
So I finally played this card in a Lucius Galloway deck in The Dream-Quest campaign, after only theorizing about it before.
All in all, I am happy with my experience and it went as expected. A few things to consider, though:
- The deck/investigator is specialized in not defeating enemies, but instead handling them via evading - a perfect fit for the card, because not defeating victory enemies is not a loss.
- The 2 campaigns in The Dream-Eaters are short (4 scenarios each). Granted, you get more victory overall, but I found them also to be challenging and there is hardly enough time to clear each location anyway, so another good fit.
- The first scenario instantly rewarded me for going Ascetic, as there was an ingame reason to not pursue victory locations. I did - and I kid you not - finish the scenario with 0 victory, which felt great!
- I drew Offer You Cannot Refuse as my basic weakness. Boy, that ground my gears! Do I get the 2 experience as usual or not? If yes, can I spend them? After all, according to the Rules Reference, basic weaknesses are drawn at the end of the deckbuilding process aka after I included Ascetic... No worries, bullshit FAQs to the rescue: I found a ruling here that explained (despite conflicting with the Rules Reference) you can still spend the experience gained by Offer You Cannot Refuse before the first scenario. Now to the other part: Do I even get the experience? I ruled that one myself and said yes. Why? Because Ascetic uses both the words "gain" and "earn" in relation to experience. Offer You Cannot Refuse makes you gain experience, whereas in the course of scenario resolutions you earn experience (which is what Ascetic apparently wants to prevent). It's an edge case, but I am convinced my ruling is both correct and fair.
One downside I noticed, though, was a psychological one, from a player's perspective: If you don't go for cards with experience cost reductions or pack Adaptable, you are playing with. the. same. deck. the. entire. campaign. Even if you like that card as much as I do, that can get boring, because it robs you of a significant part of the AH experience.