One underrated benefit of this card is that it's one of the few weapons you can use as a sidearm in a Flamethrower deck. With the flamethrower blocking up the body slot, there aren't that many guardians who can get an extra hand slot all too easily.

Roland Banks could take scientific study to help him wield a Sledgehammer, and Leo Anderson could take Hidden Pocket alongside an enchanted Hunter's Armor, but these are all somewhat faffy multi-card combos that come with various restrictions.

Anyone can spend 3 exp on an Occult Reliquary and have a permanently available extra hand slot to carry this thing around in, no additional effort needed. Heck, you can run it alongside any two handed weapon to remove the need to run Bandolier , letting you avoid having to play a relatively slow card. That, or take it anyway, run some Survival Knives or something and turn yourself into a ridiculous toolbox of death.

This card is awesome on Gloria Goldberg. It's a Holy Rosary, Scroll of Secrets, and Heavy Furs all in one. For 4 XP, you see which card is on the top of the encounter deck before every card pull in the Mythos Phase. With Gloria, this card allows you to help your team out immensely before they each draw a card and deciding the order who takes the top card.

Busted. Highly recommend it with the use of Foresight as well for maximum Mythos phase ignoring.

Marion is very broad in terms of ways to build her deck, so in writing this review I'll provide an overview rather than the impossible task of summarising ever possible deck style you can make with her. I've broken this down into a couple of sections, and provided a couple of exemplar decks around specific concepts.

Features:

• A good 2 3 4 3 statline, which encourages some flexing - especially with Determined which provides recurable boosts on events.
• Her ability gives innate card draw for playing an event, and allows you to play a second event as an extra action. This cements any deck you will play with Marion as an event deck.
• She has one fewer hand slot, which can be considered a feature and not a bug if using this to displace one-handed assets with limited uses (e.g. guns). Stubborn Detective as we all know can magically make you regrow an arm...
• She is a Drifter and Entrepreneur, so Double Down, Bound for the Horizon, True Awakening and Nose to the Grindstone are available as XP purchases.
• She has access, providing five level 0 cards. This can do a lot of heavy lifting - as Marion's weakness "I'll do it myself" makes you discard events and Winging It, Improvised Weapon, A Glimmer of Hope and Impromptu Barrier are all events which can be played from your discard pile.

• She has access to 0-2 events of a chosen Trait from either Fortune, Gambit or Improvised. You can search these using "k:[chosen trait] t:event p<3". Some of these of interest are below (with events I consider especially useful in bold, and there's hyperlinks to the relevant searches by clicking on the Trait name):

  • Fortune: "Look what I found!", A Glimmer of Hope or A Glimmer of Hope ••, Fortuitous Discovery, Good Weather, Hot Streak ••, Keep Faith, Lucky!, Oops! ••, Scrounge for Supplies

  • Gambit: Act of Desperation, Bank Job, Honed Instinct, Kicking the Hornet's Nest, Swift Reflexes

  • Improvised: "Where's the party?", Improvised Weapon or Improvised Weapon ••, Makeshift Trap, Pushed to the Limit, Snare Trap, Winging It

Deckbuilding considerations:

• Combat: Guardians have a lot of great fight action events, and Marion rewards you for using them. In terms of level 0 fight events to consider there's One-Two Punch, Monster Slayer, Toe to Toe, Clean Them Out, Improvised Weapon, Act of Desperation, Pushed to the Limit and "Get over here!". For higher XP fight events there's One-Two Punch •••••, Fang of Tyr'thrha, Gang Up, Radiant Smite, Improvised Weapon •• and Sweeping Kick. There's other events which allow you to fight or deal more damage, such as Dynamite Blast, Quick Shot, Galvanize and Hunter's Mark.

• Flex: With a useable of 3, events which allow you to investigate can be a great help. Winging It is a strong contender here because it can be played from your discard pile. Fortuitous Discovery is also nice as you don't mind too much having one copy discarded (for example, if you need fodder for "I'll do it myself"). If you take Fortune or Improvised as your chosen trait, this can exempt Fortuitous Discovery or Winging It respectively from your five level 0 cards. Access to the likes of Matchbox also strengthen capability to flex, as can A Glimmer of Hope or Good Weather. Note that even an event which doesn't provide an additional clue is fine (such as Winging It from your hand, or your first Fortuitous Discovery) as it's more about having events on hand which allow you to take an extra action of the type you're interested in. Cards like Scene of the Crime, Evidence!, Breach the Door, Guided by Faith and/or Kicking the Hornet's Nest (if taking the Gambit Trait) can further help clue-finding efforts, as can allies such as Field Agent or Grete Wagner.

