I've been thinking for a while that this card may be "the sleeper hit" of The Drowned City Expansion, so I gave it a try this weekend. I started a new campaign with Daisy (and not a high power-level Daisy: no Guiding Stones, no Empirical Hypothesis, etc.) playing with 1x Spectral Shield, 1x Eyes of the Dreamer, and eventually 2x Enraptured (which has other uses than putting chargers on Eyes of the Dreamer).

Based on my initial test in an off-class investigator, I'm overall really impressed with Spectral Shield. It's a combo card (although you could play it for a 1-cost fast on its own to prevent one damage/horror, I guess?), so if you're not using charges as your main engine then you'll need to find both Spectral Shield and something to fuel it.

Right out of the gate on Scenario 1, I started with 2 horror (In the Thick of It), failed an early treachery for 2 horror, and then drew my The Necronomicon weakness which is another 3 horror if I want to clear that. That's 7/9 horror right there. Yikes! My Guardian just randomly discarded Hallowed Mirror! Panic! I have a Logical Reasoning in my deck, but I need to find that... And then instead I found Eyes of the Dreamer + Spectral Shield, and... I'm pretty much fine? Now I don't have to worry about:

• Ward of Protection horror
• Horror from cycling my deck
• Swarming attacks, mostly (most Swarming is 1 damage or 1 horror each)
• "For each... choose..." effects where one of the options is 1 damage or 1 horror (because the "for each/every" rules for decisions is that each is its own effect)
• A 2 horror effect defeating me (now it takes two such effects)

There are so many effects that are trivialized when you get to prevent 9 damage/horror (maybe less, as I did use Eyes of the Dreamer now and then to not autofail a critical investigate with Deduction). (EDIT: Using is forced, not optional, so cannot combo with Deduction and the like. Thank you for the correction; the rest of the review still holds true for me.)

The main downsides of Spectral Shield are:

• You have to find 2 cards (normal combo tax)
• 4 resources is pricey early game for some decks
• You must spend the charge if you can, which can be annoying if (for example) your only charges are on tabooed Pendant of the Queen and you're at risk of removing it from the game
• This combo helps you "not lose" more than it helps you to win, if that makes sense

I'm very curious to play it in a Mystic with high-charge assets (Brand of Cthugha, Eyes of the Dreamer, etc.) rather than low-charge assets (Shrivelling, Rite of Seeking, etc.). I think that Spectral Shield could really open up a number of cards. Don't want to get damaged because of Alchemical Transmutation? Just spend one of its charges! Don't want to take horror from Shrivelling (3)? Just spend a charge from somewhere else! And so on. And with Eldritch Brand, you can start with a 9-charge spell from the outset, so the combo tax is further reduced.

I'm going to continue testing this card out to explore whether this card trivializes the encounter deck with all of the ways investigators can now replenish chargers: Uncage the Soul (3), Ghastly Possession, Enraptured (2), etc. Let me know what your experiences are!

Honestly an amazing card. There are obvious uses like finding the victory point enemies for the xp or just drawing a bunch of cards but I want to cover some other very useful use cases:

•Fishing out difficult enemies just before an act/agenda shuffles the discard back in to avoid drawing them again.

•Certain enemies want to be evaded not fought but this can be awkward if they spawn at a crossroads or location you'll have to backtrack on, by going to a dead-end and playing this you can ensure they stay out of the way.

•Getting the victory point enemy out of the deck when there is downtime so you don't have to deal with them later AND they spawn exhausted giving your team time to deal damage risk free of oppertunity attacks, relatilate or regular attacks.

•Enabling otherwise inconsistent clue getting cards like Scene of the Crime or Evidence! (notably able to find big enemies for Evidence! (2)) for when you really need the clues. Conversely being able to find high stated enemies for a card like Power Word early can allow you to get a lot of value or high health enemies for "Let God sort them out...".

•Certain enemies may have prey traits which are problematic for your team such as preying on your low or teammates to target their weak points, by drawing them yourself early you avoid these issues later for them (especially true for enemies which do things when they engage someone such as unavoidable damage).

A lot of these are minor use cases which aren't always useful, but considering you get all of this on a 0 cost draw card is amazing utility if you know what you're doing and long term will redefine how enemy management rogues go about their jobs and is a massive boon for guardians who get access to this like Zoey Samaras, Leo Anderson or Marion Tavares. Similar cards like Kicking the Hornet's Nest or On the Hunt may perform some of these jobs but "Where's the party?" does all of them and does it best I'd say.

Cosmic Revelation turns a Play Action and a card in your hand into one Draw or Play action for each player at your table. Assuming you value every card in your hand as being worth one action, Cosmic Revelation's value scales proportional to the player count:

• In One-Player: Cosmic Revelation provides no actual benefit.
• In Two-Player: Cosmic Revelation is action neutral.
• In Three-Player: Cosmic Revelation provides a bonus action.
• In Four Player: Cosmic Revelation provides at least two bonus actions.

Long review ahead, so I've included a TL:DR section at the bottom. Feel free to skip to that!

Forensic kit is interesting in that, while you can use it to investigate with , realistically it's more specialized towards investigation with . The reason for this is that its extra horror-healing benefit only works with an exhausted enemy at your location, and while there are other means to evade/exhaust enemies (e.g. Transmogrify), 9 times out of 10 you're going to be using for evading as normal. If you want to investigate with then you're far better off using Grim Memoir, which has an identical resource cost and number of uses while offering a bigger skill boost and arguably a better benefit for most Seekers (the possibility of card draw).

