Armageddon

Armageddon

At this moment i think the safest way to use these -asset spells (alongside Eye of Chaos and Shroud of Shadows) is with Luke Robinson. The most effective usage of these spells comes with drawing one or even more -tokens. This comes with the advantage of getting bonuses even when missing the skill check, but also with the disadvantage to have to deal with an additional modifier of -2 (-4, -6, and so on). Therefore you want to draw -tokens but also need a way to compensate their drawback. So why Luke Robinson?

First of all every mystic can make use of Favor of the Moon to guarantee the draw of at least one -token. To compensate the penalty you can name this token with Recall the Future. Or as Luke Robinson you can pray to your Blasphemous Convenant to turn this one in an actual bonus to your willpower (combined with Recall the Future to +3 bonus). As an additional bonus the token goes back in the bag.

But how to generate these -tokens? Sadly mystics do not have a lot of ways to generate them. Promise of Power is a great skill card and highly recommended with this cursed style of play, but fortunately Luke can use Deep Knowledge to draw the needed combo pieces and fill up the bag. Furthermore he can use Stirring Up Trouble in high shroud places to flood the bag with these nasty tokens and get some easy clues. Fey is another skill that functions quite well with these kind of spells.

In the end it can only be said if you draw Dread Blessing as your weakness, you could actually call yourself lucky!

galge · 16
Ironically you don't actually need to succeed at the tests. If you're leaning into Curse at all, and you draw one and fail, you could either A. deal 1 damage (good choice if that kills your target anyway) or B. put the charge you just spent back on. This gets even better if you draw multiple curses in one test, even if you still fail. In that sense, the ideal user of these imo is not Luke but actually Dexter for 1. being able to discount these spells (they do cost 1 more than most of their counterparts) and 2. being able to use Rogue cards, notably Skeptic, to heavily soften the effect curse modifiers have on tests. You then get access to more cards that throw curses into the bag, like Faustian Bargain, Riastrad, and Priest of Two Faiths, while most Seeker curse cards remove curses for their own payoff, which is counter to what we want to be doing with the spells. False Covenant doesn't work as nicely as Blasphemous Covenant for such a build, but it will still let you preserve curse tokens when you draw them on non-spell tests. You could also try a mix bless/curse build with Paradoxical Covenant, using Favor of the Sun to turn a load of curses on one test into a pass. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Scratch that on False Cov, I forgot it returns to pool and not bag. Still, not exactly a major concern with Favor of the Moon either way, but I'd probably favor Paradoxical Cov. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
yea i get what you're saying but skeptic is just one card that can be used twice. the blasphemous convenant can be used once every turn and most of the time you won't draw more than one or two cursed token. next to the seeker cards the rogue card pool is probably anyway the only one to generate cursed tokens at a low experience level. at this point even Jim Culver with faustian bargain and deep knowledge could be working, mitigating the flaws of the mystic class, resource and card management. ultimately i think dexter is as good as luke to use these spells, but i prefer the Blasphemous convenant. the Paradoxical convenant is in my opinion very unpredictable and putting blessed tokens in the bag will maybe mitigate the cursed modifiers but water down the chance of drawing them as well. and false convenant is working against the idea of using these tokens at all. — galge · 16
With Favors it’s not unpredictable at all, but candidly I don’t think you meed Blasphemous Covenant and get more out of both Dexter’s ability (including higher base will) and Rogue splash. Both would work well I think. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Dexter is by far the worse curse spell user because Skeptic is reactive instead of proactive, so he can easily draw a curse and fail on higher difficulties. Not to mention that Priests of Two Faiths and Riastrad aren't very good on Dexter for that matter. Luke's synergy with Gaze and Manipulate Destiny is far better than anything Dexter has to offer. — suika · 9508
I think it's an exaggeration to call him "by far the worst curse user" — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Yes, which is why I said by far the worse, not worst. — suika · 9508
Phrasing — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Both Luke and Dexter have their pros & cons. Dexter has access to Faustian bargain, Lucky penny and Eye of the djinn. Luke has Fey, Deep knowledge and Stirring up trouble. With Dexter I would use Paradoxical, with Luke Blasphemous. — joster · 96

The Eye of Truth

The Eye of Truth

Incredible in Carcosa.

Picked up an annoying weakness that's blocking your infinite deck shenanigans, but it's labeled as a 'treachery'?

Buh-bye.

