Wither

Wither

One of the worst cards in the game even before the Sword Cane was released. A mystic fighting with Wither is the equivalent of a Guardian fighting with a Kukri, except worse, since Wither only has a chance to make a second attack easier while Kukri guarantees it.

About the only positive things you can say is that it's a spell, so it can be tutored with Arcane Initiate, and that it gives Diana Stanley something to cancel with Eldritch Inspiration.

suika · 9508
There's a second upside: Wither(0) plus Arcane Research might save you 2 xp on Wither(4), which is actually a decent combat spell if you're worried about charges and have the right sort of chaos bag manipulation. Though, honestly, there are probably enough spells to upgrade whose level 0 version is actually worthwhile that putting up with Wither(0) in the first scenario is unnecessary... — Thatwasademo · 58
I don't consider that an upside because I don't think Wither (4) is a decent combat spell. If Wither (0) is a worse Kukri, Wither (4) is a worse Machete. — suika · 9508
Most 2+ damage spells with Twila are better. Also, Swordcane is similar and doesn't occupy an arcane slot. — Django · 5165
Something that people tend to overlook while examining this card is that this has quite a high "to-hit" bonus. Since the token effect triggers before success is determined, every spooky token effectively has its own modifier reduced by 1. Additionally the modification is independent of success or failure. This is quite good for odd health enemies as it's really cheap, and has none of the punishments of other spells--the 2 horror from shrivelling 5 _really_ adds up, there's a very strong argument that sword cane replaces this but it's not _totally_ dead — Sycopath · 1
Eh, I do think it’s totally dead. It’s upgrade isn’t worth considering as it’s incredibly overpriced for a niche effect. The level 0 version was ok for pinging damage at a decent hit rate, but Sword Cane does the same thing without taking up a slot where a good 2 damage spell could go. Sword Cane has all but eliminated Wither from consideration imo. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Like suika says, Wither was poorly received on release and already very rarely played. Sword Cane is a much better card for numerous reasons and is quickly becoming an all star. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Wither is a terrible card but Sword Cane exhausts. Azure Flame replaced Wither imo. Or perhaps even Spectral Razor since it can actually kill an enemy in one turn. With that being said I could see myself running Sword Cane to save Shrivelling or Azure Flame charges. I quite like that card. — The Lynx · 999
It exhausts sure, but enemies either have even or odd health. The only time it’s worth saving a charge on Flame/Shrivelling/Armageddon is when you would be overshooting the health. At 2 damage per hit, that covers even health enemies already, and only one hit from SC is enough to cover any odd health enemy. You could do two hits of wither to save one charge, but the charge is worth less than the extra action you spent. I don’t think Wither is worth the arcane slot at all here. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Soon the fact wither takes up an arcane slot will be seen as an advantage instead of a disadvantage. — Zerogrim · 296
Not to beat a dead horse, but this has to be objectively the worst way to handle enemies as a mystic. Pre-sword cane, I could see maybe a justification though I'd say there are tons of better options still. Post Sword cane its madness running it. I tried it for 2 campaigns and it was basically lose an action and 2 resources, do nothing. Sword cane has evade, which is a very handy thing while waiting for shrivelling and adds versatility. Unless you want to meme on a monster for your half-guardian to kill it wither is more harmful than useful. — , · 574
Wither worked nicely with Lily Chen's Agility Discipline as the first of the 3 fight actions. — dlikos · 166

Leo De Luca

Leo De Luca

There is a common misconception regarding Leo De Luca: that you must get him in play early for him to be effective (preferably in your opening hand) and that a Leo De Luca drawn mid or late into the game is useless.

It is true that the earlier you get him, the more extra actions he will give. But the opportunity cost for resources is much higher earlier in the game; spending 6 resources will prevent you from getting other assets out into play, and without other assets or events the effectiveness of each of action isn't very high. It's hard for a rogue to investigate without a Lockpick or Flashlight or to fight without a weapon, so much of the time you'll be using his free action in inefficient ways such as drawing cards or gaining resources.

In contrast, if you put him into play later in the game, the actions he gives can be used much more efficiently. Each Investigate can with a Lockpick is nearly guaranteed to succeed, and can trigger a draw from Lucky Cigarette Case. An evade gives you extra stuff from Pickpocketing. Use the action he gives to play Hot Streaks and Intel Reports. Or it could be as simple as your skill tests being more likely to succeed due to having static bonuses out. The opportunity cost for 6 resources is also much lower in the mid to late game, since tend to over-invest in resources anyway to increase deck consistency (and to run Well Connected/High Roller), and there are few better ways to spend those resources than to get 3-4 extra actions and a 2/2 soak.

So mulligan him away for your Lockpicks, your Ornate Bows, your Berettas, and play him when money's no object. Starting with only Leo tends to be an expensive trap (unless you lucked into Leo along with Hot Streak AND your key assets, but what are the chances of that?).

