I am a little late to the party, so I will repeat a lot that has already been said. But this card really intrigued me.

For me it is really hard to quantify an effect like her's or Grotesque Statue's. When it comes to probabilities I have learned that my guts are usually wrong. So I like to confirm or refute my instincts by using my mediocre programming skills.

Those statistics assume Father Mateo ( = auto pass), but should be able to be adjusted to fit any chaos bag and investigator.

My findings are the same as already posted by others:

• Olive increases your chances for very hard skill checks
• Olive increases the chances for very easy skill checks
• Olive decreases your chances for medium skill checks
• Olive "adds new chaos tokens" to the bag. What I mean by this is if you only have -1, -2, -3, -4 and -6, when using Olive you have a chance of "drawing" -5, -7, -8, -9, -10.

What the graph is bad at showing is that with Olive you always have a ~21% chance of drawing the . Which in the case of Father Mateo means free actions/resources and cards.

One thing I was really surprised by was the significant difference (~10% points) there is in the order of usage between:

• Olive and on her last token Grotesque Statue
• Grotesque Statue and on its last token Olive

After playing around with this a bit more, it seems like Ritual Candles have quite a big effect on Olive. If my understanding that Ritual Candles can be triggered twice if both chosen tokens are , , or is correct, this pushes Olive above just regular token draws in every situation with the added benefit of increased chances to find that one token you want (aka ) or avoiding the one you don't want (aka ).

Major enabler for a specific build:

Double or Nothing and All In both have (limit one per test) text. That means once either card has been committed its corresponding copy becomes an invalid target for Daredevil.

As a result once you have Daredevil plus any one copy of Double or Nothing, All In, or a second Daredevil (and no other rogue skill cards in deck) you're guaranteed to get both DoN and All In onto the same test, allowing you to pull up to 10 cards with zero weaknesses. With any luck this can pull you into a second copy of both All In and DoN, allowing for extremely quick deck-cycling.

There's a major catch to this build: for one you cannot include any other rogue skills except an additional copy of Daredevil without risking interrupting the combo. You can include non-rogue skill options however, and for a deck which has the potential to pull twenty cards in a turn its probably not a bad idea to lean into the actionless, costless economy options available to you. Still Rogue has essentially the best collection of skill cards in the game, and missing out on them to enable this combo isn't nothing. This is also an 18-20xp combo with taboo. not cheap

That being said if you can build a deck that otherwise moves quickly you can set up an amazingly potent self-sustaining combo. Toss in some Easy Marks and run this out of Skids as a way to dump all that extra money into actions and you can blitz through scenarios with card draw that will embarrass anything but the most draw-heavy seekers.

beware tho

A simple card, with a very clear use, but at the same time, just expensive enough to give a burgeoning mystic pause. There are tons of cards in the game that let you search your deck for various kinds of cards; but I think it makes the most sense to compare this to a more particular group: cards that let you search the WHOLE deck for something.

Cards that let you search your whole deck for something:

Level 5 No Stone Unturned: The ultimate gimme what I WANT card. It costs two resources, same as Word of Command, but let's you choose anything at all in your deck -- or you can give that power to another investigator at your location. And it's fast. But you'll have to pay an extra three xp for those benefits.

Research Librarian: This card is interesting to stack up against Word of Command. Both let you search your deck for a card of a particular type (tome, spell) in exchange for 2 resources and an action. The Librarian also throws in a rickety ally for free, which can be a blessing or a curse. If you don't have an ally out, sure, why not. If you do, you probably don't want to trade them for this dusty ol' duffer. I'm a little surprised, though, to see such a similar card cost an additional 2xp. But considering how many mystics build their decks around getting out VERY particular spells like Shrivelling or Rite of Seeking, it probably makes sense to force them to pay more. Still, if you are running Pnakotic Manuscripts as a seeker, the Research Librarian is a hilariously good deal. To me at any rate, he makes Word of Command seem a bit overpriced by contrast.

Stick to the Plan: Really an amazing card... allowing you to start the game (essentially) with THREE extra cards, and those three cards handpicked by you! They have to be tactic or supply events, but there are some good'uns out there, like Custom Ammunition or Dynamite Blast. Word of Command has the slight advantage of allowing you to choose your card the depending on the game state when you play it, but I honestly don't think most people will take Word of Command for that versatility. They'll take it because they want to make sure they get their level-five Shrivelling, and they'd rather pay 2 xp for a search card than another 5xp for the card itself (or they've already maxed out two copies). Again, I'm forced to conclude that Word of Command is a bit overpriced in comparison.

