I've always been skeptical about the tri-color talents. The idea of a card that makes resources and boosts any skill sounds great. But 3 XP and 3 resources is a lot of up front investments for an untutorable card. If you're trying to make a resource profit, it takes 3 turns to outperform Emergency Cache, and then only if you play suited cards on the correct tempo. If you want +2 to a skill test once per turn, there are many High Roller, other assets that will get you there, and that's before we consider the passive +1 stat cards or the +1 Lucky!-likes to be competition. The dream seems to be that you find it early and mix and match the two uses until it becomes basically a free to play skill booster in the long run. Nothing has changed my fundamental doubts here.

That said, with The Drowned City, prospects for Sleuth are looking better than ever. We got powerful new tomes in three non-seeker classes, including both the other classes on Sleuth. One of those tomes can bounce tactics back to your hand, letting your replay a One-Two Punch 4 times if you can pay for it (which, with Sleuth, you can!). We got a guardian who loves playing events. Even Agatha Crane has a very slight synergy, since she can replay ["I've got a plan!"](/card/02107) from the discard.

Boosting skills bores me because so many other cards do it, so let's look more into what expensive tactics we could look with The Art Of War. A support Marion could spam Task Force to give her team loads of movement and let someone else swing a weapon around, or she could just chuck tons of dynamite. Someone with two hands might instead hold Blessed Blade in one hand and Sun Tzu in the other, and zip around with free "Get over here!" every turn. Bonus points if it's someone who can throw one copy of the book away to get around the unique rule.

But the funniest answer is probably Rex Murphy using Sun Tzu to loop "I've got a plan!"s when he's not busy memoiring.

When Katana came out, I speculated that it was meant for a future Guardian investigator. This is a weapon for characters who are comfortable attacking with it only once per turn, and either good with agility or with success manipulation. It's also two-handed which means you usually can't be planning to spend the rest of your actions swinging other weapons, nor investigating with tools. Thus, it seemed like a card waiting for a high-agility fighter who liked playing combat events. Or, perhaps, a token-manipulating fighter with extra arms.

Well, Drowned City indeed gave us a high-agility Guardian (3 is high, right?) who likes to play fight events. And she's often played with a once-per-turn weapon and then follow-up events. There's just one problem -- She doesn't have two arms!

It's not all bad for the weeaboos, though. Artistic Inspiration is probably the best way to control your success margin we've seen so far. And they even introduced a new way to get more arms, though it seems quite overpriced. So if you really want to make this work, it's more workable than ever.

But there's still no actual reason to try beyond morbid curiosity or sheer stubbornness.

TLDR: The dream weapon for Dirty Fighting Lucius or a berserk Amanda. Probably otherwise useless.

This is a really weird card.

• As a 4xp researched card in the increasingly-valuable accessory slot, you want to get really quite a lot of value from it. They even printed it right alongside Antikythera, so everyone who might look at this does have a compelling other option.

• This card does a whole bunch of stuff, including stuff Seekers have never done before, but it doesn't seem like a cohesive package. And I'm not sure any one of its functions justifies running it.

• It can be a weird pseudo-weapon that spams unlimited 2 damage attacks. But they're made with combat skill, at no bonus. There are only 3 characters with more than 2 combat who even can play it: Joe Diamond, Parallel Jim, and Kohaku. All of them have access to some guardian melee and two of them have mystic combat spells, so I don't see any of them going for it unless Joe really needs a hands-free attack cause he's juggling too many investigation tools. Speaking of hands, while other Seekers could certainly find ways to pass these tests, they'd probably rather run Timeworn Brand if you own it. In a big collection there's also lots of events or charged assets that let Seekers deal good damage. Only Amanda seems likely to actually want to spam attacks.

• It can manipulate tokens. This mitigates the auto-fail, and you can make up for the lack of skill bonus by testing at low skill and fishing for good tokens. But if you do this it rapidly gets used up, in which case we must ask why you're not running events or spell assets instead. Because it manipulates tokens, it can trigger Agatha Crane's ability. But she has 1 Combat and access to Shrivelling and Spectral Razor so who are we fooling?

