This quality card double, triple dips into as bunch of different card roles.

• The typical Hp/Sanity value you can expect from utility allies. Like other high-importance allies (Leo De Luca) though you really don't want to have Lola Santiago die, ever. Lola Santiago extends your hp and sanity bar by 1 each, and then if is a matter of life or death she can take one more of each. Nothing of particular note here.

• A static +1 for two different stats. This here is tremendous value for a 3-cost card. Buffing two(+) stats insofar has been the realm of conditional allies (Dario El-Amin and sensitive accessories (St. Hubert's Key, Key of Ys), Lola Santiago does occupy an ally slot but she is completely unconditional and always "on". The faction typically has middling and high and rely on one or both for clue gathering, Lola Santiago is already at this point the premier Clue-card for clue-minded characters, even without the extra card text. Note that Lockpicks taps into both of Lola Santiago's stats, that's a cool synergy there.

• The text ability, exchanging cash for clues, will become expensive ->FAST<-. if you've ever played cards like Scene of the Crime or Working a Hunch you will know that these mechanics can chunk down your resources dramatically. Obviously though Lola Santiago can keep doing her thing "infinitely", an action-less clue every turn! Running this ability with any sort of regularity means that you need a powerful economy engine to pay for repeat payments at 2/3 or 4 resources. One trick with Lola Santiago is that regular "investigate" actions suddenly become somewhat less effective than just triggering her ability, this means that rather then spending the odd-action to investigate you might actually be better served spending those actions to gain resources. If your engine is strong enough then your only actual investigate actions will be the ones you try while she is on cooldown (Barring superpowered Lockpicks triggers. Note that Flashlight can bring her cost down or nullify it completely, with Lola Santiago as a centrepiece (dual wielding Lockpicks and Flashlight) it is now possible to build a very strong clue-sniffing .

The biggest strength of Lola Santiago is not her incredible ability, it is her flexibility. Cards that on one hand help you gather clues and on the other help you deal with enemies are very rare, Lola Santiago's +1 can really help bridge the gap for when you can't quite (or don't want/need to) kill an enemy.

Lola Santiago's biggest weakness however is her high sustained cost, there is no way that you can play a dedicated monster killer, you just wont have the resources to fund weapons and combat utility cards like Machete+Physical Training. You can still deal with a few threats every scenario and if you hold off on using her special ability and lean on the raw +stats instead you can shift strategies to/from clue gathering and monster killing as needed.

One thing I had failed to notice with this card at first is that "the performing investigator draws 2 cards and gains 2 resources", which makes it a fantastic support card! If your friend Finn is facing rotting remains, a test he will probably fail, you can help him recover a bit. He will draw 2 cards and gain 2 resources which is a good compensation. The fact that you can take it back with true survivor and true survivor with resourceful (another innate card, see a pattern?) just makes the survivor a well oiled machine! Silas and Calvin will like it a lot. Now the survivor can alleviate others failures too, that's fantastic!

P.S: English is not my native language, so sorry if I make mistakes.

What a great card! Lucky! is a great card and this card will not change that, but it's so nice to have a card that fills a similar role to Lucky! while at the same time not being the same and still having its own space. I'm currently playing an Ashcan Desperate/Dark Horse/Yaotl deck and I'm taking out my Lucky!s because they cost one resource and have no icons in a deck that discourages having resources and encourages having cards with icons in the discard pile. They synergized badly with the deck. This card (while not necessarily getting along with Yaotl) is a great replacement in that deck.

In general, it's very well balanced with Lucky!. While Lucky! gives you a chance to pass a test when you would have failed after you've seen the token, Live and Learn lets you weasel out of an auto fail or other really bad draw. Lucky! costs a resource, while Live and Learn still resolves side effects of a bad test and does not guarantee success (or further side effects of another failed test). But it's free!

I'm happy to see the designers make a card like this, and I've enjoyed playing with it.

Sefina Rousseau, This, and Ornate Bow = potential 15 damage for 5 resources and 2 extra actions. Back her up with Backstab, and Sefina can now deliver that 3 damage burst pretty consistently (and cheaper than ever). I can't think of another investigator this would be better on.

The flavor is pretty cool, but I think the mechanics are quite weak here. Intrepid is in close contention with Expose Weakness for worst card in the Heart of the Elders pack. The benefit is pretty weak and you have very little control over it. At best, Intrepid is going to work out to around +4 scattered over a bunch of skill tests. Even in this optimal situation, that's still a fairly weak card. I would actually rather take Take the Initiative or even Unexpected Courage just to get a more substantial boost to a single test, which is going to be much more consistently useful and much easier to plan around.

Why do people think Streetwise is better than Keen Eye? Part of the reason is just that Rogues have more resources to spare than Guardians, but another part of the reason is that +3 to one test is superior to +1 scattered over 3 tests. It's just much easier to benefit from the former.

Of course, then there's the problem that you only get that full bonus in a small minority of situations. A lot of the time, you'll actually get way less than that. After all, more often that not, you're not spending every action of a turn taking skill tests. And even if you do plan to spend every action taking skill tests, you're not always going to get the Will test you need. And even if you get a Will test, passing Will treacheries is really hard, and Intrepid's +1 is certainly not going to make you likely to succeed on its own. On Expert you would have to add an enormous amount of additional boosting or face a very strong chance of a wasted card.

I think this card is significantly better if there's a Mystic in the party. Mystics proactively test Will all the time and usually build their decks so they have a pretty easy time passing those tests. So you can have the Mystic go first, chuck this onto one of their spells, and then take your turn knowing you'll have the Intrepid bonus. This is much better. Even then, though, I wouldn't take this card. The payoff simply isn't big enough.

Yes, you could combine this with Leo De Luca or Police Badge or whatever, or "Let me handle this!" to try to hunt for a Will test when you want one, but honestly the payoff of this card is just way too low to make these combos interesting for me. I just don't see much here.

Fortunately, the other Guardian card in the pack, Custom Ammunition, is a huge hit, so Guardian players needn't feel too much regret about this one.