I am a bit biased towards investigator cards with cool artwork, so pardon me if i present Survival Instinct a cut above the general opinion. Many investigators find themselves on the cusp of including this card to their deck and it is often the first to be dropped when upgrades are made.

Short explanation what Survival Instinct does: you commit it during an evasion attempt. If the test is successful, the evading investigator evades and exhausts the enemy he was testing against. Additionally, the investigator may disengage from all other enemies he is engaged to. Then he may move to a connecting location, if the text at that location does not prevent moving there.

With only 1 Agility icon, it does not really shoot your evasion attempt into the stars, so either you push the odds further by adding more cards to the skill test, or your investigator has a high Agility base value anyway.

Survival Instinct has several strong competitors with similiar effects. And this is the important point about it: each other card has it's own desirable effect, but as most investigators hate to leave their position or estimate evading as a flimsiness, they are reluctant to adapt the means to the end.

I would like to enforce to choose your means according to the situations you are most likely to face. If you don't know what to expect in a scenario, Manual Dexterity and Bait and Switch probably provide a better service than Survival Instinct. But the more enemies surround you, the more valuable Survival Instinct becomes. If there are alternate locations available, that is. If the scenario traps you within a small scope of locations, like in The Devourer Below, the basic version of Survival Instinct(0) utterly fails. Cunning Distraction or the upgrade Survival Instinct(2) is there for you then.

Especially on a solo trip, the encounter deck sometimes adds enemies at the most objectionable times. Survival Instinct gives you some tremendous respite in such situations.

Pros

• Survival Instinct can be committed to bail other investigators out.
• Works against all enemies engaged with the evading investigator, including Elite and Massive.
• Can be combined with Double or Nothing, as the movement is independent of the disengagement, so success lets you move 2 locations away.
• Most effective when played against a group of enemies.
• A little better suited for Wendy Adams than for other investigators thanks to her high Agility.
• Each item listed under the "Cons" rubric does not apply for the upgraded Survival Instinct(2).

Cons

• The evading investigator only disengages from the enemies, they are not exhausted and will engage him again, if he/she decides to stay at the same location.
• Enemies with the Hunter trait can move and will engage again in the Enemy Phase.
• Adds only 1 Agility icon to the skill test.

Recommendations

• (spoiler) If you plan to win The Devourer Below by finding clues and there are some people blocking the path, this skill could become useful.
• (spoiler) In The House Always Wins there could be a situation where you want to save someone during a turmoil.

Lucky! is a superb card from an angle of flavour and universalism. A survivor's trait is escaping dangerous situations rather than appeasing them by force of arms.

Considerations about the value of this card are found under the basic version of Lucky!(0)

The upgraded version has to be evaluated a bit different. While Lucky!(0) can be recommended without a second thought, Lucky!(2) costs 2xp. Someone claimed "Definitely one of the best cards in the game, Every character can run it at all times and the levelled up version is even better! must have in all decks that can run it!"

I disagree. The additional cost of 2xp have to be put into relation to the additional effect that the upgraded version gives you.

The difference between both is "Draw 1 card." That is it. While generally useful, there are plenty of cards which give you better bonuses at the same price. As always, it really depends on the difficulty setting and personal playstyle. For a deck that takes advantage of events, or wants to speedily sift through the cards, Lucky!(2) probably pulls it's weight.

Pros

• Saves one action, you gain another card.

Cons

• There is a small danger of drawing a Weakness from your deck which could meddle with your plans.

Lucky! is a superb card from an angle of flavour and universalism. A survivor's trait is escaping dangerous situations rather than appeasing them by force of arms.

Especially new investigators should note that this card has similiarities to other in-faction cards (Look what I found!, Oops!), but a fundamentally different mode of operation. Like the other above-mentioned cards, Lucky! is played after the chaos token is drawn from the bag, but unlike the others, Lucky modifies the value of the skill test, giving it a +2 bonus, hence turning the result from failure to success!

Let me give an example to make things clear: There is a location with a clue, a shroud value of 2 and an Obscuring Fog attached to it. You have a base value of 2 Intellect, there are no further modifiers and you draw a "0"-token for the skill test. You failed the test by 2 points.

Variant a. You play Look what I found! The skill test is still considered "failed", but you gain the clue from the location. The Obscuring Fog stays in place.

