A really interesting card. How many Will or Agility tests can you realistically expect to draw in a given scenario? Well, people have done the math about this. In an excellent post, The Strange Solution calculates that skill tests collectively make up significantly less than half of all encounter cards. Skill tests feature in about 40% of encounter cards in Night of Zealot, 36% in The Dunwich Legacy, and 32% in the Path to Carcosa (the vast majority of these being Willpower or Agility tests, with a handful of Intellect tests thrown in).

This means, if we assume the player is not drawing extra encounter cards (from Delve Too Deep, Overzealous, the exploration deck, etc), the odds are that you will probably not get that many treacheries that involve skill tests. Roughly three to five such treacheries per scenario is a reasonable expectation--and that doesn't leave a lot of room for Tooth of Eztli to turn a big profit. If your scenarios are taking longer or extra encounter draws are a factor, that obviously changes things.

There is the further difficulty that, on high levels, you will often be failing the treachery tests anyway, even with Tooth of Eztli's bonus, and even if further resources are invested. On Expert, even a Higher Education/Hyperawareness/Tooth of Eztli Ursula, which is probably the ideal situation, won't be able to pass all of these tests; and if you fail, obviously, Tooth of Eztli isn't doing much for you. (Although there are a handful of treacheries, like Frozen in Fear, that will almost certainly give you a draw sooner or later.) Daisy and Norman, meanwhile, are going to have a really hard time taking advantage of Tooth of Eztli's draw on Agility checks. On lower levels, where you'll get more draws, and it is just generally a more viable strategy to try to pass treacheries, this card is more attractive.

Generally speaking, Seekers are pretty well positioned to ignore treacheries. The most common outcome of treacheries, by far, is that you take horror; but Seekers can often just ignore this, as they have naturally high Sanity pools (as well as good in-faction horror healing and horror soak if they need it). While Seekers have some nice assets they'd rather not lose, compared to the other four classes, Seekers are the least asset-dependent, and consequently the least afraid of things like Crypt Chill. Frozen in Fear is a terror to Guardians and Rogues; but for a Seeker with Pathfinder in play, it often makes literally no difference.

My instinct is that for solo Seekers, treacheries are generally the least of their worries. Spending a big chunk of resources on a card that provides a small boost against them, and maybe a bit of long-term economy down the road, just doesn't make a lot of sense--not when enemies are such a big threat. For multiplayer Seekers, who don't need to worry about monsters, this is more playable. But I suspect its benefits will end up being substantially less impactful than a lot of other expensive first-turn plays a Seeker could make--and if Tooth of Eztli is delayed past the first turn, it's even less likely to provide profit. Of course, the various synergies related to the Relic keyword (Unearth the Ancients, etc.) complicate things further.

Daisy begins the ritual. She's never attempted it on something this difficult before. It will take all her knowledge to unearth an ancient with this level of power.

She speaks the word of the incantation. The translation had felt nearly impossible to piece together at first. It was mentioned in hushed tones in certain texts, reprinted in partial in others, in Sanskrit here, Sumerian there. Through months of intense study, she had finally reproduced it in full.

A glowing seal appears in the middle of the pentagram she has drawn in the dirt as she mutters the words. A wizened hand breaks through the dust. Then an arm. And finally, the truest sign that she had succeeded in her task, a neckbeard.

Trailing slime as he pulls himself upwards out of the seal, Dr. Milan Christopher grunts. "Hrumph! This better be good. My clan was about to raid the Deadmines, and all our other DPS are shit."

Here's a conundrum: how far can the basic weakness go to be as thematic and heart wrenching as possible, but at the same time maintain player's ability to have interesting choices and control over their investigator?

The answer is: closer than this here card, because Doomed is now the king of nastiest basic weaknesses in the game.

Well, not on its own it's not, but in the chain of events between Doomed, Accursed Fate and The Bell Tolls, this card takes the cake easily just by the association with its "upgrades". Last card in this chain of weaknesses outright kills you on the spot the moment you draw it. How bad is it? I propose we take a look at the "Doomed chain" from two very different perspectives.