• It can give you evades with +1 damage. Plenty of seekers have good base agility, so this is less of an uphill battle. And evade with damage is an okay effect, potentially. Historically, we've seen that effect a bunch of times and it's rarely been played much. But then, the old versions tended to have serious problems, like being expensive, requiring multiple tests, or having really bad random backlash effects, or being stapled to a mediocre character. How much better is an asset that lets you do it as much as you want, with no downside, and auto-fail insurance?

• If you were going to take basic evades frequently, this is probably enough of an improvement to be worth playing. It looks especially good on Ursula Downs, who is more likely to go off alone and get engaged on, and of course on Lucius Galloway, who can evade for clues and use the token redraws to fish for "succeed by X". You will frequently get to ping something with a damage just for doing what you were already going to do.

• But, how often does that really benefit you? Spaming 2 or 3 evades in a row to kill one guy doesn't seem efficient. When you wipe a 1 HP opponent with it, that's great. It's also good if you drop an enemy's health enough that your team's fighter saves an attack. But sometimes the enemy had even health and the 1 point doesn't matter. So I think in most cases if you have a conventional fighter on your team, this damage matters only 2-3 times per scenario, despite being unlimited use.

• This card's downfall is that while it's better than basic evasion, I think it compares unfavorably to other evade cards you could be running instead. Getting extra actions from Blur or Eon Chart or Pendant of the Queen, or keeping the enemy down longer with Disguise or Slip Away, or even getting free movement from Nimble or Mists of R'lyeh, all seem like better payoffs than 1 damage, in yellow.

• In conclusion, you might run this just as an evade boost for Lucius in Core+Drowned limited. With a full collection, I don't think this is good unless you're planning to both evade and fight with it. Being able to two-shot 3 health enemies all day while gaining all the benefits of evasion is pretty good, and you can probably manage to pass one combat test when you need to. As I mentioned above, Dirty Fighting with Lucius Galloway would probably be the combo. That free action attack comes in at a respectable ... 3 skill, counting Dirty Fighting, but at least it's free and you get some re-draws. He could run Michael Leigh if he really wants a passive combat boost and another damage source? You could get more Dirty Fighting value by running some parley events? Sounds jank as heck but maybe solo-viable.

We all know Michael McGlen is going to be very good at fighting. I will leave it to someone else to figure out the exact mix of one-handed guns, two-handed guns, and melee weapons that optimizes his kit, whether to use the "Viola" Case or not, etc.

My interest is: what else can this guy do? Compared to other Rogues, the solid 3 willpower gives him some uncommon resilience. But we've had Guardian fights for ages, many with 4/2 or 3/3 willpower and agility, and plenty of potential to carry a team through combat. The guardian card pool gives them a variety of team support options, from treachery cancelling to healing and shareable soak, plus a pretty good suite of clue events. Most guardians also have some off-class access. If your team doesn't need you 100% devoted to murder, there's no shortage of ways a guardian can contribute in downtime.

Michael McGlen's got some of the most restricted deck building ever, with only 0-3 in his main class plus trait access to the firearm trait, which is extremely one-note. And his 1/3 Intellect/agility split makes a lot of rogue staples staples hard for him to exploit. So what can he do with himself when there's nothing to kill?

Big Money Things: From a little bit of playtesting, I immediately noticed that Michael can get really rich, really fast. Most guns have ammo roughly equal to cost, so his ability looks like it just pays back the otherwise crushing cost of fighting with multiple guns or expensive reload events. But in fact, Michael can easily make a profit doing it. The Luger P08 can be reloaded with 2 bullets for 1 resource over and over. The .32 Colt is an emergency cache if you can spend bullets one by one. And the Mauser C96 and .45 Thompson already paid you for shooting them, letting you double your money on Michael. Even if you only break even on .45s and .41s, making your weapons free means you save the 3 someone else would have blown on a machete.

