The obvious card to compare this to is Chicago Typewriter, since both are 2-handed, 4 XP rogue weapons.

1. Cost: The Beretta is slightly cheaper to play.
2. Damage and ammo: Both can do up to 3 damage per action once they are in play, and both have 4 ammo.
3. Combat bonuses: The Baretta gives a bigger upfront combat bonus, while the Typewriter allows you to use up extra actions to get +2 combat for each action spent (this might seem terrible, but it does increase the total damage output for very high fight enemies who you would otherwise fail fight tests against). If you need to ready the Beretta, this takes away the combat bonus advantage of the Baretta over the Typewriter, since you have to succeed by an additional 2.
4. Risk: the Baretta has a glaring weakness of requiring exhausting it to fight. It can ready again if you succeed by 2, but this could get you in the sticky situation of missing and having your Beretta "jammed." So it's good to have an escape mechanism if you are using the Beretta (which can be as simple as high agility to evade).

If you do the math on damage per action (factoring in the chance of missing, based on the token pool), the Beretta deals more damage than the Typewriter when only one shot is needed per round, especially against higher fight enemies. The one attack per round might be enough for some parts of the game, especially if you are using a "hit and run" strategy focused on evading enemies and getting clues. Because of the +4 combat bonus, it offers a very high chance of dealing at least 2 damage. But the Typewriter deals more damage if you need to attack multiple times per round. So the choice depends mainly on what type of attacking you will be doing with your investigator. Of course, you can take both, and play the Beretta earlier in the game to fight lower health enemies (especially 2-3 health enemies), and play the Typewriter later to fight high health bosses.

POW. Sniped!

Beretta is a GUN, with a massive hit bonus and conditional post-shot effects. The former means it's great for the many 3 characters in the game, the latter still means that without some additional help then you wont be fighting like a or anytime soon.

• So, the big downside to Beretta, on one hand you need to beat a fight by 2 to even get a second shot, or you can have the hit deal 3 damage, or you can beat by 4 to get both effects. On Standard this means you need to aim for a big number like +9 or +10 if you want to guarantee bonus damage and/or bonus shots, and you need to push all the way to +11 or +12 to be high enough over 3 and 4 fight foes to get guaranteed benefits.

Knowing the above, a +4 to the fight test, to net most characters who like guns in the first place, a +7 base. Shooting at +7 is quite alright, if you want to land a single 2 damage hit. You can do that with a lot of security against regular ol' 2 or 3 fight enemies like Acolyte, but the fact that you have such a weapon in your hands at all -probably- means that you're hunting bigger game, it's probably your job to put down the 3 health chaff and the 4-5 health minibosses, and to chunk down the 10+ health big bads. For this job the impressive +7 fight actually becomes annoyingly flaky, bad hits that leave you with a living enemy and/or an exhausted gun, all of a suddent your only venue to killing the target is gone and the team is in trouble!

So, obviously, Beretta M1918 synergizes with statistical boosters like Well Connected, Hard Knocks, High Roller in particular is a natural combination since both cards really reward you for gross overkills, along with Lucky Cigarette Case to cash in on all the overcommits and similar effects. Perhaps less obviously, This gun synergizes with , as a means of reorienting yourself when a bad token pull would leave you stranded, someone like Winifred Habbamock or Finn Edwards is almost certainly going to get better results with a Beretta than a Tony Morgan.

If you compare Beretta M1918 to the Chicago Typewriter its's an excercise in splitting efficiency hairs, but once it's all boiled down, a Beretta far outpaces the Chicago Typewriter as a means of fighting when your starting is 3 or less and you're not using many boosts or depending on something incidental, but the flankyness of the Beretta makes the Chicago Typewriter straight up better when you have a higher starting point and/or building easy access to static boosts.