If you're worried about picking the wrong Desi since you don't have the secret only the real Desi would know, there's actually a really neat way to guarantee you kill the right one in the third act!

Assign the lead investigator role to an investigator with the card Ward of Protection (5). When you resolve the b side of this act, use Ward of Protection (5) to discard the phony Desiderio Delgado Álvarez. This will also cancel his concealed keyword as per the effects of Ward of Protection (5) making the following act 2a pretty easy to complete quickly.

When you reach act 2b, the game will get a little scuffed. Since the fake Desiderio Delgado Álvarez is now sitting in the encounter discard pile thanks to his nifty standard encounter card back and is not at a location, the real Desiderio Delgado Álvarez will be discarded since he has no spawn locations. Since he does not have an encounter card back, he cannot be placed in the encounter discard pile and will instead be removed from play. Act 3a will be a little challenging to complete from this game state. It only ends when one of the two Desis are defeated. Simply run through the entire encounter deck as quickly as possible, draw Desiderio Delgado Álvarez, remembering not to resolve his concealed keyword nor spawn him engaged with you as per his aloof keyword as per the rules of 3a, then defeat him. Since the real Desiderio Delgado Álvarez is safely permanently removed from play, there is no risk of picking the wrong one!

Unfortunately when resolving act 3b the game will now instruct you to store the copy of Desiderio Delgado Álvarez that is currently in play, which as you will note is currently neither of them. They provided a failsafe if both are in the victory display, which is also not the case. One is in the victory display and the other is removed from play. I presume this means you store neither copy safely, and come the Congress of Keys, the real Desiderio Delgado Álvarez will have had his memories erased by his trip to the shadow realm, have no idea who any of you jokers are, votes to have you all killed, and steals the mirroring blade he gave to you for good measure.

Typo lol a a

I like revisiting old cards that were once terrible/awkward and have gotten better with subsequent releases. I think this one is still awkward but the payoff is actually good if you can make it work.

It works well with Trish's In the Shadows and Skids' On the Lam. Stealth and Hiding Spot used to be basically the only ways to use this other than burning an evasion attempt beforehand, but now we also have Ethereal Form, Blackmail File and Existential Riddle.

There's trick synergies with Chuck Fergus and Bewitching, (and insight synergies with Eidetic Memory and De Vermis Mysteriis but these are questionable).

Blur lets you evade and refunds your action so you can use it to get 2 clues. There's a lot more support for evasion in general these days, and as evading becomes cheaper and more common, Eavesdrop gets better and better.

Overall this is a solid B-tier card in the right kind of deck, can be bumped up to A if you are really building around it, but shouldn't really be played outside of its niche. If only it was a parley test we could run Snitch alongside it to bulk scoop some clues. Alas.

I played this card in George Barnaby and was left disappointed.

Only being able to do +1 damage once per turn is quite weak for a weapon. It makes dealing with 4 health enemies a pain and missing an attack against a 3+ health enemy means you won’t be able to kill it.

Furthermore, George wants to discard 1 card per phase. At level 0, his main way to do that during investigator phase is with Nautical Charts, so having Hand Hook or Anchor Chain to trigger his ability is quite useful in scenario 1. However, as you add cards such as Cornered, Bound for the Horizon, and Gift of Nodens to your deck, you really don’t want to be discarding a card to Hand Hook.

Overall, I have found Fire Axe to be a better card in George. It’s cheaper, has more consistent damage, and doesn’t “waste” a use of his ability.

Pretty surprised the reviews for this are mostly lukewarm/negative when this is one of my favourite cards ever printed and is extremely fun. It essentially thins your deck by up to 6 cards per reshuffle, because you are saving 3 actions drawing the cards (if you find them in a search) and you get 3 bonus draws from the successful tests. In reality you might fail the tests or draw the card, but if you put some thought into it you will be thinning your deck by at least 4, and usually 5 or 6.

You do need at least some search support to make it work, but a lot of search cards are already very good and once you have even a handful of them in your deck. Cards that you might run anyway that also give you search synergy here: Practice Makes Perfect (anyone), Eureka! (anyone), Bewitching (Trish, Parallel Skids), Guided by the Unseen (seekers), Research Librarian (tome users), Arcane Initiate (Luke).

If you're already running some of these cards, which I frequently am, then Surprising Find turns into 1 xp for a 15-20% deck size reduction. Huge value. Compared to Astounding Revelation it's also more useful when you draw it because is better than . If you have enough search then you can even run them alongside each other, but devoting 6 cards to search payoffs does make it hard to fit all your other cards.

Overall just a really good and cheap way to smooth out your deck and get to your good cards more quickly.