• Michael can easily float 10+ resource for Well Connected, bringing him up to 5 on any skill but intellect. If the scenario has many will or agility tests to progress (discarding treacheries, parleying NPC, etc.) then Michael might your guy.

• With Money Talks he can even pass book tests. It's not a great way to get clues, but it could solve other problems. The upgrade lets him bail other people out of their treacheries, too.

• If you're willing to spend down there's always Counterespionage and Intel Report

Raw Action Spam

Some scenarios have lots of straight-up action taxes. Michael probably wants at least one +combat ally, and is bullet-constrained, so I don't expect to see Leo too often. But you can make it work. More likely, Quick Thinking, Swift Reflexes, Haste, or Ace in the Hole will give him extra actions to discard weaknesses, visit distant locations to cash in objectives, and so on. Bound for the Horizon and Scout Ahead also offer ways to get lots of bonus movement, specifically.

Support the team with resources, soak, and pseudo-draw

Michael gets so rich that he can easily funnel Faustian or Bank Job money to his friends, if they need it. This can then set them up to pay for "You've had worse...", if they need it. Black Market is another easy pickup that's actually much better than No Stone Unturned when helping a friend dig for key cards.

Pre-empt the encounter deck If there's anything scary, kill it proactively with Kicking the Hornet's Nest and "Where's the party?". The former even gets you a clue. Sadly, even on 2 player, gaining only one clue usually isn't a difference maker. I'd really like to find this guy a good way to get one more clue, so he can clear a location by himself. Maybe the answer involves using a rogue parley event so a friend can commit Contemplative.

TLDR: A solid and very fun flex cluever who requires very little to excel. He works without a big collection, he works without much XP, and he works without many assets in play. Core+Drowned gives him an easy to build deck that works. Large collections open up a dizzying vast array of deck options. Easily my favorite new investigator in years, possibly ever.

The Basics: Stats and Role

Stats: George has 4/3/3/2 in intellect, combat, agility, and willpower, so you know he wants to investigate often. His character ability gives him lots of extra cards to commit to tests. Some of the best discard engines can boost any test, and as a survivor he has access to several good multi-stat cards, too. He can easily set up to pass lots of tests using many stats. I think his combat and agility numbers can give him a lot of value and you should try to do something with them. If you just want to draw zillions of cards while spamming investigate and passing willpower mythos checks, you might as well play Daisy or Rex or Agatha Crane.

Clueving: He's got tons of good clue compression in color. Nautical Charts, Contemplative, Winging It, and Sharp Vision all synergize with his sctick. Mariner's Compass doesn't, but is still great. "Look what I found!" is okay too. His yellow and green access gives him Deduction, Quick Thinking, and a variety, of, other, options. He should have no trouble keeping up tempo.

Flexing: George's ability makes him very good at exploiting skills, assets that discard cards, and events that play from your discard. For damage, there's Improvised Weapon, Hand Hook, Brute Force, and Long Shot, while Anchor Chain, Survival Instinct, Nimble, Lightfooted and Stunning Blow enhance evades with bonus movement or damage, or by evading two enemies at once or one enemy for two turns. He's also perfectly capable of using staple assets like Fire Axe, Meat Cleaver, and Disguise effectively.

Something very cool about George is that if you dedicate some deck slots to enemy handling, you don't need to invest much of anything during the game to bring his combat ability on line. One reason some people build dedicated cluevers instead of flexes is that they don't want to waste actions playing weapons, nor hoard resources for combat events. Sometimes they don't even want to allocate hand space to those options. But it costs george very little to prepare for battle. He could walk around with Brute Force and Long Shot below, Hand Hook in hand, and Improvised Weapon in discard. With only 1 resource banked and one "real" hand slot spoken for, he's ready to make 3 attacks for 8 total damage at any time. Actually doing so will cost at least 4 cards + probably more to ensure he passes those tests, so actually doing the damage won't be cheap. But being ready to, if needed, is cheap. For this reason I think if you aren't flexing, you're leaving a lot of optionality value on the table.

