Safeguard

Safeguard

I love this card so much. Sometimes it feels hard to stick to your Seeker. You lag behind while prepping for enemies, but now you don' t have to! Just plop this down in the turn you play your weapons and ride on the back of your Seeker friend. Another tool to compress Guardian actions to focus on protecting their friends. Whereas Heroic Rescue, "Let me handle this!", and Taunt are all fantastic cards, the reusability of Safeguard makes it a great choice. It's also easy to play via cards like Ever Vigilant.

Furthermore, when your Guardian finishes using all 3 of their actions to do combat, they cannot be by the Seeker's side during the next mythos phase when the Seeker has moved to a new location only to spawn another enemy. Safeguard makes sure the players are in sync and there isn't a stagger where the Guardian spends 1-2 actions to catch up to the Seeker surrounded by enemies.

It also makes the movement cards off other investigators twice as good. Combo with things like:

chirubime · 27634
Who do enemies engage when moving with this card? — Django · 5095
It says 'as' rather than 'after', so I presume it happens simultaneously. This being the case, absent any specific prey conditions it would be up to the lead investigator to choose. — Sassenach · 179
I was going to argue that their action needed to resolve first, but I think Sassenach is right: use of the word "as" definitely implies that the actions happen at the same time. — SGPrometheus · 821
We played it like that and it was hilarious, Mandy pathfindering around while tommy gathered all those cultists with safeguard and no one took OAs — Django · 5095
It doesn’t usually combo with Think on Your Feet, since Safeguard can only be triggered on an Investigator’s turn, and ToYF is rarely used during a player turn. — Death by Chocolate · 1473
You're right. the chances of that happening are probably very minuscule. Probably equally situational is moving with an Elusive should that investigator choose to move only 1 location away from yours. But i forgot to add Survival Instincts is probably more usable with this card. — chirubime · 27634
I have been trying to find ways to consider this card as simply a powerful card vs one that is overpowered. And it is difficult. Combo'ing this with a Pathfinder Seeker can net someone multiple free moves a turn and keeps the Guardian/Seeker in sync for the mythos phase draw. The one argument for it simply being a powerful card is comparing it to Pathfinder which is also a very powerful card. And most importantly neither cards breaks the game like some cards do but they will likely be auto upgrades in every eligible deck. — The Lynx · 980
Step 1 : Play Leo Anderson with Safeguard(2), Dynamite Blast(any) and Elusive. — Fovar · 22
Step 2: Have someone play any seeker (Ursula Downs would work pretty well) with Pathfinder(1) and Shortcut(0), which she should do anyway. — Fovar · 22
Step 3: Have her travel into every location with a monster +1, do not follow into the last area, play elusive on your turn (after attacking if some are tough cookies) and Dynamite whatever is left in the room. Bam. Up to 7 areas worth of enemies in one single area blast. And there was still some investigation going on. — Fovar · 22

Summoned Hound

Summoned Hound

I've been looking at this card for a while now cause the free action looks strong, but i think FFG overdid it with the costs and risks involved, mainly these:

  1. The main issue being, once you draw Unbound Beast the Summoned Hound will leave for the rest of the game, because the beast sets the hound aside and does not return it in any way. This is a mayor disadvantage because every card you draw could be it's end (like the next one after playing it) and gets worse the more you draw. Can be avoided if you "put it into play", not adding weakness to your deck.

  2. Arcane slot is a big problem for mystics cause most want to have a spell for investigate and combat. Then there's also a lot of support spells like Scrying or Seal of the Seventh Sign. Works better for off class mystics who don't need their arcane slots to win the game.

  3. Ally slot cause there's lots of great allies in the game.

  4. Base value of 5 is enough for shroud 3/ fight 3 on standard difficulty. Mystics tend to have many icons on their cards and stack boosts so it won't help on more difficult tasks and risks retaliate or haunted penalties. Again off class mystics work better when they stack or boosts.

