As Kleptomania is a weakness with a player card type (asset), the player retains control of it when played to their play area. This means it should be a valid target for Dexter Drake to use as a sacrifice for his ability.

Just like the reviewer above, I tried to use this card in a self-sustained fighter build, and it feels like the combo was specifically designed for these kind of builds, because everything just clicks with this one. I'll describe a somewhat different combination of cards that provides a lot more consistency and action compression but less burst potential. Daisy seems like the most effective choice for this combo since she gets a built-in extra action to use her newfound weapon. Here's what the core of this deck looks like.

1. Gray's Anatomy is our bread and butter. I find it sufficient to only have one copy, because Research Librarian, Whitton Greene and The Raven Quill can all fetch it from anywhere, even from the discard pile.

2. The Raven Quill is the enabler that both helps us find our book of choice and virtually grants it a weapon status by making it not provoke AoOs. The upgrades we want are "Living Quill" (to ignore AoOs), "Spectral Binding" (to free one hand for Daisy's signature weakness), "Mystic Vane" (not necessary, but since we want to succeed by 3 on our Gray's Anatomy tests to deal max damage, it will make it much more comfartable to do so, especially on standart) and "Supernatural Record" (to play the Anatomy from anywhere while also compressing an action).

3. Ancient Stone (Knowledge of the Elders) is the source of damage that will be amplified by Gray's Anatomy. With just one secret spent and card drawn we can hit enemies consistently for 4 damage without ever directly attacking them. To find the stones as soon as possible also grab Whitton Greene, and to keep it full of sectets I'd also suggest Enraptured and Ariadne's Twine, but keep in mind that even 6 secrets, which I'd say is an average amount, can net you up to 24 damage.

4. Empirical Hypothesis is what gives us actionless card draw to activate Ancient Stone and deal 1 damage from the Anient Stone + 3 from Anatomy's amplification. The best part is that the Hypothesis works amazingly well with no upgrades. Always choose "succeed by 3" condition because you're already looking to succeed by 3 on your Gray's Anatomy test, which will happen very often since you're testing at skill value of at least 7 against test difficulty of 1. If you have some extra XP, I also suggest taking "Alternative Hypothesis" and "Independent Variable" upgrades that will let you generate 2 evidence per turn instead of just 1 as long as you defeat an enemy, which is rather trivial to do with this build.

4.5. As a plan B in case of not drawing Empirical Hypothesis for the whole game you can take Ancestral Knowledge, which will provide you with 5 instances of 4 damage from the start of every scenario while also being a great card on its own.

With the combo set up, the process of annihilating enemies will look like this: 1) you choose an enemy at your location;

2) you initiate the ability on Gray's Anatomy and test (1), preferably succeeding by 3;

3) you put an evidence on your Empirical Hypothesis because you chose "succeed by 3" criteria at the start of the round;

4) you ready Empirical Hypothesis and choose "discard a treachery or enemy from play" criteria;

5) you spend an evidence from Empirical Hypothesis with its ability and draw a card;

6) you activate ability on Ancient Stone and deal 1 damage to the chosen enemy which gets bumped up to 4 with Gray's Anatomy amplification;

7) if that is enough to defeat the enemy (which is usually enough if the enemy is non-Elite), you exhaust Empirical Hypothesis and add another evidence to it.

This is a very consistent way to deal 4 damage in one action and up to 16 damage in a turn. Apart from consistency, this way of dealing damage has a number of advantages compared to traditional attacking. Firstly, you don't actually attack enemies and thus can't get retaliated. Sedondly, with test difficulty of 1 you can't really fail, barring the dreaded , so no tokens that trigger negative effects on failing can bother you. Thirdly, you draw a card every time you deal damage, keeping your hand full of cards. Finally, with the very same Gray's Anatomy you can also amplify healing if needed. This increases the value of Painkillers and Smoking Pipe, which suddenly heal 4 damage or 4 horror in exchange for just 1 horror or 1 damage respectively. Considering that you'll be drawing like crazy it might be a good idea to include 1 copy of each in your deck to never worry about dying.