Combatant: I don't recommend full-time fighter George because too many of his best combat options are one-use (events and skills) or once-per-turn (the nautical tools and usually hatchet). Even survivor weapons that are technically spammable get unwieldy. Furthermore, he's at most risk than most characters of losing his options at unfortunate times. Cast Adrift can wipe out damage skills tucked in the boat, and sometimes also events in your hand. Reshuffling the deck may take your improvised cards offline, etc.

Intermediate Sailing: Leveraging the Boat.

After picking a role, the next biggest question is how often you want to trigger George's ability (you could do it 4 times a turn, but probably won't), and how you're going to make that pay off. This determines the interlocking combination of draw effects, discard engines, skill, and play-from-discard cards you'll want to include.

A tricky thing with George is that the cards other discard investigators used with their abilities mostly don't work well his triggered effect. Play-from-discard cards don't have icons (except glimmer of hope), so if you tuck them under George they provide no value and in fact are stuck there until Cast Adrift or recalled with your signature, but even that requires swapping something else in their place. So, if you discard only one card per phase, you'd probably rather tuck a skill instead of pitching a discard asset. These shine best in a George deck that expects to discard multiple cards in one phase, usually because you're using Cornered repeatedly or in tandem with nautical tools in the Investigator phase, or because you're overdrawing and discarding multiples in Upkeep. So: the more you plan to discard on your turn, the more play-from-discard cards you should run, and then the more card draw you need to pay for these multi-discard binges.

Since you can tuck once per phase, and you want to mostly tuck skills, the more skills you have, the more you want to find extra chances to tuck. And the more chances to tuck you have, the more skills you want to run. The easiest way to make our your tucks is to run Artistic Inspiration, Nautical Charts or Cornered, and Cornered or Idol of Xanatos. During Mythos you discard to pump a test or prevent damage. During Investigation you discard to pump a test or feed a tool. During the Enemy phase, you discard to refresh Artistic Inspiration. During Upkeep you overdraw and discard to hand size. This lets you draw 5 cards per turn and get full value for all of them, if 4 of them are skills. Unfortunately, it's not realistic to make more than about 50% of your deck skills. You'd thus need to draw 8 per turn to find 4 skills on average, so you need three more draws. Sometimes the skills themselves might provide that, especially if you're using Gift of Nodens to recur Last Chance. But it's probably more reasonable to settle for tucking 3 times per turn. This also reduces the risk that you run aground after clogging the boat with situational skills you can't yet use, or don't want to.

Brief Remarks On His Interactions With Other Stuff In The Card Pool

• George does great with all the skills mater stuff in Survivor, and somewhat with the Discard matters.

• George can take Short Supply, Underworld Support, and Forced Learning in any combination. This means your initial draw pile could be anywhere from 20 cards to 50 cards deep after your mulligan and optionally mill. Personally I think Forced Learning is still very bad, even for George. There aren't enough skills or "discard me" cards to fill the slots, and he doesn't need the help triggering his ability in Upkeep. He's already going to overdraw naturally more often than not.

• George can also use the Dark Horse archetype very well. Skills are free and the play-from-discard stuff all costs only 1. He may well want to pass tests with all 4 skills frequently, especially if he's got something like Fire Axe + Nautical Charts +Track Shoes going on. Madame Labranche is already good with him because he can empty his hand frequently. He has two other drip economy allies, and also lots of burst economy options other Survivors don't, even testless ones.

• Customizing Grizzled with the return-from-discard effect gives him the only repeatedly-tuckable skill option.

• George also does well with the Edge of the Earth "synergy" mechanic and multi-class cards. With just permanents he can get Call for Backup to be move+clue+heal damage, great if anyone pulled a heal-able weakness. Talisman of Protection is an easy way to sneak purple in, too.