If one of your team members has a Lola Santiago, Otherworldly Compass can help the as the player playing Lola can trigger Lola's ability in the middle of your Otherworldy Compass investigate test! A nice and repeatable combo, as long as you have the resources for it :).

This card joins the ranks of a growing list of events that grab 1-2 clues. I think Read the Signs is not the best of these, but also not the worst. In general, events like this get one clue for 2 resources and a card (Working a Hunch or 2 clues for 2 resources, a card and an action (Scene of the Crime, for example). Some cost less but have limitations (Eavesdrop) or drawbacks (Drawn to the Flame). Most require skill checks but a few are test-less (Working a Hunch and Scene of the Crime.

Good things about Read the Signs include lack of limitations, special requirements or punishments, and a bonus that is better than all the other similar events that require skill checks. The ability to ignore a location effect is probably pretty limited (only works on keywords effects triggered during the investigation), but of note “ignore” triggers Diana Stanley’s power. However, overall Read the Signs is probably second only to Working a Hunch in terms of flexibility, and so is less likely to be a dead card sitting in your hand compared to many of the other similar events.

The main consideration when deciding whether to include a card like Read the Signs is that its effect should provide a major advantage over a regular investigate action. So it is less valuable with strong investigators like Daisy Walker and Norman Withers. Diana Stanley is a special case because it could activate her power. Sefina Rousseau loves it, as pointed out by others, since she needs events and since she would rather avoid possible enemies coming from Drawn to the Flame, so I think Read the Signs either joins DtoF or replaces it for Sefina. Many other mystics would at least consider this card, since they tend to have 3 or less intellect.

This gun has appropriately been maligned since its released. A gun that discards itself means at best you can get two shots off with this thing in a normal 3 action round, and that's if there's already an enemy at your location, so you either just took an Attack of Opportunity to play it or you're shooting at something engaged with someone else. Because of the discard clause, you often will be in the situation where you play it into an AoO, as you literally do not have the ability to play this ahead of time. Yes, judging this card in the same way you would judge a normal weapon does not put it in the best light. So let's talk about why the Colt Vest Pocket is actually pretty cool.

Let's get some synergies out of the way first. Fence makes this fast, so if you're running Fence you might consider CVP to go with it, but personally I think Fence is really bad. Action chaining helps you get more shots off the CVP- Borrowed Time, Ace in the Hole, maybe Quick Thinking if your is boosted high enough, you get the picture. Narrow Escape and Dodge can help you against the Attack of Opportunity, the former even giving you a little boost on the first attack you make. The all star card to run this with though every time is Sleight of Hand, especially if you're playing with Taboo where big guns like .45 Thompson and Chicago Typewriter are not so easily concealed. Keeping a CVP up your sleeve means you essentially have a .45 Automatic up your sleeve, except with the potential to fire off one more shot if you can make the actions for it.

And after all of that, even when you do actually play the card by itself, it's really not all that worse than a .45 Automatic. It's half as expensive in resources, and at its absolute worst fires for half the shots. Again, the big downside is the very likely Attack of Opportunity for not being able to play the card until the turn you need it, but aside from soak you can use other cards to mitigate this. Of course sinking two cards into a lite .45 Automatic starts to look bad again, and worse than that, 's don't have great scores. Most of them hover around 3 which is fairly mediocre, certainly not high enough to even want a .45 Automatic most of the time, and they're more than willing to shell out the extra two resources to pay for it over CVP (and usually they'd go for another two resources after that just for .45 Thompson).

Enter Tony Morgan. He gets an extra fight action a turn pretty much the whole game. His is 5, so he would love a .45 Automatic lite. His ability to fight makes him a natural fit for over-success which fuels Quick Thinking for more actions. His bounties can help him pay for Leo De Luca. With a single Sleight of Hand you could very feasibly fire off all 5 shots in Tony and actually land most or all of them. That's 10 damage. Lupara, .41 Derringer, even his signature colts at most do 6. And then you could play it again next round, and probably land another 3 or 4 shots. Sure, theoretically you could actually play a melee weapon like Kukri or Switchblade and land more damage in one of those than any gun, but CVP gets high damage in very few actions for almost no cost or effort on Tony's part. Even Knuckleduster carries a lot more risk given that most high health enemies tend to have high fight values.

Now all of that said, the big downside of using the CVP this way is simply that you don't always have a point where you'd even want to do 10 damage. There are some really big bads out there in this game, but they're not in every scenario, and it's very possible you'll upgrade CVP before you get to fight them. So here's what you can do to make CVP work for you. 1. Play in multiplayer where you can more easily make your shots worthwhile, 2. take Adaptable and throw in CVP in scenarios where you know a big bad is coming and you need to dish out the pain (in addition to your other weapons, not as a replacement; also consider "Let God sort them out..." for such a scenario), 3. stay close to your fellow investigators so that you're more likely to have to fight several enemies at once for them, and 4. make sure you load up on icons, as the last thing you want to do is fire off 5 shots at your friends instead of all the monsters. Crystallizer of Dreams can help with icons with cards like Act of Desperation or Scene of the Crime, but otherwise you have skills like Quick Thinking, Overpower, Daring, Steadfast, Stunning Blow, Inquiring Mind, and Unexpected Courage. splash also has Lucky! which is obviously solid insurance.

Mandy Thompson is quite a complex investigator to take, not only her deckbuilding options but also her weakness seems to have more to it than meets the eye. I am not completely sure, if I am doing it right, but as far as I do understand the rules as written ("When a player is instructed to search for a card, that player is permitted to look at all of the cards in the searched area without revealing those cards to the other players.") the target of the search for certain cards is the entire deck. This is true for the upgrade No Stone Unturned for example. So if you use such a card, than you will always find Shocking Discovery and by that set it of in a "controlled environment" so to say and don't have to worry about it any longer.

Having said that, as long as you do not have found Shocking Discovery yet, than a card searching the entire deck is pretty valuable for Mandy to have. So not only the expensive upgraded No Stone Unturned which you might probably not want to waste on this, but also cards like the 0xp Research Librarian all of a sudden look completely different to me. Even some encounter cards might help, like SPOILER or SPOILER from Path to Carcosa. The latter will also surprisingly be completely canceled as far as I do understand it.

I'm not sure about the text on this card, we have managed to interpret it in three different ways.

First, after successfully investigating you take two horror and discover a clue and you are only permitted to investigate once per round.

Second, after successfully investigating you take two horror and discover a clue but you only take the two horror once per round and are permitted to continue to investigate for the remainder of the round finding clues as normal.

Three, after you successfully investigate you gain a clue as normal, take two horror and then gain a second clue, only taking the two horror and second clue once per round.

Any thoughts appreciated.