Compared to the Occult Lexicon variation above, this combo only needs one action to deal damage, doesn't require to have Blood-Rite in hand, to spend resources or to discard cards. On the other hand, you can never deal more than 4 damage per attack, although you still can spend more evidence from Empirical Hypothesis and secrets from Ancient Stone to deal 1 damage for every draw if you desperately need it. Given that the majority of non-Elite enemies have 4 or less health I find my build's damage capabilities more than enough while being much more consistent. And if I do need to deal more, e.g. to a boss, I'll just spend more actions, comfortably dealing 4 damage with each attack.

I have tested a deck with this combo in true solo in Standalone Mode of Midnight Masks and crushed it with 3 turns and a couple of actions remaining, which is a crazy thing to do in solo Midnight Masks. Currenlty I'm trying to figure out the most XP-efficient way to upgrade into this build during a campaign, given that at 0 XP you can't fight at all or are very bad at it, but at ~30+ you're leagues ahead of any traditional fighting decks, e.g. big gun (as it always is now with the class). Anyway, just like Daisy with Abyssal Tome, which also got much stronger in The Scarlet Keys, seekers with their superior intellect once again invent a combo that proves that words hurt more than bullets.

Humorously, possibly the best available weapon for Carson Sinclair.

With a measly 2 , you need to cram as much damage into a single test as possible. Reliably hitting anything with a Machete is impossible; you need buffs, and whether in the form of cards or resources, it's going to be expensive.

Stick a Jury-Rig on a sledge and suddenly frail old Carson is swinging at 6 for 3 damage, easily handling most of the enemies in the game. You hit a wall against 4+ health enemies, but you have a few options to squeak in extra damage in a pinch without additional tests, or to evade them with reasonable success.

And of course, playing as Carson you're going to be glued to other investigators that could pitch in occasional extra damage or evasion when you do hit those edge cases. If Carson is trying to play solo, something has gone terribly wrong.

Like most investigators, however, he probably doesn't want the upgrade. While the bonus on the second ability ensures you'll always hit and kill, six damage is usually excessive and three actions is much more prohibitive than two. The inability to step over to an adjacent location to rescue a fellow gator is crippling, and unlike most characters, his low combat means he can't primarily rely on the first ability. Potentially useful in a duo using Safeguard, if you're excited about not actually playing your character.

Played with a group with this card a few times now. I was not the bearer but I hate this card. It is not just because that the recovery condition is so hard, but the design is so bad : It goes against the fun of hidden information on hand.

Normal Revelation weakness requires the player to show that card right after drawing, not hard to do it correctly instead of tucking it on your hand. More advanced weakness card that stays on hand requires a bit more discipline from the player until the table knows for the first time that it is on hand, like Dark Memory, Arrogance, Whispers from the Deep, or Pay Your Due. But there is this satisfying flavorful reward when they do it correctly, even more so if they managed to keep poker face when drawing it up. Dark Pact is also good design, similar to Carcosa Hidden card. You can make up all sort of stories why you don't want to do something or even looking like you are doing your job normally, until the reveal, and it makes memorable gaming time.

Underprepared is the worst of such "cripples from hand" weakness. The owner can make mistake of committing cards normally completely forgotten about Underprepared and no one else is going to correct for him. When I am trying to help with : "You gasp just now drawing in Upkeep Phase. You sure you don't have Underprepared on hand?" it is just so weird to say every now and then they commit something.

Apparently to play this card the right way, the owner should commit and then say one of the icon mysteriously disappear. (Or in the case of single icon like Resourceful, only the effect remains.) This is not a digital game and the icons aren't going to blink away on their own. Underprepared does not say anything about revealing it, unlike Dark Memory / Pay Your Due, or not revealing itself elegantly as a part of punishment (and trying to fix it) like Arrogance / Whispers from the Deep. Not only it is prone to mistake, it also takes away from the impact of discovery. It's kind of downer...

But the suffering has just begun. The whole table would then have to keep checking for error each time the owner commit something, likely until the end of scenario because they loses all the will to get rid of it. And since the card is facing the owner's side invisible from others, it is a matter of time an entire table forgot about it since they are busy with their own calculations, at the same time owner also forgot to mention it since they are discouraged from committing for a period of time.