From the thematic point of view, nothing fits Arkham Files game better than Doomed, because from the moment you see it for the first time, you know what's coming. You understand your inevitable demise and you know there's no escaping your fate. Your powerlessness regarding your future is certain. Sense of dread is overwhelming.

You get the idea.

This one card is the most Lovecraftianesque, Poe-like and Chambers-shaped thing in this game and there's no denying it. It embraces all the things that source material on which Arkham Files is build upon tried to convey to its readers and contains all the characteristics of reliving it in your own living room. It's a perfect thematic 10 out of 10.

But... Is it fun to have in the game from the mechanical standpoint, that's a different question entirely.

I'll start my considerations with few assumptions in mind:

1. I'll assume that basic weakness is drawn only once per scenario;
2. I'll assume player knows what weakness they have in their deck before starting their first scenario;

We can't really escape the comparison between "Doomed Chain" and other weaknesses printed so far. That comparison will be skewed, because no other previously printed basic weakness provides overarching effects that accumulate over the course of the campaign (Dark Pact is such a card, but it's also realeased beside Doomed). If we focus on the in-scenario effect of both Doomed and its first upgrade, Accursed Fate, we can safely say that their effects are mild to say the least. One horror, hell - even two horror is really basic and relatively bearable. None of those effects are even close to some of the previous nastiest basic weaknesses (like Overzealous that can drop the sky on your head all by itself) - but it's The Bell Tolls that makes the chain the foulest of all. Why is that? Because of it's thematic inclination: you can't do anything about it.

The strongest point of this weakness chain is also the biggest mechanical problem. You can't do anything about it. With above assumptions in mind, we can precisely say that investigator will die in scenario number 5. (We will investigate other options later on, keep on reading)

I can hear the voices already:

"Of course you can counter it! you can use Scrying or Alyssa Graham and never even draw it!"

"You can drop all the card draw from your deck and not draw extra cards!"

First of all, mystic-specific solution is just that - a mystic specific solution that not all investigators can use, and even from those that can take mystic cards, do you really want to take 4 off-class cards that don't serve any other purpose than not dying? Sure, not dying is important - but it doesn't progress the game on its own. And second, you have to draw cards! And you will draw cards every upkeep, not drawing cards isn't helping either. Basic weaknesses in general are not there to be scared of drawing cards, but to thow a wrench in the works. They also serve the purpose of affecting player behavior. (More on that later, bear with me.)

There is no real way to play around "Doomed Chain" but it's not a surprise: it is in line with its design through and through. And from the mechanical standpoint, that is not ideal. No other weakness based on its revelation effect does this. If you have Amnesia in the deck, you don't hoard cards, if you have Paranoia you try not to sit on your resources. Overzealous, as much as I hate it, can be helped with greater preparation for the encounter set shenanigans. Enemies can be dispatched in small paper bags or evaded, weaknesses with lasting effects can be discarded for 2 actions. With this, you can't do anything. Another basic weakness from The Forgotten Age expansion, Dark Pact, gives you the choice and punishes you for chosing poorly, but there is a place for human decision and its consequences. With "Doom chain", there's nothing. And for someone more mechanically oriented, that might be too far, because if you get Doomed, you just lost the character without fault of your own, before you even start playing. "Is the winning move not to play at all...?"

Because of how "Doom Chain" is designed, it can be heavily detrimental to your campaign. If you have to start from scratch with new character in scenario 6 of 8, your chances of overall success diminish, as a fresh level 0 deck will be at disadvantage. And that's with the assumption you draw one basic weakness every scenario, but let's say you were lucky and The Bell Tolls took you down later, in scenario 7. Starting final battle with fresh level 0 deck isn't really fun EVEN with Arkham Files standards in mind.

And all of this just because of single basic weakness, that could've been something different entirely. Chronophobia, anyone?

