Errata You may give/tip fedora from hand to any female investigator as a fast action, by paying its cost and referring to her as m'lady until the end of the scenario. The female investigator receives one mental trauma.

Flavour text "Even when the unknowable horrors of the universe descend upon a supreme gentlemen, such as yourself, you remain polite in the face of a lady".

This Trish is a massive downgrade from her original form. Before errata changed her ability (to only affect non Elites), there were tons and tons of ways to use fast actions and auto evade Elder Gods. And with Handcuffs or Fend Off and a guardian, her ability was basically "once per turn when you're at a location with a teammate, get an extra clue."

Her signature is better now (plus one card or a move; previously it was pretty situational). But her enemy is no longer something she can deal with herself with obsfucation and an investigate. If you have a guardian, easy enough for them to take the guy out. But the new weakness means if you want to play Trish solo, you have to massively build around it.

This is a downgrade. An automatic success is better than the chance to take a test. Evades are the worst of the five core actions, because not only are they contextual, they generally delay problems instead of solving them.

Immediate Staple for Chapter 2 Rogues. This is arguably the best 0XP rogue ally even in Chapter 1, providing a bonus stat and an extra action (So long as that action is to move) for a reasonable amount of resources. In the context of "a core set that doesn't cause issues down the line" color me disappointed on this one. I would've preferred to see a card closer in power level to Cat Burglar (1).

With respect to the full cardpool: There are going to be decks that prefer other effects (like gaining resources with Bianca "Die Katz" or getting an extra action to play items like Joey "The Rat" Vigil or boosting with Robert Castaigne. But Olivier has the same advantages of the venerable Dr. Milan Christopher of being a general-purpose slot filler that improves exactly what his faction wants to improve - which is going to make him a consideration for nearly every rogue deck, even if Olivier doesn't ultimately make the cut.

One potentially overlooked card this helps is Old Shotgun. Instead of entering with 0 or 2 ammo, it would enter with 1 or 3 ammo. That's a pretty significant increase and helps a lot to make the shotgun better for investigators. There are other ways to enable the shotgun, for instance Cleaning Kit, but that costs resources and you need to draw it. Locked and Loaded is always there and always ready.

It seems wrong that this card has been around since the beginning of the game and has never gotten a review. In fact, this is the "random" weakness you put in the original Roland Banks starter deck for the original core set, so for many this is the first generic weakness they were exposed to. How does it set the bar for other weaknesses? What does a new player think when they see this card hiding in their deck?

Short answer, it sucks. I find this to be one of the more damaging weakness cards you can get (although I do also tend to play the kinds of decks it punishes the most). That said, I do think this actually is quite a good tool to teach new players some important lessons about Arkham Horror. Let me explain:

This card teaches that some decks have more trouble with certain situations than others. Play a character without a lot of economy who likes to save up for expensive assets (i.e. guardians, especially way back in the core set when guardians didn't have the economy they have now) and this card can be back breaking. Play a character who has good economy, or who usually doesn't play expensive stuff, and the weakness is almost trivial. The fact it's the weakness in the OG Roland deck is kind of mean if you ask me, since that's the exact deck it's the worst in.

This card teaches that you should play around your weakness, but sometimes it's just luck when you draw it. It highly encourages playing things as soon as you can, and not sitting around with resources unspent. If this gets drawn right after a big turn when you spent all your resources on a shiny new gun then it's a non-issue. If it gets drawn the turn before you spend all your resources on a shiny new gun then you are very sad. That's kind of good advice for the game in general. Use your tools to accomplish "good enough" right now. Don't wait around for "perfect" since that may never happen and you're always one bad draw away from getting wrecked. I guess it is a case of smacking new players until they learn to play better.

This card teaches that Arkham Horror is cruel and doesn't care about your feelings. Especially in the first few campaigns the developers made it very obvious that the game hates you and is actively trying to ruin your day. That design philosophy seems to have ebbed over time but is still present to some extent.

All of these are very good lessons for a new player to learn, although learning them can be very un-fun. This card is also bizarrely thematic. When you know it's in your deck you do indeed get paranoid. As my deck gets thinner I often find myself deliberately not triggering my "draw a card" abilities because I really don't want Paranoia to come out right now...

Overall I find this to be a worse than average weakness. The average weakness seems balanced around ~3 actions worth of punishment and maybe an additional small slap in the face. This can easily wipe out 5, 6, or even more actions worth of effort if you draw it at a the worst time (and unfortunately "the worst time" for this weakness happens surprisingly often).

I do think it has gotten far easier to manage over time though, since we have access to many more cards that accelerate economy and we are less dependent on very expensive assets. That takes a very bad weakness and brings it more in line with less horrible ones.