  5. Update: If you reshuffle you deck after killing the Unbound Beast and draw it again, it's revelation will likely set it aside. But that draw is still wasted.

Avoiding the weakness

Django · 5095
Patrice has the icons to use it well and can take A Chance Encounter 2 as a way to put it into play and skip the weakness. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
You can either use cards like A Chance Encounter (2) to put the ally into play and bypass shuffling the weakness into your deck, or you can use cards like Alyssa (and/or Scroll of Secrets, lol...) to try to prevent yourself from ever drawing the weakness. If you're Diana, you can cancel the Unbound Beast with Dark Insight. A free action almost every round is very strong, so this card definitely takes some thought to put in your deck. I agree with you though that I don't know whether the extra work to put this card into your deck is worth the effort, though, but it'd be interesting to try. — iceysnowman · 164
The hound isn’t unique so you can have more in play, even over several players. But Alyssa occupies another ally slot... might be worth it if you build your deck around them. — Django · 5095
My Skull King Jim deck can pull off the Summoned Hound I think. He runs Alyssa Graham which can bury both his weakness and the Unbound Beast on the bottom. And he uses Alyssa, St. Hubert — The Lynx · 980
Completing my comment - St. Hubert's Key and Hawk Eye Camera for Intellect boosts. The Summoned Hound would almost be one guaranteed clue per round with him. That is crazy. He can also kill the Beast if it does get out. — The Lynx · 980
If Alyssa spots the beast you could also use eureka or arcane initiate to reshuffle your deck, intead of adding doom to her. — Django · 5095
Actually my favorite part of using Alyssa is to minimize the times that I shuffle my deck after sticking something on the bottom so I don't include cards like Eureka. I want to never see that card again. Of course the encounter deck doesn't always cooperate. — The Lynx · 980

Call of the Unknown

Call of the Unknown

Just play Ursula and found this Weakness is never discarded. So I need to move and investigate every turn since I draw it around mid-game. Then I found some card to include for mitigate your tempo

  • Place the upgraded Shortcut save you a lot when you running around central location.
  • Also Using it with Pathfinder would make you way around more efficient.
AquaDrehz · 197
Yup, play Ursula the way she asks you to play her and her weakness shouldn’t be too bad. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
the only annoying thing is if you draw it before all of a scenario is explored (in TFA), really slows you down to have to backtrack, at least in solo (in multi-player, you might be jumping back and forth when investigating to get more use out of Fieldwork — Zinjanthropus · 229

Sharp Vision

Sharp Vision

This card looks like the good ol' Deduction but for survivors. It is a perfect card for Minh Thi Phan as she does normal investigate actions without using assets such as Fingerprint Kit. Her signature ability which gives +1 when commiting cards plus the 3 pips from this card and her basic stats (4 intellect) gives a really good 8. Also, I find this card really great for solo Silas Marsh. It can boost his poor intellect to 5 and depending the outcome of the chaos bag, he can decide if he want to commit or not this card. Also, boost this sweet 5 with a Grisly Totem and Resourceful and you will never need Newspaper again!

Sotosprotos · 86
Excellent analysis! This card makes me hope for a high INT Survivor. — mogwen · 254
I wonder if Minh actually wants to sub out something like Winging It for this. Winging It avoids the King in Yellow debacle, and does not have the succeed by 2 conditionality. Plus this card costs xp, something that might hinder Minh since she has a long list of things she wants upgrade before this. I think I would rather spend the 2 XP on a Cornered for Minh than 2 XP for 2 copies of Sharp Vision. Maybe its just me — chirubime · 27634
I think this is a very good card for Minh and maybe Wendy but for lower Int investigators I don't think it matches up to the essentially testless clue gathering options that they have. They can use Flashlight or Winging It (or Lantern) to reduce shroud and combo it with LWIF or Lucky. Testless clues at 3 or 4 shrouds is really powerful. — The Lynx · 980
Of course Mihn needs the Cornered as fast as she can get it. But this card is a good boost in the overall great choices she has between Survivor and Seeker. I haven't tried this build yet as I got Dream Eaters after I finished the Campaing I played with Mihn (Path to Carcosa) but for sure, the next time I will return to Arkham with her, I will spend my old exps for those two copies. I will post again my thoughts! Also about the question of TWWaterfalls: You are correct. But the idea to this is that you can recycle this card using resourcefull. You can also use all those cards that you mentioned combined to achieve the best possible result. — Sotosprotos · 86
An important difference between Sharp Vision and Deduction is that the former requires an "basic" investigate action. So you cannot use it together with Lantern, Old Keyring, Flashlight ... — NoobTheReal · 1