Arkham Horror LCG with its content celebrates diversity of its players, both thematically and mechanically affilicted - and anyone in between. It focuses greatly on telling player stories, and in this one case, I think that theme took precedence over the mechanics. All of the player misfortune in this game is never truely based on single card draw or single token (unless you make it so yourself with some Double or Nothing combo), and certainly not even before the game starts and player scatter to do their investigating, killing and evading. This is unprecedented, and I can see it being too much for some.

Are there any upsides to being Doomed though? Surely it can't be that bad, can it? As I've mentioned already, revelation effect of first two cards in chain is relatively mild, and as for the third card... Well, it can be somewhat diminished. I'd like to propose different approach, that we shall call "Embrace your Doom, or how I learned to love the Bell" (trademark pending).

If you can manage to not draw your weakness even in few scenarios, you're probably set for the rest of your campaign if your deck is not based on drawing whole stack few times in any given scenario. You might simply never get close enough to The Bell Tolls for it to be any real threat to the success of your campaign. But that's easy. You can go even further.

Earlier I've mentioned that "good" basic weakness gives difficult choices or affects player behavior. If you know you're going to kick the bucket faster than anyone else anyway, why not just take some risks that you wouldn't have taken because of fear of trauma or other lasting effects? You're Doomed anyway, what do you care? Sweet bell calls you home, draw those cards faster, aim for Bell in scenario 3!

TL,DR: Bells be flying, players dying, on this journey of self-discovery make your mind if you can take it anymore. The most polarizing weakness of all. Either have fun with it, remove it from the pool or just embrace the inevitable. None of those approaches is injustified nor should be looked down upon.

So time may tell but for now Calvin just seems horrifically underpowered. The idea is cool - you can happily fail early scenarios to gain trauma which increases his skills which means you can spend those scenarios trying to grind XP instead of making progress - but the payoff really isn’t there to make up for him having such awful base stats.

Let’s compare him to Mark Harrigan, another investigator who uses something bad happening to him (taking damage) to boost his skills. Using Sophie he can boost any skill by 2 for a relatively low cost of taking one damage. Sure, this doesn’t apply throughout the whole game like Calvin’s ability, but Mark easily makes up for this by a) having good stats to begin with, b) being able to boost a stat more than once for a critical test and c) being able to heal the damage to get further uses of his ability. Calvin has awful stats unless he is close to death, cannot naturally boost his base skills above 5, and gets weaker if you heal damage or trauma from him. Mark even benefits from taking damage whilst Calvin gets nothing other than approaching having a decent stat value.

Calvin’s weaknesses are pretty glaring. He is awful at the beginning of a campaign (or any time he has less than 3 damage/horror on him) as he can’t do anything effectively. With 0 in everything he has almost no hope at fighting or evading enemies and he can really only discover clues by using Flashlight to make locations 0 shroud or via events. He can use enemies that deal damage to boost his physical skills, but when stuck with an enemy that only deals horror he is going to be in trouble. Even 2 is a bad number to have in a skill and 3 is still poor, so he really needs at least one other investigator to kill enemies that he cannot handle early and another one to discover clues. However, this goes against his desire to fail scenarios in order to gain additional trauma as the other investigators are not likely to want this to happen, leaving him in an awkward position early in the campaign. Once he gets some trauma he starts to become okay, but then a lot of his deck needs to be devoted to keeping him alive and becoming merely ‘okay’ is not worth the annoyance of being useless for a long time.

So all in all he is definitely interesting, but I can’t really see him being anything other than awful unless some amazing combo comes out that only he can use.

Up until Forgotten Age, this had been relegated to the back of my stack of Mystic player cards. With the Player Card options included with Forgotten Age, though, I think this may see play. Between Dark Prophecy, the new "Seal" mechanic, and the upcoming Olive McBride, I'm thinking that Jim may see Song of the Dead as carrying a lot of potential.