The real cost is still the opportunity cost of an ally slot. At 0xp the extra action will be difficult to efficiently use, consider other allies to increase action efficiency or give static boosts. Once you've gotten the core of your deck and all the money you can't spend, buying a Leo (1) with Charisma is always worth considering if you've got the deck slots to spare.

suika · 9508
That's why my friend and I called him a "trap card", you don't play him in your starting hand. That play will screw you over for the entire game. — Wdblazer · 1
I strongly disagree. Getting him out in the first round gives you that many extra actions over the game that you can spend as many as you like to just get ressources or draw cards. It's often completely meaningless what you do in the first rounds, that's why people spend the time to setup in the first place. Don't get me wrong: Leo's always great - as long as you can pay for him. In my experience that's often easier at the start than in the midgame where you pay for all your other rogue tricks. — Elfaron · 1
I think you can all be right, depending on the situation. If you're running solo in a hard difficulty, you'd probably rather put out skill boosts than get some extra actions with base stats. But in 4 player, where you can count on other 'gators to get clues and handle monsters, I'd slam Leo on turn 1 and set myself up to power through the last act. — Hylianpuffball · 29
The point is not to have as many actions as possible. The point is to have as many effective actions as possible, and if you open Leo first, you'll be wasting a lot of actions that could have been used to advance the board state had you set up with actual assets. You could play Leo and then take a bunch of actions drawing cards, or you could have played a Lucky Cigarette Case, investigating committing Perception and draw cards while advancing the game. Playing out other assets also gives "actions", otherwise you won't have taken these assets in the first place! Even boring old static boosts makes it less likely that you'll fail a test, and thus saving you an action you would have wasted by failing the test. On higher difficulties this is most apparant, but the logic applies to standard as well. — suika · 9508
Leo is a force multiplier and he scales by how effective your actions are. If you were just going to play him and use a bunch of actions gaining resources, you may have been better served playing Lone Wolf or even Investments. — suika · 9508
Okay, but: (a) You can easily run both? and (b) If you use Leo's additional actions for money, once you have all the money you need *you have Leo still in play*. — Thatwasademo · 58
Resource, Leo, Resource, Lone Wolf is a fine turn 1 that sets you up to have both plentiful *and* effective actions by turn 3 (if not sooner) — Thatwasademo · 58
Don't mulligan away your tools and weapons for Leo, but don't shy away from playing him turn 1 or mulliganing filler cards for him either — Thatwasademo · 58
My point is that not exactly that starting with Leo is bad (in fact, I did say the best case is to start with him and enough resource generation to play your key assets). My main point is that getting Leo out mid or late game is still good. — suika · 9508
Okay, it seems my disagreement is more with Wdblazer than you then. — Thatwasademo · 58
So I wrote a review of Leo not too long ago, and I actually stand more now by what I said than I did back then. I think Leo is a great ally, and I think he is also massively overplayed. Here's the issue with Leo- playing him makes your immediate actions afterward much less effective. 6 resources and a card and an ally slot for an ally with no static boosts and no action enhancing abilities- and mediocre soak to boot- is a heavy price. The return is absolutely worth it if you can bounce back from the tempo hit quickly and if you play him early enough. Some investigators have really solid set up economy, like Preston Fairmont. Others run really low curve decks, like Winifred Habbamock. These are investigators where Leo shines for me. On the other hand, some investigators have weaknesses that a good soak ally would do well to mitigate, or are heavily dependent on specific boosts to make their actions more consistent. Tony Morgan does well with Leo in my experience, but he also does well with Lonnie thanks to her soak potential and combat boost. Trish actually uses her intellect for almost everything, even evading, and so Milan Christopher works exceptionally well with her. Finn likes to use his agility for a lot of things and has very low will and medium sanity, so Peter Sylvestre works very effectively with him. I wont say it's true for every deck regarding these investigators, but in many decks I've found a more focused ally that makes your actions more effective is preferable to Leo's action increase, because they tend to be less expensive immediately and let you set up to be more effective sooner. They also tend to be more helpful if you draw them late, as Leo's extra actions in the last few rounds of the game are pretty much eaten by the resources, cards, and action to play him. Without any secondary ability or boost, he basically doesn't solve any late game crisis you might face. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
In summary, yes the opp cost of Leo early is harder, but the impact of Leo is heavily diminished late, way more than this review gives credit. Hence why my philosophy with him is to only run him in decks that can bounce back from setting him up early. Fortunately, Faustian Bargain makes this much easier. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
I agree with those two above comments. I'd just add that the difficulty level is also relevant. Leo is probably at his very best on Easy because spare actions are so much more useful (because they can so often be turned into successful investigates), and because the passive stat boosts given by other allies is less needed. On Expert, where action quality and stat boosts are critical, Leo often underperforms. Not that he's unplayable, he can still be great in the right deck, but he's harder to make work. — CaiusDrewart · 3200
For Trish and Finn, the 4 Intellect Rogue/Seekers, I think Leo has a really hard time competing with the taboo'd Milan on a higher difficulty (let alone the Taboo'd Milan). The extra Intellect is so so important. — CaiusDrewart · 3200
As a final note, I find it odd that the review mentions Lockpicks as a card that works with Leo. Lockpicks is a great card but it exhausts! It's actually a prime example of why Leo's extra action, while good, is not as good as it initially appears. — CaiusDrewart · 3200
Because you can have two lockpicks out in play. Play/evade/move, investigate, investigate, move, is a common turn in duo as a clue-focused rogue. — suika · 9508
@Styx: completely agree with your review, except that 1) Leo pays for the action playing him and 2) 6 resources mid/late game that you're not spending anyway is basically free! As a rogue, it's odd to not end up late game with a pile of resources from Watch This/Faustian Bargain/Lone Wolf. You don't need to break even with him because you weren't going to use those resources anyway. — suika · 9508
Mid/late-game use just Leo as an expensive Ace in the Hole spread out over a few rounds; that's hardly the worst use of resources. Like I pointed out in the review, the main reason you won't play him is the fact that other allies are better a lot of the time. — suika · 9508
I disagree wholeheartedly that you necessitate using your endgame resources on Leo. Rogues have some of the best resource sinks in the game, like Streetwise and Lola Santiago/Delilah O Rourke, which make those end game resources very helpful late game. I would not spent 6 resources on Leo late game where the additional actions are unlikely to help more than the investment would hurt. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
That's a tautology, of course don't play him when you need the resources more. Whether resources or actions will be helpful will vary deck by deck, scenario by scenario, though I should point out that any deck that included Leo should have bought a surfeit of resources anyway! — suika · 9508