• Event manipulation: There's a couple of noteworthy cards which allow you to manipulate events: Stick to the Plan and Book of War. Stick to the Plan gives you ring-fenced events to play and activate Marion's ability with, while Book of War allows you to recur Tactic events round after round (especially useful if you have a high XP event in your deck). For an example of a deck using both of these, please see the excellent One-Punch Marion deck by Valentin1331.

• One-handedness: As mentioned earlier, having one hand slot in some ways can be considered an exploitable feature and not a bug by giving you an easy means to discard assets with uses. The new Remington Model 1858 •••• allows you to take an action with it when it's discarded (i.e. displaced from your single hand slot), so by having two of these it's easy to squeeze in additional fight actions. The really cool Marion Takes a Gunbit deck by Providence shows how to do this style of deck well. In addition, assets which use less used slots (Brand of Cthugha) or are slotless (Mk 1 Grenades) may also be useful on Marion if you want to use the handslot for something useful like Blessed Blade ••••. The deck Quick Rigging Marion! by the infamous StartWithTheName is a great showcase of these ideas.

• Other useful events: In addition to fight and investigate events, it's worth mentioning several others. True Awakening is a great catch-all event which can provide clues, healing and/or card draw - flexing to exactly what you need at the time. As highlighted and depending on your chosen Trait, Marion can have access to resource generators like Bank Job and Hot Streak •• which can make you flush with cash, in addition to Guardian staples like Stand Together •••. For healing, there's the likes of Emergency Aid, Short Rest, Second Wind and Ready for Anything. Of particular note is Hallowed Mirror and Hallowed Mirror •••, with the latter providing an endless supply of healing which can be paired to allies that take damage or horror regularly, such as Grete Wagner, Beat Cop •• or Field Agent. For a Hallowed Mirror focused deck, my own Field Agents on a Boat! is a good a example (I think!) to show that capability.

I hope the review has been useful in showcasing what you can do with Marion. In particular, I think there's been so many good and distinct Marion decks already that there's a lot of inspiration to draw on! Let me know your thoughts.

Full Binder's Jar + Astral Mirror + Familiar Spirit + The Hierophant • V + Occult Reliquary = 7 empty arcane + 9 empty hand slots.

Which = +18 skill value and 10 damage Blood of K'n-yan

Good luck to the boss!!

Writing this now that Drowned City is out because Wilson got a pretty significant boost.

Wilson's biggest problem, aside from a terrible statline, is that tools don't have any synergy with themselves. They're generally meant for specific builds. Things like Lockpicks require high int and agi. Old Keyring requires the survivor recursion suite, namely Scavenging. Mariner's Compass requires resource manipulation. Microscope requires an evasion focus, etc. There are very few tools that can stand alone that you would want to build an investigator around.

The two big exceptions are Chainsaw and Fingerprint Kit. Three damage/clues per action is absolutely worth building around, even at the high cost. As a guardian, Willy has access to the most Supply-boosting cards with Cleaning Kit, Venturer, and Stick to the Plan to hold an upgraded Emergency Cache. Running out of supplies is not an issue, even without survivor recursion or seeker card draw.

To seal the deal, Drowned City added Nose to the Grindstone, a card so Wilson that he's on the card art. In addition to the skill-agnostic +2 every round, it means that you won't waste supplies even on an autofail. You can actually gain supplies by failing attacks with the chainsaw, spending 1 and getting 2 in return.

In addition, DC added Anchor Chain. Previously, your only options for evasion were Fire Extinguishers that exile themselves, expensive Flashlights that occupy valuable hand slots, and at level 0, only the underwhelming Impromptu Barrier. Anchor Chain provides effective 5-skill evasion in a reusable asset, can exhaust enemies for two turns, and has the option to pitch it from your hand as an event. If you draw it early, equip it to hold you until you get it set up. Once you have your Chainsaw and Fingerprint Kit, use it from your hand as an event. It never stops being useful, even if you don't have the slots.

To flesh out the suite, Tinker lets you dual-wield a chainsaw and FK for every situation. Tool Belt similarly lets you swap between them; less efficient than Tinker, but you can replace the attached asset if it gets discarded or you manage to run out of supplies. Fine Tuning lets you use your Fingerprint Kit twice per round, though you'll probably sweep locations clean with a single activation anyway.

Finally, if you want to play support and can spare yet another hand slot, Pocket Multi Tool with Spring Loaded and Detachable is extremely handy, and Fine Tuning lets you use it twice per round.