Variant b. You play Lucky! The skill test is modified by +2, you pass the test "successfully" and gain the clue. The Obscuring Fog is discarded.

Pros

• Lucky! is played after a chaos token is drawn, so you only play it if you would have failed else.
• Low priced play cost, only it's competitor, Unexpected Courage, is cheaper.
• Provides the currently best fallback strategy against otherwise failed skill tests.
• You can play two Lucky! instances to boost one test, if you are not passing the test after playing the first.
• Wendy's Amulet can play events from the discard pile.

Cons

• Lucky! under no circumstances turns a drawn -token into a successful test.
• One-time effect. Make it worthwile!
• Does not combine with Rabbit's Foot nor Look what I found!

I just tried Dark Horse with a Wendy Adams deck - and it doesn't work, at least not without Scrapper or similar. Wendy's Amulet is pretty awesome, as it lets you play discarded events - so you need some resources for events. However, if you have resources, it's pretty tough to clear them when you want Dark Horse to take effect. Scrapper would be good, as you can pump a test and clear your resources - but without it, I was stuck.

It is a powerful effect, +1 to each stat - but I think this might suit someone like "Ashcan" Pete who maybe can run a little more empty resource-wise.

Zoey is the Guardian's Guardian. Roland Banks will try to get clues, using his killing as a means to an end. Zoey kills because things need to die. Her base stats show you what she does - 4 Combat (which is basically 5, as you'll always want a weapon) and 4 Willpower - she survives and she kills. Her investigator ability also tells you want she does. She hunts down monsters and engages them. And then kills them. And then moves on. For players who want a clear cut role on the team, Zoey is a great choice. If a monster spawns, you go to it, and you kill it. If a monster engages another 'gator, you engage it, and you kill it. If a monster thinks about spawning, you make sure it knows you'll engage it, and you'll kill it.

Zoey's weakness, Smite the Wicked, is extremely time sensitive. If it comes up early in the game it's effectively blank. It will spawn somewhere, and eventually, Zoey will find it, and she'll kill it. If it spawns near the end of the game, it's probably just going to become a trauma, because the AP required to go to the farthest location and kill it will likely be better used to complete the scenario.

Zoey's unique card, Zoey's Cross, is yet another indication of what Zoey does. Combined with her effect, it basically becomes "Do 1 damage when you engage a monster." The flexibility and efficiency this gives her can't be understated. Zoey can literally walk in to a location containing a 1hp monster and declare it dead once the cross is out. Monsters with that incredibly awkward 3 HP now become 1 action kills with Machete or .45 Automatic. About the only time you won't want to use the effect is fighting a 2 HP monster, because the 1 damage won't kill it, and won't change the AP it takes to kill.

As a Dunwich investigator, Zoey has a limited but interesting card pool. She can take all the investigator cards, giving her a lot of ability to make things dead, and a very small amount of ability to do much else beside spend AP inefficiently on healing. However, her 5 cards from any class really let you shape her.

Her inherently high willpower makes Zoey a reasonable place to put Mystic cards. In particular Rite of Seeking is a very nice way for her to grab a few clues. Her high WP and focus on killing means that she is extremely well suited to survive the encounter draw that Drawn to the Flame requires, letting her pick up clues for free. She can pick up Scrying to give her something to do with actions when there aren't any monsters around.

Outside of Mystic, cards that give free AP or free clues are usually ideal for her. Guardian weapons are generally all she needs for combat, so shoring up her other duties is usually the best route. She really likes cards like Shortcut and Quick Thinking that grant her free actions and moves to get closer to monsters and to kill monsters. Things like #"Look what I found!" and Lucky! let her attempt investigations and have a much higher level of success. Leo De Luca benefits everyone and Guardians have a relative dearth of allies (Beat Cop is always a nice friend with the cross to do 2 free damage, but he'll die eventually). Working a Hunch gives her access to "free" clues when there's nothing to kill.

Overall, Zoey is about as straightforward as she seems most of the time. She is best paired with someone like Daisy Walker, Rex Murphy, Agnes Baker or Jim Culver who can cover the clue finding and story events while she keeps bad things at bay. But while it may seem like being a one-trick pony isn't that much fun, Zoey is one of the most entertaining investigators around!