Here's a thought: Is this card actually pretty good with Favor of the Moon and Favor of the Sun? Now you can choose which effect you want to use. 2 testless damage for essentially 0 resources (because you will gain one from Favor of the Moon) is pretty strong. Normally I expect to be paying at least 2 resources for this, and/or have other restrictions attached to it. 2 damage healing for 1 resource is pretty good value, and also a fairly hard-to-come-by effect outside of . Looks kind of tempting for blurse Sefina with her paltry 5 health (though to be fair, Vito is excellent damage soak).

The counterpoints would be that it goes back to being random if you don't have the favors out (though the probabilities will vary depending on the state of the bag), and you might have more valuable things to spend those favors on. Also 2xp is not a negligible cost.

This worked quite nicely in a Winifred Habbamock deck. I had a small suite of necessary assets: Lucky Cigarette Case, Lockpicks, Knuckleduster (no ammo limitations means you won't need to replay it later), Delilah O'Rourke (good outlet for excess resources), and Haste. The rest of the deck was skill cards, Swift Reflexes (can be played during another investigator's turn, as an extra action source, while writing this up I realized it does not give me the ability to play assets outside my turn so it might not be worth running), and of course Geas.

The play style was standard Winifred, commit lots of skills and draw lots of cards. Her draw is so strong, you'll cycle your deck before long, at which point you'll have drawn your critical assets and can play Geas. I wouldn't call Geas, critical by any means, but she benefits from all the boosts. She regularly uses Intellect, Strength, and Agility, and the boosts push her closer to over-succeeding. Furthermore, despite her low Willpower, she is still quite competitive on that front due to the mass of wild icons in her deck.

I was regularly pushing 5 action turns between Haste and Quick Thinking with the ability to over-succeed on each action. It's unclear how critical Geas was, but the extra insurance certainly didn't hurt. The biggest issue I ran into was sanity problems, despite the ability to succeed on most Willpower checks, the fact that I couldn't replay my ally for more sanity soak meant I trended dangerously due to the combination of unavoidable treacheries and deck cycling. If I were to run it again, I'd likely want someone else in the group with the ability to heal sanity.

It's sad how Ikiaq still doesn't allow mystics an in-faction way to avoid the Unbound Beast. How else am I going to slot this dog into the latest fad Empower Self deck?

It's surprisingly viable on Sefina or Dexter running Geas and Crystalline Elder Sign/Tristan Botley now at least. With the Taboo'd scroll of secrets and promising never to draw, the odds of drawing the corresponding weakness is low indeed.

A lot has happened in the four years since Roland was released to round him out, and he’s a stronger investigator than ever.

Most of these cards are used by soloclue in his ARRR deck, which adds seeker splash for search and finances. There are new ways to increase your horror threshold and heal yourself as you go, like seeker allies, enchanted blade (3), or hallowed mirror, that weren’t available before.

Roland can also move lickety-split for a guardian, with copies of safeguard and shortcut. With a level zero deck, it’s possible for him to move himself and an ally to another location for zero actions.

A new wrinkle is that the “get clues by killing enemies” tech is even better. Grete Wagner and the updated evidence(1) combo well with Roland’s talent. Assuming you finish off four health worth of enemies in a turn, you can get four clues. Or use the Disc of Itzamna and On the Hunt to replace the encounter phase with "summon a two health enemy at your location, kill them instantly, get three clues.” Don’t mess with the Bureau.

Why should you take Handcuffs just to handle Tommy? From a naive action-cost perspective it doesn't seem to make sense: you just spent 2 resources, a card, and an action to save yourself 2 actions, in a class that isn't known for having an excess of resources. Effectively you're playing a Swift Reflexes, which isn't even a particularly good card on Rogues, much less Guardians.

But there are three important reasons why you would do this. Firstly, Cho will almost certainly draw through his deck every scenario, meaning that there's a good chance of seeing Tommy twice if not for Handcuffs. Secondly, you only need to pass a single test, not 3, which is particularly important at higher difficulties. Thirdly, it means you can draw safely during your turn. Since it usually will takes 3 actions to clear Tommy (baring Beat Cop (2), Dogs, and One-Two Punch), it'll feel terrible taking a draw action and find Tommy while trying to refill your hand. Banking an action with Handcuffs will save you from being smacked around by Tommy for a turn, or deal with him easily if he's drawn by an Overpower or Glory.