Empty Vessel

Empty Vessel

This one seems to be a very interesting card for Guardians since defeating enemies is basically what they do, but this card has a catch to it. Of current guardians, all but Carolyn Fern are able to take this card. A pity for Carolyn Fern, since it is the bonded card, not this card that heals horror.

For Leo, Mark and Roland this card has to compete with the always powerful Police Badge and the potential Police Badge/Well Prepared combo with one additional icon compared to this card. It also has to compete with the strong Hallowed Mirror. While also healing, the Hallowed Mirror does not cancel an icon from the chaos bag but does not need charges and does not cost any xp, so I think I would prefer the Hallowed Mirror over this card because of this. With Zoey Samaras, this card competes with one of the strongest investigator-specific cards in the game which is of course Zoey's Cross with an obvious outcome.

Of non guardian investigators Ursula is able to take this card currently (Father Mateo can take blessed only up to level 3), but she is very bad at defeating enemies with her 1 so she is not the obvious investigator to charge this card.

There is just one investigator I think of, when looking at this card, and this is (it might be a big suprise so tension is rising): Akachi Onyele - she can take "uses: charges" cards up to level 4. She does not really require the Holy Rosary because of her powerful stat and she definitly is able to kill monsters and she really like cancellation of special symbols for her spells and she starts this card with 1 charge and also can charge it with tokens. Akachi Onyele is a very potent monster slayer for a non Guardian so it might be worth a shot.

As a conclusion the most obvious investigator for this lv. 4 guardian card might be: A Mystic.

thakaris · 198
Guardians have some of the least useful elder signs and also have access to trusted, pushing this card into major feasibility territory. The only issue is the effective additional 3xp cost for Charisma — Difrakt · 1304
Aaaaand whoops wrong card review — Difrakt · 1304
It might be great for Akachi, but I don't think we can overestimate the value of a guaranteed attack (or three) against bosses for Roland, Mark, Leo, and Tommy. Healing 3 horror in a round (while dealing damage) is also probably enough to let you soak another attack from the boss, which might be worth 3 actions over the badge's two. All that said, it does feel like a very late upgrade card, after you've gotten your weapons up to god-killing mode. — SGPrometheus · 821
Also I just realized the fast action isn't forced; if you know a boss is coming later in a scenario, you can wait to swap this out until after the boss pops up. Also, i thought wish-eater canceled the auto-fail, which it doesn't, but I still think this is better than the badge because of the auto-heal. — SGPrometheus · 821
Just played a TCU campaign as Akachi, and after i got this every scenario basically turned around once it flipped. One health/sanity left with shriveling (5) out? Let's just cancel those pesky tokens that would kill us. Using rite of seeking? Continue taking actions despite bad draws. Additionally, if bad tokens account for most of the -3 or less modifiers in the bag, you increase your odds of success significantly with this out. The hardest part was taking enough damage before flipping it to really feel like i was wringing maximum value out of it. Can't wait to try with an actual guardian. — SGPrometheus · 821
Quick comment about this review. Current rules ruling on March 17th means Carolyn CAN take this card since the bonded cards do heal. Just in case someone reads this review and @ thakaris hasn't updated the review to reflect that. — techoatmeal · 15
@techoatmeal: as per current ruling (August 2023), Caroline can't take it neither can Vincent (see FAQ above) — thakaris · 198