Where this card starts to shine is on Rogues who can take it (in particular Kymani Jones, Trish Scarborough, Finn Edwards and potentially Monterey Jack) or Lucius Galloway as the one Seeker who is slightly more specialized towards (especially with his ability). All of these investigators have below average Sanity (and some like Lucius and Jack have weaknesses which deal you horror), so having an option with both gives you clues and heals horror linked to your preferred enemy management option (evading) is excellent card compression. It makes standalone solutions to these problems (e.g. Liquid Courage) much more questionable.

The obvious comparator to Forensic Kit for agility users is Thieves' Kit. Thieves' Kit by contrast has more uses, doesn't offer a +1 skill value, and returns resources for successful investigation. The uses here is a key consideration, as Thieves' Kit is okay for longer before you need to replace it. For me though, rather than considering these cards as competition, I'm very likely to take both on investigators where I want to use to clue-find (and if you have one in each hand, you can use whichever is more beneficial in the circumstances). Having four cards in a 33 card deck that allow for this gives an 81% draw chance of at least one in a hard mulligan, which allows your investigator to get clue-finding much more quickly without needing to fall-back on things like Streetwise.

For cards that interact well with Forensic Kit, there's String Along and "Where's the party?" - both of which keep enemies engaged with you after they become exhausted. This allows you to drag enemies to other locations with clues and so heal horror (and can help fire off abilities like Lucius’s, especially if you drag an enemy to a location with clues in preparation for it readying in the upkeep phase). Kicking the Hornet's Nest is also nice to spawn an enemy at a location with multiple clues (and so then evade and use the Kit). Alton O'Connell is worth a mention, as he boosts but also allows for occasional clue compression when succeeding by 1 or 3 (which I'd argue is more common on Rogues using to clue-find, as they don't have as trivial ways to boost agility compared to Seekers who have things like Magnifying Glass for intellect). Pilfer can be synergistic from having clue compression off , but whether the resource cost is worth the price of admission is up to you.

For a look at a deck in practice that uses Forensic Kit, I've just posted an Ascetic Kymani deck which uses both Forensic Kit, Thieves' Kit and Grappling Hook to have a lot of ways to clue-find with agility. Feel free to check it out!

TL:DR

• Forensic Kit favors investigation through , as Grim Memoir otherwise is typically superior for clue-finding with .

• High Rogues who can take it and Lucius Galloway are therefore a good fit, as they all have below average Sanity and can readily evade enemies to benefit from its horror healing.

• Thieves' Kit is an obvious comparator. Taking two copies of both Thieves' Kit and Forensic Kit can be beneficial, as it gives an 81% draw chance to find at least one in a hard mulligan on a standard deck.

• Cards which pair well are String Along and "Where's the party?", which keep exhausted enemies engaged with you for opportunities to heal horror even when changing locations. Kicking the Hornet's Nest allows you to spawn enemies on locations where there's already clues, evade them, and then use the Kit.

• Alton O'Connell, as a new level 0 booster who provides occasional clue compression, is also worthy of consideration. Events like Pilfer have overlap due to testing for clues.

So, basically each time you use George's power, you get +2 in card advantage. Why +2? Well, you draw a card, so that's +1, and you get to not-really-discard the other, for another +1 as long as it's a skill. Or a card you would've assigned. Or any card that you don't need immediately since you can get it back later thanks to Grim Resolve. Now, it's not as good as drawing 2, but it's close enough if you build your deck with loads of skills. A standard investigator power is a bonus action per turn, if you deck is build around it. Drawing 2 is usually better than +1 action. So, as long as you can reliably get it once per turn, it's a quite good investigator power. That is, if you actually get value from discarding.

There are of course a decent amount of cards that allow you to discard productively during your turn. At low xp it's mostly the new set of investigate/fight/evade tools, but later there are also cards like Cornered, Gift of Nodens or Bound for the Horizon, all pretty good cards in their own. So long as you manage to get one of those in play, you can reliably activate George's power most turns, if not every turn.

But of course, having a good power that you can activate almost every turn is good, but George's power is once per phase. So you want to use it more than once per turn. So, how to use it outside of the investigator phase? 

At first I thought there were not many great ways. If you overdraw you can use it during the standby phase, but that's not ideal. Idol of Xanatos allows you to discard instead of taking damage/horror, which can happen in the enemy phase or the mythos phase, but that doesn't seem very reliable. Artistic Inspiration is great because it can be reloaded at any phase, but that imply to use it, which you can't always do productively. And Cornered and Gift of Nodens can be used in the mythos phase if there is a test to do. All that is good, don't get me wrong, but it's not as reliable as I'd like. So even with a good setup, you probably won't be able to use his power twice every turn, at least not early in the campaign, or maybe you will have to use it in sub-optimal way (like reloading an Artistic Inspiration that you didn't really need).

And then I realised that George totally can take Forced Learning. Which allow him to use his power every. Single. Standby. Phase. And not just to replace a card that you overdrew, no, no, to replace a card in addition to your draw. With absolutely no setup, and no xp spent.

So, again, each standby phase, you draw two cards, you discard one of them — but not really, it's not discarded, you can still assign it, and then you draw one more card. Basically drawing 3 cards instead of 1 every turn (so long as one of the first two is a skill). In addition to your "main" power, that you can still use pretty much every turn during the investigator phase, and maybe an additionnal time during the mythos phase.

Yeah, yeah, I know, that imply to have a 50 cards deck. Who cares? You draw like 3 to 4 more cards than a normal investigator each turn. It's not a disaster to have 70% more cards in your deck when you have thrice the draw power.