Out of all the resource dump/pay-to-win playable assets in its suite of cards (Hyperawareness, Arcane Studies, etc.), I think this upgrade should see the least play for two reasons:

1.) Resource economy. I saw this mentioned in passing in a comment on a Hard Knocks (2) review, but wanted to more strongly state it here since level 4 would be more of a commitment and restricts it to mainline Rogues (watch there be some investigator that takes Talent assets up to Lvl 4 or something): Rogues have the easiest access to resources; don't underestimate that. Not just in class cards, but even in investigator abilities for some of them. If you're so strapped for resources that you need a resource discount on this card, as a Rogue, then you'd be better off investing in something that gives you more resources or a greater effect than just a +2 each turn. After all, you have 4 XP to burn.

Sidebar: Personally, I would even posit that Hard Knocks (2) isn't worth the purchase. It does have much more off-class potential, but so do a lot of resource-gain Rogue cards. The argument could be made that you're buying resource discounting in the same card slot with (2), and when it comes to off-class uses of pay-to-win cards, you can be using them for any number of reasons depending on the economy and card slots of your deck; I don't want to be stringent on that, but honestly I really don't think it's worth the XP in my opinion. Not as strong an opinion as for Hard Knocks (4), though, which brings me to....

2.) The price tag. Having replenishing skill buff every round is really nice, but as a Rogue, you have much better and much more EXPENSIVE XP buys than this to consider. The vast majority of Exceptional cards are Rogue cards, and only two of them (standard disclaimer: "as of this review") offer multiple versions for incremental upgrading, so you'll be needing to save and ration XP if you're interested in their purchases. Even apart from spending XP for resource gain, there are many other (sometimes pricey) cards that utilize resource hoarding/spending better than a Lvl 4 card that gives you 2 extra "resources" per round. XP budgeting is important in general, but especially as a mainline Rogue.

I'd steer clear of this variation of Hard Knocks. The upgrades to this suite are meant to save you resources and make the card trigger more often as a result, but this is just the wrong class for this sort of an upgrade.

Heavily underrated card.

Partnering with a curse based Mystic, this card gives you testless free clues and fills the curse engine. It can be used to power a Tides of Fate to turn those into a bless and pull them out with favor of the sun. Or you can just deal with the curses and accept you can't pass tests, which on the higher difficulties you can't anyway.

Basically this card provides excellent curse generation, no additional mythos and two testless clues for only 1 exp.

I'm surprised nobody's written a review of this card. I suppose that's because we're all unified on our thoughts on it: it's... well, it's really fucking good.

Oh right, there's a 200 character limit. Let's talk about why it's so good.

Decks need resources. Whether that translates to literal cash or lines of communication to whatever you think resources are, you need them to play your shit. And while the rest of the group is starting with five, our good friend Preston here essentially starts with NINE - enough to pay for even the stingiest of friends to help out on turn one without wasting an action making a buck. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, since you have those four resources available to you EVERY TURN, to do whatever you want with - none of those silly type restrictions like the triple class EotE cards have. Wanna take all of them on your last action and hoard your cash for later? Go ahead. Wanna live the poor life while still feeding your hobbies from behind the scenes? You betcha. Late on payments? A trifle.

So... uh... yeah. Is good.

Even for groups that don't regularly observe Taboo restrictions, Dr. Milan Christopher's change to exhausting him (limiting his gain to single resource a turn) is one of the most fair rulings of the Taboos I have seen. It was the first I took into account after my first full playthrough of The Dunwich Legacy; Daisy was regularly ending scenarios with a dozen resources in hand. Zoey looked on in just a little envy.

Even with the new limitation, the good entomologist easily pays for himself in a couple turns, assuming you value a flat +1 Intellect and a little soak is worth 2 resrouces. Seeing as Seekers generally aren't leaping into danger, it's likely your Ally will stick around for some time, perhaps the entire scenario.

The biggest problem with Dr. Milan Christopher is that he exists. While deck building, players shouldn't have to consistently ask themselves "Is this new Ally better than Milan?"

What 2XP of an upgrade can buy varies a lot from card to card. What do we get here in comparison to the Level 0 Mauser C96?

• Costs 1 fewer to play (3 rather than 4)
• Has a icon as well as an one
• Has an addition +1 when firing (for a total of +2)
• Has a bonus on succeeding by 4 or more.

The first of these is always nice but is completely standard.

The second (a bonus skill icon) isn't much to write home about - "you can now discard your 2XP investment for a +1 in two out of four skills instead of just one" is pretty much the most meagre possible boost you can give a card

The extra +1 while fighting is actually more beneficial than usual, because of the succeed by ability. Most equivalent upgrades e.g. .45 Automatic to .45 Automatic (2), in gaining +1 , basically say "there's one value in the bag that changes from fail to success" (or "you need to commit one less to this to be at everything-but-autofail"). For the Mauser, the +1 does that but also gives you a second value in the bag that goes from "succeed but no bonus" to "succeeds with a bonus". This can actually cause the effect on a good number of tokens, so it's pretty valuable.

In contrast, the additional text (the bonus on succeeding by 4 or more) is actually a bit lackluster. Passing by 4 isn't a trivial task with a +2 weapon, even for a character with decent base skill. Moreover, you generally know whether you need to ready the gun with it's oversucceed bonus in a turn or not, and in cases where you don't, getting to ready it in addition to the resource you were already getting for oversucceeding by 2 is basically pointless. So the only time this meaningfully triggers is when you oversucceed by 4 in a fight where you still need to fire your gun again this round, in which case you now gain a resource as well. Personally, half the time that sort of situation occurs is when I'm fighting the boss of a scenario and throwing everything in to a test anyway to be sure of hitting before drawing a 0 - which is exactly the sort of time I usually don't need an extra resource!

So overall - it's not a bad upgrade for only 2XP, but the most valuable parts of it are actually the -1 cost and +1 when firing. In a class with a wealth of XP options such as Rogue I'm not convinced it's likely to be a first choice upgrade, unless you're playing an odd Down the Rabbit Hole build.

Excuse me, I need to go and check Dexter's base combat value...