allies that you could otherwise use to soak the horror), and it makes it so that you can't recur cards or cycle them back into your deck when you draw through it. In practice though, I haven't found this one to be that bad, as I've never had to have it out for enough rounds to be a problem. — Zinjanthropus · 230

Voice of Ra

Voice of Ra

The other review for this card is completely accurate, but I just want to give some statistics to help people decide if they want to use this. Using the standard difficulty Night of the Zealot chaos token pool, here are your odds:

  1. 29% - no indicated symbols - 1 resource
  2. 49% - 1 indicated symbol - 3 resources
  3. 17% - 2 indicated symbols - 5 resources
  4. 2% - 3 indicated symbols - 7 resources

Average: 2.75 resources.

This is slightly less than Emergency Cache, and more random. But it does have the willpower skill icon. Also, the odds are altered when the chaos token pool is different from NotZ, or (as noted in the other review, when you use effects to reveal more tokens (like Jacqueline Fine, Olive McBride, etc).

jmmeye3 · 632
I'm sorry but this stat looks like total 16 total tokens with 6 proper tokens. NotZ has only 5 proper token (elder_sign does not work with VoR). — elkeinkrad · 496
Thank you, error corrected. I thought there was a "monster token" in the NotZ pool. — jmmeye3 · 632
There is, but only after setup of scenario 3. — Thatwasademo · 58