If the table forgot about it for some time then someone suddenly remembers it, now it also tiring to retroactively think about previous misplays whether the removed icon would change the outcome or not. It's a weakness that taxes actual willpower of all players. I would have to make a sign saying "I have Underprepared" that the bearer can choose to place on their play area after the first crippled commit the next time we got this dang weakness, or some kind of temporary insert to make it double-sided if the bearer needs help reminding.

A better design for the same effect would be a Revelation that put this card on threat area for everyone to see, and say hand size is reduced by 1 (weird by itself I know but I am trying to make an equivalent effect here), and with condition to pay 1 resource + no card on hand + only bearer can trigger to clear it.

Even then, it took too much imagination to link its mechanic to thematic sense of this card even in the original hides-on-hand version. (The awesome Oops! guys art is the only good thing that helps understanding this card.) Take the classic Dark Memory, it is easy to understand what is happening here. Her past memory from Hyperborea is acting up again and it is hurting her. By playing the event she released the thing with some effort (2 cost) and it causes some collateral damage, but she is fine for now. Dark Pact's moment of playing is the stabby-stab time, it probably took some effort (2 cost) to do so. When you play Pay Your Due you paid your due (duh), extra actions paid may meant you offer them some work to substitute the cash, and when not they get rid of your fingers or something. Event weaknesses are supposed to be designed like this. The moment of playing the event should be immediately understandable.

Now we are back to Underprepared. After getting this on hand, you have to deliberately go from very well prepared, to underprepared, to finally play this "Blunder Event" which seems to implies that up until now, while the weakness is (not so) hidden on hand, you were making blunder of being underprepared and you learned now to be more prepared, getting rid of the weakness. At this point it is already weird that the punishment of continuing to be properly prepared instead of playing your "man of blunder" role is lesser skill icon (while you can be perfectly armed with Asset cards or a lot of resources, looks very prepared to me)

Even weirder, you are actually underprepared after fixing it since you are left with nothing, you don't immediately go back to properly prepared, unlike most weakness that flavorfully implies you have won against your personal struggle and recovered, or just a singular "oh no!" moment like Darrell's Blunder weakness Ruined Film of the same trait, or Mark's Flaw weakness Shell Shock. The investigator in fact looked more prepared with spare Asset cards on hand and some spare resources to play them when decided to not fix this weakness at all.

The design is so bad and the flavor is also weird!

I recently play a rogue with some XP devoted for treachery defense. He can simply not trying at all to boost and tank horror from willpower tests with Elder Sign Amulet (skips about 1-2 tests), or make it go away with cards like "You handle this one!" or Counterespionage. But there is a hole in this defense, if Frozen in Fear already lands there is not much I can do.

Frozen in Fear is an example that this card is a good answer. Like Lucky!, you get to keep this card intact on hand while you try the recurring test again and again, until you see an appropriate chaos tokens, then like its name you surely pass with 2 resources. Much better than going for a big willpower boost (e.g. Moxie pump / Say Your Prayers / Savant) only for the chaos bag to laugh at you with a bigger minus and lose all your investments. You just wait and not waste anything with Sure Gamble. For the sake of variety and same XP budget, rather than doubling up 2x Elder Sign Amulet for consistency only for it to be powerless against Frozen in Fear, 1x Elder Sign Amulet + 1x Sure Gamble maybe better.

The "Striking Fear" set is special that it is somehow used in most FINAL scenario of the campaign. I say this card is not so situational if there is this prominent pattern in campaign design. In the final scenario you either win or lose the campaign and many things in Striking Fear set are BS against Rogue, and it will be sad if your character is on their knee unable to play after such a long journey. I think even 3 XP for one of this card added last minute before the final showdown is a good investment. It is a core set card for good reason.

To make good use of XP, an over-success card with situational benefit like .41 Derringer (2) which now comes together in Revised Core Set can give it an another duty. Unlike Lucky! which only works when you fail, this card sometimes let you choose between regular success or over-success. (In the case if this gun it has 3 kinds of success.) Breaking and Entering (2), Slip Away (2), etc. also has multiple kinds of success.