Miss Doyle

Miss Doyle

Hope, Zeal, and Augur all share a common mechanic where you can discard them to test at a base of 5, and the test is automatically successful. This means that the test difficulty is 0, and no chaos token is drawn, but you still get to commit cards to the test. In other words, you get a guaranteed success by (at least) 5, and you can make use of this to assuredly trigger not just cards that have if successful effects, but those with succeed by X effects. Cards with automatic successes aren't terribly common, and the cats provide a reliable, repeatable way of getting them.

Since you have to trigger a Fight / Investigate / Evade action on the cat itself, this is limited to skill cards and reaction abilities on assets. Most of the succeed by X cards are in the faction, making a / pairing an ideal investigator choice. skill cards include Quick Thinking, "Watch this!", and Nimble at 0xp, and Momentum and All In with XP. For assets, there is Gregory Gry, Pickpocketing and the Lucky Cigarette Case.

Succeeding by 5 maxes out every single one of these cards so far (except upgraded Lucky Cigarette Case), so you get the full benefit. The downside is that you forego the benefit the skill icons would have provided. This isn't such a big deal for Vicious Blow or Deduction, but something to consider for Overpower, Manual Dexterity and the like.

In the faction, you have Drawing Thin, a repeatable, stacking source of income with absolutely zero downside to using, that completely breaks the game.

Moving on.

Preston Fairmont and Wendy Adams have the best access to these cards, with Preston benefiting particularly well from the regular use of the cats' elevated stats. Preston is also the only investigator so far to be able to take Miss Doyle and All In + the upgraded Lucky Cigarette Case, guaranteeing a 5 card weakness-free draw, or a 1 in 5+ filtered draw that is (hopefully) also weakness free. (Actually, Lola Hayes can use the LCC too but this is a terrible idea, putting the cats at risk on one turn and the LCC on the other). Wendy, with her 4 and investigator ability, is a lot less impressed by these shenanigans.

In multiplayer of course, one investigator doesn't have to do everything. A player can trigger an automatic success with a cat, and the rest of the team can pile on skills. The skills above, as well as skills that are valued more for their effects than icons (Resourceful, Inspiring Presence, Eureka!, Enraptured etc) are all great candidates. Someone with Crystal Pendulum can also get a free card draw out of it just by being at the same location and predicting which way the fur flies.

As you can see, the cats are very multiplayer friendly and a great combo initiator. They are a very interesting deck choice for Preston as well, giving him a path to oversuccess other than stockpiling money. He still needs to find Miss Doyle first though, so don't neglect card draw.

P.S. There is one event that modifies an existing skill test, as opposed to initiating a new one. Sadly, tossing Zeal isn't considered a projectile attack, so Marksmanship does not work. Maybe one day we'll get a Cat-apult card?

