This is the card that Blinding Light (or its more experienced cousin Blinding Light) could have been! While this does not damage the enemy in question (and this doesn't work on Elites, which can be significant), it does push the enemy away to another location. Also, the bad token text on this card is way more favorable than Blinding Light as it could effectively lock down a hunter enemy for a long time; perhaps enough time to complete a scenario without worrying about it.
This card really is the Bandolier of spells. Great if you're running a spell-heavy deck, but this is not necessarily a good thing, because Bandolier itself has some issues in regards to its playability; issues that are not unlike other cards that can hold slots such as Daisy's Tote Bag or Leo's Mitch Brown. These cards do nothing by themselves, but rather enable more space for other cards. The issue is when you draw all those cards.
Draw Sign Magick too early without filling out your spells slots and it's effectively a waste of 3 resources. Draw Sign Magick too late in the scenario and you'll find it hard to justify paying the cost to open up AND fill the additional arcane slot. This timing pressure makes it hard to really value Sign Magick in all situations.
The good thing about Sign Magick as compared to the 'additional slot' cards is that it is fast. This really helps to offset the pressure that comes from playing it. Additionally, the 3 cost of this ritual plays very nicely with Uncage the Soul by choosing to pay the action to play it in exchange for the resource cost. That's some great flexibility in how you pay for these things.
Are you Preston Fairmont (or maybe Jenny Barnes)? Do you like getting clues? Then this card is for you. Probably too expensive for most other investigators, unless you have more economic support cards in your deck like Hot Streak or Emergency Cache and ways to abuse playing them multiple times (think Sefina Rousseau).
The ability to pay 2 to snipe clues from up to 2 connections away is VERY valuable, as it saves you precious actions needed to move towards that location. The issue is that you'll need to reveal the location to be able to grab said clues, so this becomes more useful in multiplayer. That said, even in solo, being able to pay 2 to grab a clue without fumbling for a test is pretty solid. We've already seen different takes of this in Seeker and Guardian.
Track Shoes can be used to generate a safe, action-less skill check for Drawing Thin every time you move. Enemies need not be present to use the ability on Track Shoes. This is currently the best way to generate recurrent skill checks for Drawing Thin, and it is available to every .
The effect on this card is clearly very powerful, as we have seen with Working a Hunch the ability to discover a clue without a test or even an action is invaluable. This card has the same powerful effect but for one fewer resource, and in a faction with less competition for clue gathering tools. The catch here is that in order to play it you have to successfully evade an enemy, and over-succeed at that.
This downside is both more and less severe than it can initially seem. The biggest problem posed by this restriction is that if there is no enemy in play, this card is mostly dead weight. This isn't helped by the pretty feeble skill icons provided by this card, as compared to the broadly useful double icons on Working a Hunch. In addition, even if there is an enemy in play, if you aren't engaged with it then you're going to have to spend an action to engage before spending another to evade which significantly reduces the efficiency of this card.
While enemies are common enough that this card is unlikely to be offline for more than a turn or two at a time, there is the additional caveat that the enemy has to be on a location that it is valuable to discover clues from. If the enemy you need to evade is on a low shroud location you are forced to make the decision as to whether you will fire it off now to guarantee getting a use out of it, or if you hold onto it in the hope of using it on a higher shroud location later on. Even worse, an enemy may spawn on a location with no clues at all.
Finally, its not enough to just evade an enemy, you have to succeed by two or more. This likely means that you either need to be evading a low evade enemy, or you are needing to overcommit to the test to ensure Belly of the Beast can be used. In the former case, you are placing another restriction on its usability, making it more likely that you never get to play it in a scenario. In the latter case, by needing to commit resources to ensure over-success you are mitigating the advantage that you gain by test-lessly gathering clues.
In summary, this card is no Working a Hunch, and I dont see it reaching the same level of ubiquity in Survivor as Working a Hunch has in Seeker. So what is Belly of the Beast good for?
What I see as the power of Belly of the Beast is the way that it lets you convert your strengths in one area into success in another area. In this case, letting investigators who are already very good at evading leverage some of that power to gather clues as well.
Investigators that I think will find this card very useful are:
One oddball pick for this card could be William Yorick who can use Handcuffs to evade with his reasonable score. Though reliably finding humanoid enemies to evade makes this a little more niche, and Yorick doesnt have a shortage of ways to grab clues.