Well Prepared

Well Prepared

Where does it say in the rules that the skill icons on the chosen asset must be of the same type of the skill test being performed? The way I read the card, it boosts your general skill value for whichever test you're performing by an X ammount, which is calculated from the matching skill icons on an asset. But it never says that the icons matching on the asset need to be the same as in the test.

Drakkions · 1
You seem to be ignoring the word “matching” on Well Prepared. What would one match these icons against beside the type of skill being tested? — Eudaimonea · 5
What do you think Matching means if not...'the same?' — MrGoldbee · 1464
It just says you get +X and X is the number of matching icons, it doesn't say X can't be 0. — Gsayer · 1
It is true that Well Prepared doesn't explicitly spell out that the icons have to match the test bring performed, which means that the linguistic rules of the English language could theoretically allow the card to be interpreted 'icons that match each other' rather than ‘icons that match the skill test.’ However, the rules also don't explicitly spell out that I can't spend painting supplies from my garage to pay for Streetwise (even though it is correct usage of the English language to describe my brushes and tools as ‘resources’). When the vagaries of the language you are using allow multiple interpretations of a card we should go with the one that is consistent with the rest of the rules of the game, meaning that Well Prepared is referencing icons that match the skill test being performed. — Pseudo Nymh · 60
The comparison to "spend painting supplies from my garage to pay for Streetwise" is quite ridiculous, as the card explicitly states "Exhaust Well Prepared: Choose an asset you control.", giving you an open choice to choose any asset you control, and not creating any reference to do something completely unrelated to the game. Not that it would change anything, you would just exhaust WP for nothing then. For me it isn't allowing any multiple interpretation, it is quite quite clear and obvious as it is. — Gsayer · 1
@Gsayer I think I agree with you that you can exhaust Well Prepared to get +0 to a skill test. What I am trying to suggest is that it would be contrary to rules precedent to add the three Combat icons on Chainsaw to an Intellect test (even though they can be considered 'matching icons' as they match each other). Perhaps my example was a bit fanciful. I am trying to suggest that any game quickly becomes absurd if we allow any rules interpretation that isn’t explicitly textually forbidden. That’s how you get golden retrievers playing basketball! :) — Pseudo Nymh · 60
Oh, looking at it again, it seems I misread the OP, now I understand the point of you guys in the comments. My point is that you could exhaust WP and choose any asset and X can be 0, but of course the "matching icons" refers to the skill test, you'd never be able to add a different icon (as in @PseudoNymph example of Combat icons to and Intellect test). Sorry about the confusion. — Gsayer · 1
For the record, you can't exhaust WP to choose an asset with 0 matching skill icons because in that case its effect wouldn't change the game state. — Thatwasademo · 58

Solemn Vow

Solemn Vow

Tommy Muldoon loves this. In a pinch, another investigator can free trigger this to heal some damage/horror, move it on to one of Tommy's allies to kill it, and Tommy can use his ability to take that damage as bullets for Becky. Even better if that ally is Tetsuo Mori, so you get bullets/resources, an item (maybe Becky or Bandolier if you already have Becky out), and your buddy got some healing, all without spending any resources or actions.

TartanLlama · 1

True Understanding

True Understanding

This is a top-tier card that continues to fly under the radar. For zero actions and zero resources this grants a clue. And in a game where every scenario is a race to advance the Act Deck via clues, it's hard to overstate how great that is!

Yes, you do have to pass a test on a "Scenario Card". But between location actions and treacheries I've never had this be a dead card.

If you're running Milan Christopher and have resources to burn, Working a Hunch with its $2 cost is just as good, but in decks without him I argue that True Understanding is the superior pick.

This should be a staple in every deck that runs Deduction, because it's essentially 2 more copies of Deduction. Happy hunting!!

An_Undecayed_Whately · 1261
While I will agree that this is a good card, it is often in my early picks, and always ends up being cut in profit of core elements to the build I am working on, or value cards (draw, resources). This card was better when it was published and now suffers from the overcrowdedness of the card pool, in my opinion. — Valentin1331 · 71907

Esoteric Method

Esoteric Method

No reviews for this oddball of a card? Let's change that.

As I just mentioned, this is a very strange card. But it's surprisingly good. Let's dissect it piece by piece.

???? is great. There's no question about that. 1XP is an ask for this skill. You won't be able to run it at the start of a campaign unless you take In the Thick of It, but there are so many better options to spend your XP on. Practiced and Cursed increases the potential of this card tenfold. Since it's Practiced you are able to run Practice Makes Perfect with it, and since there aren't that many Seeker and Neutral skills that you'd be wanting to run in a Cluever deck, this is a potential target. But the real trait for this card is Cursed. We'll get more into that later.

Now for the downside of the card- and it's a big one. You add a Curse token for every point you pass/fail by. That's huge. Each Curse token is -2 and ideally you would want to pass/fail by 2 or less if you're not looking to generate a whole bunch of Curses. It's not worth it to play around it, even with using a Premonition. Just let it ride. Now, the Curses will inevitably have you fail a test at some point. That is... unless you have two copies of tabooed Ritual Candles out. Doing so would give you +2 for each Curse you reveal in a test, effectively negating any downside of the card. Even with one of them out, each Curse will only be -1, which isn't that bad. If you're not using it as a Curse generation card, it's best to save it for a crucial test that you desperately want to pass. TFA SPOILER comes to mind. Or you can save it for one of the last turns of the game when you're not making too many tests at that stage of the game.