Anna Kaslow: Kind of a niche card -- you have to be running lots of tarots to make her work. But if you are, she's great. She lets you find and immediately play a 3-resource asset for, well, three resources. And she has other benefits beside. Good action and resource economy for a search card, but pricey at 4xp.

Overall, I think Matt has been a bit stingy with this Word of Command, but probably because he knows plenty of mystics are desperate enough for more reliable draws to pay his price. Decks that heavily rely on a couple key spells will benefit from this card, but I think that most of the time, the better strategy will be to create a deck that works with a variety of draw sequences. Mystics who have built more versatile decks can use the 0xp Arcane Initiate instead, and potentially get multiple draws out of it.

One note: if you do plan to upgrade into a couple copies of this card reasonably soon, it may be a good idea to start your deck with a single copy of Astounding Revelation. You're guaranteed to be Astounded whenever you play Word of Command, assuming you haven't already unluckily drawn the Revelation.

Final take from this vacillating and indecisive reviewer. The card definitely has a clear and powerful effect, but it's expensive and feels a bit like a crutch for an overly rigid deck.

I completely agree with the other review, but I feel like it's worth mentioning that this card synergizes really well with Ursula Downs' ability. Both Fieldwork and said ability require you to move before you can activate them so you end up investigating after moving very often. It gets even more efficient once Pathfinder enters the mix. Almost every Ursula decklist on ArkhamDB includes this card. It's almost like a secondary signature card.

EDIT: as a side note on Fieldwork with Ursula, if you have Jake Williams in play, you can make a move action without taking an AoO. This means that you could move with an enemy engaged, use Fieldwork to evade that enemy, then move away (using your extra action to investigate if there's a clue left on that location) so that you can avoid becoming engaged again during the enemy phase. I hadn't thought of this before because I almost never actually play Jake. Becomes more efficient with Pathfinder, of course (though you can't activate Pathfinder if you have an enemy engaged iirc).

It also probably works well for Luke Robinson, though probably not to the same degree. You could use Dream-Gate to warp across a scenario and then use Fieldwork to investigate the new location. This also improves with Pathfinder, of course. That being said, I doubt that it is an auto-include in a Luke deck, as he can't necessarily Gate Box every turn, and he doesn't inherently get perks for movement.

Don't forget that it can also be used for non-investigation skill tests provided that you move to a location with at least one clue. In practice this is not terribly common. I have run into situations where I want to evade an enemy who's one location away to help a teammate. I have also used it for questing tests, though some of these need all of the clues gone before you can actually do them. Once again, Pathfinder helps a lot to make these acts more efficient.

I like the concept of this card; playing an asset by performing an investigate test. It's a similar concept to Unearth the Ancients. Like Unearth, however, this card doesn't seem worth the deck slot (actually probably even moreso given that it's an xp card and is competing with two other types of Archaic Glyphs). It's bad in different ways than Unearth, though.

The main issue with it (apart from just the fact that you have to take a test, which is, to be fair, kind of just part of the game) is that you have to over-succeed in order to not waste your charge. Because you probably aren't going to want to use it to play an asset with cost≤2, this means that you need to beat the shroud by 3. That means that you probably need to get your to be like 6 above the shroud if you want to have a decent chance of being able to play a card. Apart from some Key of Ys double Magnifying Glass Death • XIII type of situation (I've been there, it's awesome), this means you'll probably need to commit something unless you're investigating a 1 or 2 shroud location. My feeling is that you don't want to waste precious icons on something like that that you might even still fail if you pull a -4 or

Other issues with it are its install cost, which isn't that bad (it's only a 2 cost asset, and uses the less contested (for seekers) arcane slot) but is still of dubious worth even if it you didn't have to over-succeed. There's a reason why so few decks run Unearth.

It also costs 3xp and competes with the two other versions of Glyphs, as I mentioned earlier. Both of those cards are actually really good (I think, anyway).

Some of the pluses of the card are that it can play an asset from any faction (not just like the aforementioned Unearth the Ancients. It also isn't a replacement effect, AFAICT, so you still get a clue for your investigation, which would give it a lot of action economy potential if it didn't suck so much (Both other versions of Glyphs are very efficient cards).

It also is an investigate action, meaning that it can be used with Ursula's ability. It also could trigger Rex's ability.

It kind of makes me wish there was some kind of reverse taboo list that aimed to make cards with cool concepts more actually playable. My recommendation would be that it allows you to put an asset into play with cost=shroud (though maybe that would be considered too powerful?). I would definitely play it then. Well, maybe anyway. The other two versions of Archaic Glyphs are still probably better most of the time, so it would probably depend on the deck, number of players, scenario, investigator, etc.