This guy really should have been called "Security Consultant" or "Locksmith" or something because he is far better with Lockpicks, Damning Testimony, or a Thieves' Kit than with weapons, generally.

Even with investigation tools, though, he is clunky as heck and suffers greatly from the fact that Leo De Luca, Delilah O'Rourke / Lola Santiago, and Hired Muscle / Treasure Hunter exist.

Theoretically Trigger Man offers a nice combo package of three benefits: he cheats an asset into play, he gives you bonus actions (that ignore attacks of opportunity), and he may give you a skill boost. Unfortunately, there are a few snags that end up making him less than the sum of his parts.

First, you have to wait on playing him until you have the desired asset in hand. He looks like a setup/efficiency/action-economy card, but punishes you for playing efficiently and getting value down on the table. If you play Leo De Luca and then .45 Thompson as your first two actions, you'll have only two actions left to shoot with. If you play Trigger Man instead, you get the Thompson out at the same time and can shoot three times right away : twice with normal actions and once with Trigger man. But, if you draw Leo De Luca before your gun you can play him immediately and collect an extra action per turn while you wait for the gun to show up and you'll still be on action-parity with the Trigger Man player when it finally does. Also, trigger Man's own base resource cost is a large as any illicit card's bar a couple of guns, and then you spend resources on the activations too, so although Leo De Luca + .45 Thompson takes more upfront resources to deploy it works out to be comparably resource efficient in the end.

If your collection is thin, you might run him alongside Leo or when Leo's uniqueness is a problem, or just for a change of pace. But Rogue has lots of ways to turn money and XP into actions and I feel that Haste, Ace in the Hole, Honed Instinct, Swift Reflexes and the like just do it better. Several rogue guns even grant bonus actions when upgraded, such as the .41 Derringer and .25 Automatic.

Thus, I think this guy only really makes sense when you get some value replacing your base skill with 4, which is a rough place to be because you can only use him once per turn. And you probably want whatever you plan to equip him with to be something that you could conceivably use for yourself if you draw it without him. The Rogues that consider toting guns already tend to have 3+ strength, and the 2 strength rogues usually plan to fight in other ways and or not at all, and are unlikely to have the stat boosts or icons to succeed even from a base 4. So this is usually going to be a +1 once per turn, maybe sometimes a +2.

The other problem with giving the Trigger Man a gun is that when you need a weapon you usually want to use it several times in the same round to put enemies away, so you may not want to rely on his strength after all. The Trigger Man also runs out of usefulness when his gun runs out of bullets, and while you can reload it with events you cannot play him a fresh gun from hand.

The ideal use case for Trigger Man, then would be to load him up with an asset that can only be used once per turn anyway (because it exhausts), that tests a stat tend to be weak on (will or investigation), for which they can easily stack bonuses, and perhaps one which would normally provoke AoOs.

Lockpicks fits the bill perfectly. You can only use it once per round in the first place, but with Trigger Man you can do it every turn even when engaged without spending your real actions. You still add your agility, so Kymani or Winifred can get the trigger man investigating at a base 9, and most other rogues on base 8, before any bonus from tarot, footwear, other allies, and so on. Charlie Kane unfortunately gains little from adding his base 1 agility unless he has passive boosts on that too, and may therefore prefer a single-stat cluever item that gives some additional rewards such as Thieves' Kit, Damning Testimony, or Fake Credentials.

It's still not great compared to just playing Lola, who soaks more and brings most rogues up to 8+ on lockpick tests by herself while providing a different way to turn resources into clues. But "worse than Lola and Delilah" is unfortunately where most reasonable ally designs are fated to end up.

I was amazed looking at all the fancy new toys in Hemlock, and decided to try my very own curse deck starring eveyrone's favorite trumpeteer Jim Culver.

When looking at this card, you notice it's a skill, and the only icon it has is . This shows you this card was not meant to committed to any test. huh. Then you read and notice it gives you after you draw a curse. This is a big step up from it's 1XP yellow cousin Fey.

In reality, this card works as a pseudo . Draw a ? Go ahead, pretend it's a +2, just this once. If you're ever in a space where you need to pass an important skill test and you draw a , this card basically makes the test an auto pass (unless that ugly comes up). You can even game the system by drawing one through Favor of the Moon!

Imagine this scenario: You're playing Trish Scarborough and you have your Lockpicks & Lucky Cigarette Case out. You investigate a 4 shroud location. Uh oh! . Then you trigger your Blasphemous Covenant and play your Diabolical Luck and turn that -2 into a +5. Lastly, you draw a -3. Now, instead of failing the test, you're searching the top 6 cards of your deck for your favorite card.

Outside of curse decks, this is a waste of space, but in them, it's fantastic safeguard for unlucky curse tokens.

I find it very amusing that the Guardian perhaps most incentivized to go around sticking people up for cash is FBI Agent Roland Banks. With Red Tape and Due Diligence he can make this fast and get +2 to the parley for each enemy engaged with him. Browbeat those Ghoul Minion or Cats from Saturn into assembling a flamethrower for you, then cook them with it. It does take up both of your allowed card plays for the turn, but seems worth it. Just don't autofail.

I think this is essentially an S-tier card, easily worth the 5 XP cost of admission and should be considered for a first campaign purchase/upgrade on most Dark Horse decks. Comparing to the original (most of these points are overlapping, but I think there's distinct points for each):

• It doesn't cost resources. The 3 resource cost of the original is fairly steep for a deck designed around keeping resources at 0. With this you only need to focus on having resource for other assets you want to play, hugely simplifying the design of decks which take this.