Card Comparisons:

Inquiring Mind: Inquiring Mind is very similar to Esoteric, as it has the second-highest amount of commits[Barring Survey the Area] in the class. The ??? is great, but it loses value as the scenario runs long, because of the fact that you clear a whole bunch of locations. Esoteric is the opposite of that. The later in the scenario you commit this, the more you're able to play around the downside of the card. If you make perform less tests, then you'll be able to draw the Curses less. Inquiring Mind does not have the same traits as Esoteric, so it can't be used for PMP.

Promise of Power: If you have access to Mystic off-class as a Seeker, 9 times out of 10 you should run Promise of Power instead. The biggest differences are that you add the Curse in as soon as you commit it, rather than after. However, this rarely matters. Secondly, you're guaranteed to only add one Curse instead of who knows how much. And it's even better since it has the same traits and can be used in PMP.

Who'd like this card?

Kōhaku, Parallel Wendy Adams, Parallel Jim Culver, and Parallel Rex Murphy, can take it and would enjoy to do so. Wendy can seal them on her Tidal Memento, Kōhaku can repeatedly gain extra turns with how many curses you'll generate from it, Parallel Jim could recharge his assets (But he'd struggle a fair bit with his Advanced Final Rhapsody), and Parallel Rex would take it for fueling every version of Cryptic Grimoire. He'd also like it for the chance of negating all of them for his Elder Sign. I think Parallel Jim(If you can play around his Final Rhapsody) or Kōhaku is the best user of this card for the synergies it provides with other Mystic curse cards, most notably the big three: Eye of Chaos, Armageddon, and Rod of Carbonara Sauce. As mentioned earlier, Parallel Rex Murphy can also take it, but I find the Curse Seeker archetype to not have the greatest pay-offs. Besides, Parallel Rex also has plenty of ways to generate curses with his reaction ability, so Esoteric isn't necessary.

TLDR: It isn't Promise of Power or Inquiring Mind, but it has it's homes. You can look at it either one of three ways: It's a curse generation card, a way to fuel Practice Makes Perfect, or use it as a way to pass an important test if you don't mind failing a few later. In my opinion, it's best as a curse-generation card.

The first time I played this card was in a Harvey deck and ended up putting 9 Curses in the bag. Worth.

fishingbrick · 5
"Now, the Curses will inevitably have you fail a test at some point. That's just how it is." That's not quite true, if you play Mystic with taboo. Two "Ritual Candles" will make you literally fail no test, you would not fail otherwise. (And with "Occult Reliquary" you still have a third hand to hold the rod.) For the advanced "Final Rhapsody" Curse Tokens are quite the opposite, really bad. Elder Sign and Blesses are the only symbol tokens, that won't hurt you. — Susumu · 366
Thank you very much for bringing those points up! I've edited the review to reflect them. — fishingbrick · 5

Geared Up

Geared Up

Note to all you new players out there who freshly cracked this card out of the box and thought, “Man, that’s lame. It’ll only play like 4 or 5 items most of the time.” The card does not read as printed. They wanted to let you have a little fun with it so they issued an errata to add the clause “One at a time, play …” to empower some degenerate combos.

Okay, wait, I see that little sinister grin curling the corner of your lips, but not so fast, Speed Racer. They noticed that some players were now abusing the card for degenerate combos. So they added another clause by taboo to fix the clause they added by errata. Got that?

So in short, you must add the clause that breaks the card, and then you may optionally add the clause that unbreaks it. What you may not in any circumstance do under rules as written, is play the card by it’s printed unbroken text, so don’t even think about that.

I hope this information was helpful.

Eudaimonea · 5
This was discussed ad nauseam 3 years ago. Some people said, the addendum "one at a time" was necessary, others (including me) said, playing cards is a sequential process, playing them simultainiously does not make sense, and this phrase was a mere clarification. But however people see it, the design team clearly meant the card to work like that from the beginning. And later reconsidered, that it potentially can get to strong, so they taboo'd it. Besides, this card gets really bad in "Hemlock Vale", with or without taboo. — Susumu · 366
Indeed, Geared Up is so absurdly bad in Hemlock Vale (it triggers at the beginning of Preludes, with the extra insult that you cannot transfer more than one played asset out of a Prelude) that we simply house-ruled that Geared Up triggers at the beginning of the ‘real scenario’ instead. There are a lot if mechanical annoyances for Preludes that I’d like the designers to have spent a bit more time thinking about :/ — anaphysik · 95
Yeah, it's no good in Hemlock Vale but way too good in its errata'd form. The notion I'll take strong exception with is that we can safely assume MJ Newman's original intent is reflected in Alex Werner's rulings. We can in no way assume the sequence of intent, realization, and revision @Susumu references occurred behind-the-scenes anymore than we can assume that the original intent for Backpack was that it would offer a timing window in-between the playing of each item and that Nimble would offer one in-between each move. I don't want to rehash original intent because it's inscrutable. All I — Holy Outlaw · 269
... intend to do is smirk at the way the clean-up occurred. There is both an errata and a taboo of the errata, rather than a removal of the errata so the card works as it reads. — Holy Outlaw · 269
Agreed, let’s not revisit the argument from years back. Susumu, you made some good points then and now. I can see I’m reopening an old can. I was just trying to be whimsical. — Eudaimonea · 5