Present & future list of cards this skill may apply to (Spoiler Warning):

arkhamdb.com search

tercicatrix · 16
Also great for your teammates, because they also have one copy each in their decks. — PowLee · 15
Wow... None of the basic weaknesses involve tests... Huh — NarkasisBroon · 11
None of them are treacheries (and I guess all the scenario/campaign specific ones are treacheries) — Gandalph · 34
Um, lots of the basic weaknesses are treacheries. It looks like b:weakness doesn't detect basic weaknesses. — NarkasisBroon · 11
try b:basicweakness — Thatwasademo · 58
Oh, you also need to show player cards and not only encounter cards in the search to get investigator or basic weaknesses — Thatwasademo · 58
I'd update the link, but edits don't seem to be working for me right now: https://arkhamdb.com/find?q=t%3Atreachery+b%3Aweakness%7Cbasicweakness+x%3Atest+&sort=name&view=list&decks=encounter — tercicatrix · 16
https://arkhamdb.com/find?q=t%3Atreachery+b%3Aweakness%7Cbasicweakness+x%3Atest&sort=name&view=list&decks=all — tercicatrix · 16
Edited. Turns out the edit area silently appears toward the top of the page, not down here where my review is. — tercicatrix · 16

"Fool me once..."

"Fool me once..."

Pointing out potentially obscure interaction (if it's already been discussed, my b):

The ability on "Fool me once..." is entirely optional. The means you can lock away nasty treacheries like Ancient Evils forever to decrease their appearance from the encounter deck at all. Then in the final stages of the scenario you can always choose to cancel it anyway if you'll finish before reshuffling the encounter deck.

The reason I'm bringing this up at all is because my group has found that Syzygy is just an absolute nightmare to handle. Since it is a Peril, your Ward of Protection or A Test of Will packing friends won't be allowed to cancel it. If you have a way to ensure that you're the one to draw Syzygy (say... First Watch or Scrying) you can ensure one or both of them are completely removed from the scenario for its duration.

Notably the reverse also applies. "Fool me once..." cannot cancel Perils drawn by your allies despite its card text.

"Peril is a keyword ability.

While resolving the drawing of an encounter card with the peril keyword, an investigator cannot confer with the other players. Those players cannot play cards, trigger abilities, or commit cards to that investigator's skill test(s) while the peril encounter is resolving."

Anyway, there's plenty of encounter sets that include only one or two copies of completely disgusting treacheries that can be completely negated for the remainder with some luck and/or some encounter deck manipulation. Give it a shot!

DanPyre · 62
Not only can you do this on encounters, you can also do it to weaknesses, locking a treachery out of someone's deck permanently after resolving it once. Not a big deal if you draw normally, but for decks that cycle quickly it can be very nice. However, as you pointed out, you cannot use FMO's reaction to then cancel another copy of the treachery unless you draw it, so the utility of locking a treachery is going to depend massively on how quickly you chew through that deck and/or if the deck gets reshuffled a lot, which to be completely fair is very common in Innsmouth I believe. — StyxTBeuford · 13052

Ancestral Knowledge

Ancestral Knowledge

This card has totally replaced my original plan to run a Big Hand Studious Amanda Sharpe.

The flexibility Studious gives is threefold: You can get it in two instalments of 3XP, you get both cards turn 1, and you can mulligan them as well. But it stops there, while Ancestral Knowledge shines later on...

While Ancestral Knowledge has to be paid upfront in full and only gets the second card turn 2 - no mulligan - it allows for a nice flexible reserve, for when you need to fill the tank for a life saving Higher Education boost, get an extra bonus with Celaeno Fragments or Curiosity, save 1 resource when doing some Extensive Research, or even enable Farsight.

It also has the guaranteed Skill cards at the start of the game, helping enable Minh Thi Phan and giving Amanda Sharpe more options of skills early on.

It synergizes well with Dream-Enhancing Serum, since you will be having skills doubled on your deck - Big Hand builds without the early need to increase hand size!

And you can even get Studious with some leftover 3XP later on.

Kidaf · 6
Question, does this count as a search hability? "stick to the plan" counts but it says "search" explicitly — biuzenho · 1
It doesn't explicitly say search so it shouldn't count. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Also, it says 5 random, so you are not searching the deck anyway. — Kidaf · 6
This is a really good comparison. Studious costs 3exp and gives 1 card. This costs 6 exp but gives 5! — fates · 54

Henry Wan

Henry Wan

With the combination Wendy's Amulet and Premonition, which forebodes every token and thus prevents Henry Wan to miss, you'll get on average 2.67 resources/cards on his action (with the starting-standard NotZ chaos bag). It is versatile as you can avoid the overdraw and choose what you lack most, even upgrade a Dark Horse deck; but it is unreliable, as you basically toss a dice to know how much you earn.

I feel like making his ability a trigger or even "when you are about to draw a card or gain a resource" would make it funnier and yet not broken.

Spending action for this effect feels wrong.

LeFricC'estChic · 86
You can't play Premonition in the middle of resolving Henry's ability, since there's no action window. — Thatwasademo · 58
Indeed you're right. So, knowing your first token, and if you somehow always knew when to stop (as every AH player), you could expect on average 2.67 resources on the action. Still not worth the risk. — LeFricC'estChic · 86