• You don't have to play it. Playing a card costs an action, so given Dark Horse decks are lean and tempo-focused saving an action is always nice.

• You don't have to find it. Similar to the above, Dark Horse decks want it in play as early as possible. Dark Horse itself however is not readily tutorable (Mr. "Rook", Eureka!, Captivating Discovery and Friends in Low Places all spring to mind, but can all miss as well either come with their own costs or at a minimum take up deck space) and while the class does have good card draw (Take Heart, Drawing Thin, At a Crossroads, Unrelenting) it's never going to be infallible. Having it there and ready to combo off is the biggest selling point by far.

• The stat boosts activate very early. It's worth saying you can online that +1 all stat boost from your very first turn with just a couple of assets (e.g. Mariner's Compass and Madame Labranche for example). Equally common resources sinks like Fire Axe make getting the universal +1 trivial in your first few turns.

• Permanent protects it from asset discarding treacheries. Everyone has had a moment where Crypt Chill has discarded something useful I'm sure. With this being a permanent card it's safe, which is great given its high XP cost and importance to this archetype of deck.

• EDIT: Good point from the below comments - it saves deck space. Level 0 Dark Horse takes up two cards in your deck, while this takes up none. With the pressures around deck building these days, it's definitely a nice feature.

All of this sets the card up as dramatically better than the original and a huge leap forward for the 0 resource archetype. In addition to Dark Horse staples (things like Mariner's Compass, Fire Axe, Madame Labranche and Schoffner's Catalogue - check out the level 0 Dark Horse page for wider interactions and more possible combos) I would say the addition of 1 resource masks in Hemlock Vale (Sparrow Mask and then off-class Mouse Mask, Fox Mask and Wolf Mask, ignoring Cat Mask because it's niche) and potentially the 1 resource Matchbox depending on your needs are all good ideas. Hemlock Vale also added in the pretty great Fire Axe •• and the pretty medium Mariner's Compass •• to boot.

All in all, I think everyone would love to play an investigator with +1 to all stats, and permanent Dark Horse allows you to do just that - potentially from your very first turn and without any install costs. It's a very, very good card!

Deduction has been a Staple since day 1 for a good reason: clues are what move the game forward, and so more clues mean being more likely to win the game before the doom clocks out, or you are being defeated in the many possible ways.

Chemistry Set is a 0xp card, in a non-competitive slot for that has a printed Deduction on it. So what's the catch?

1. You need to test at a very high value to have a chance to get the additional clue.

   • Higher Education being off the taboo list is your gateway to insane oversuccesses.

   • Kate Winthrop is the thematic and most likely best user because of her built-in capacity to skyrocket her skill value, and Chemistry Set is an enabler for it. Mr. "Rook" your Weakness first, though, if you don't want to be one-shot.

   • are the most likely to want to increase their basic stat, wich card like Magnifying Glass and Dr. Milan Christopher.

2. You need to succeed by exactly 4 to get the clue.

   • You are helped in this task by many cards. The most important one is the one that came with the set: Steady-Handed. When both are on the table, by testing at 5 above the shroud in standard and at 4 above the shroud in Hard, you have approximately a 60% chance of getting an additional clue. What's best is that you still get a card or sometimes 2 resources if you don't get your additional clue.

   • Some reactive cards can also help. There aren't so many, but we can mention Knight of Swords, Daring Maneuver, Ritual Candles, Diabolical Luck. Lab Coat can help you get 2 resources and a clue from a test you'd fail by 1.

   • Some cards can also help by revealing tokens earlier: Scrying Mirror or Premonition.

   • Some cards reveal multiple tokens: Grotesque Statue, Third Time's a Charm, Against All Odds are some examples. Olive McBride (0), on the other hand, will sometimes decrease your chances of getting the token and the score you want. Finally, Analysis is also an option, but I am not sure I would do this one...

3. It exhausts.

   • You can get a second copy on the table with Tinker or Relic Hunter. This way, you have double the uses, which, in my experience, is enough.

   • You can ready it with the newly printed Fine Tuning. It takes 1 more action, costs 1 more resource, and 1 more experience than Tinker, but it only requires you to find 1 copy of Chemistry Set, so it is online faster. This is personally my favourite option because the second copy of Fine Tuning can be placed on Steady-Handed (or on Empirical Hypothesis if you're that greedy).

4. It discards when failing by exactly 2.

   • This can happen by pulling the on a 2 shroud location. If you are dead afraid of this, you can pack some protection, such as Eucatastrophe or Nightmare Bauble. Token of Faith and Live and Learn, and the other hand, won't work.

   • This can happen if you pull the wrong token. Lucky!, Granny Orne, Spring-loaded Pocket Multi Tool can help. As weird as it may seem, Lab Coat is a nonbo and will not help you save your chemistry set.

5. You will only succeed by exactly 4 when there is only 1 clue remaining at your location.

   • Sucks for you. It's like finally landing that trick when no one pays attention anymore. Maybe you can get -1 with Steady-Handed to get a card and heal 1 horror.

Overall, it's a sound card if you build around it, and can be pretty monotonous, so having a mini-game in the game is a lovely gimmick to explore once in a Kate Winthrop deck.

Here's the deck I've used for this review: arkhamdb.com