Edit: Added Drawing Thin..

jemwong · 97
Ha ha! Nice I like it! — LaRoix · 1646
Cat Party! — MrGoldbee · 1496
If you automatically succeed (or fail) on a test without pulling a token, you succeed or fail by zero. — Pinchers · 133
@pinchers, you are mistaken — NarkasisBroon · 11
If a skill test automatically fails, the investigator's total skill value for that test is considered 0. If a skill test automatically succeeds, the total difficulty of that test is considered 0. (Here begin the expanded rules. NB this section overrules some of what is above.) Some card effects make an investigator automatically succeed or automatically fail a skill test. If this occurs, depending on the timing of such an effect, certain steps of the skill test may be skipped in their entirety. If it is known that an investigator automatically succeeds or fails at a skill test before Step 3 ("Reveal chaos token") occurs, that step is skipped, along with Step 4. No chaos token(s) are revealed from the chaos bag, and the investigator immediately moves to Step 5. All other steps of the skill test resolve as normal. — NarkasisBroon · 11
If you automatically succeed before revealing a token you still perform step 5 (determine modified skill value) and compare it with the test difficulty (which is considered to be 0 because you automatically succeeded) — NarkasisBroon · 11
@Narkasis I guess I was reading it where you *either* perform the test at base 5, *or* automatically succeed. Definitely the way I played it with Patrice. Never crossed my mind that it could be an *and*. — Pinchers · 133
So I played TCU with Preston and took Miss Doyle after the third scenario. For five scenarios I never saw her. Discard treacheries, discard actions on breaches, empty space, you name it. So like a cat. Since she's a 1-of, you might look for Calling In Favors or Chance Encounter to make sure you get her into play. — Time4Tiddy · 249
Miss Doyle is an auto-include for any Charlie Kane deck. Her ? means that you get +2 for exhausting her, and you get an additional +1 or +2 from whichever of her lieutenants shows up with her. — Xelto · 7

Lola Hayes

Lola Hayes

Lola is not bad.

Rather, Lola is really freaking good.

If people are afraid of her weakness then frankly they're just not playing her well. Her stat line 3/3/3/3 is just one bump away from greatness. And she can bump it a whole whole lot. In a game this week I was running her and with 25xp she had the stat line of 5/6/6/4. With the Timeworn Brand so swinging at 8 Fight. And that wasn't that particularly hard to do. Or even in a way which runs chances of exposure: I think over the course of the scenario there were maybe 2 turns where I was exposing more than 1 asset to be lost to her weakness. Which I drew once, and lost 0 assets because of it.

The formula isn't complex. Load up on cards which provide passive bonuses. Go asset light on a couple of colors and use those for Events or Skills. Harvest the best of them from every color. Profit.

puert · 48
Even discounting her weakness, Lola has no real ability. Her appeal is her card access, but it’s not a great trade. Lola is fine in the sense that no investigator in this game is truly bad, but there always has to be a worst. Lola arguably is the worst but that doesn’t mean she can’t be fun. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
...and at 19xp, a post-Taboo Key of Ys + Dark Horse Silas has an effective stat line of 7/8/6/9, fighting with a Fire Axe at 10/8 Fight while holding a hand full of cantrip skills. And he sets up faster and more reliabily than Lola does. Lola is far from unusable, but she's pretty much outclassed at everything she does. — suika · 9508
Fine, I updated my review. I never meant to say Lola was bad, unfun, or unplayable... but I think that too many people were reading 'bad' as _bad_ instead of 'sub-optimal'. — Hylianpuffball · 29
Yea Lola is solid because she can get all those stat bump cards and go to town. But remember that takes set up, and more importantly, XP. And I mean a LOT of XP so she doesn't shine until mid campaign and that's if you somehow managed to perform well with pitiful health and sanity this whole time. — LaRoix · 1646
I agree that Lola, if properly built, may feel powerful with 25 XP, but this is faint praise. Show me an investigator who doesn't. Yes, it's true that the incredible power of certain player cards, especially XP cards, can make her effective. But she's still relatively weak compared to other investigators. Access to a broad pool of player cards (which is not nearly as flexible as it might seem, given her strict deckbuilding requirements, the need to play around Crisis of Identity, and the need to deal with the roles drawback) is a poor tradeoff for a bad statline and a missing investigator ability. — CaiusDrewart · 3200

Idle Hands

Idle Hands

Another fun card from the Erratic Fear encounter set that is troublesome, yet fun. That extra action is a great bonus, making this a card people would almost pay to play. It's very situational how good or bad this is. If you draw it on a turn when you could really use another action and you are playing a beefy investigator like Silas or Nathaniel, it's a win. If, on the other hand, you are playing Daisy Walker or Luke and you're left saying "well, I guess I'll draw a card," that seems much more bleak. At least those two might have a Logical Reasoning in hand (as it were).

LivefromBenefitSt · 1091