Just a great addition to the card pool. Guardians that were previously interested in "I've had worse…" now have a stepping stone, and Diana Stanley can also take this.

For most of our Guardians, this card can serve as protection against horror and economy, two things they really need. For Mark Harrigan, he might be interested in avoiding damage sometimes, just to make sure he doesn't flip Sophie.

For off-class Guardians, I've already mentioned Diana, who can use this as a canceling effect. Otherwise, "Skids" O'Toole, William Yorick and Joe Diamond can all take this. I don't think any of them combo particularly hard with this card, but I think all of them could take it and have some us for it.

Finally, as this is Spirit traited, Calvin Wright can take this... and that's amazing. From what I've seen, Calvin is all about riding the edge, pushing your damage and horror up high without dying. This lets you avoid two points of damage or horror, letting you stay alive for just a bit longer.

To analyze the skull, we consider the cost and the benefits. The effect of the skull is that each time you spend a charge, you gain a resource and a card. But anyone can spend an action for a card or a resource, so the real benefit of the skull is that it gives you the other one as well. This means the skull gives you one of whatever you least want at the time – if you really want a card, you could have spent the action getting a card even without the skull, the benefit of the skull is that you also get a money. If you wanted a money, it gives you a card, and if you really wanted an action, you aren’t going to spend that action on the skull, so the skull is useless. So the upfront cost of the skull is a card and an action to play now, and the benefit is to gain one of whatever you least want, in the future, for each time you use it. So using the skull 3 times is kind of breaking even, you would want to use it 4 times to feel excited about taking the card. And since the skull is useless when drawn late, if you draw it early you want to use it at least 5 times to think it is a good card.

In my experience, it is very possible for a combat character (in a 4-player party) who plays the skull early to pick up 5 charges – indeed, to pick up all the charges they can handle. The real limitation is the actions you have to spend to use these charges. The analysis above is that if you would have to spend at least 5 actions gaining cards and/or resources, after you start gaining charges, to be happy with the skull. And that assumes you would have been happy spending the actions even without the skull (otherwise the skull really isn’t practical at all). But in my experience, most characters are kept very busy, and don’t spend that many actions over the course of a scenario drawing cards or gaining resources – and when they do, it is often at the beginning of the mission when the skull wouldn’t have charges. It is a special sort of character who has that much free time during the mission.

The Decorated Skull isn’t the sort of card that is really going to blow anyone away with its amazing power, you aren’t missing much if you never use it. But it can be fun and useful for a very specific type of character – a dedicated monster killer (so you put yourself in the right place to get lots of charges) who can’t investigate (so you have free time) and who is in a party with plenty of ways to deal with monsters (so you aren’t under constant pressure to save your friends, and thus have more free time), and who doesn’t need the accessory slot for something else.

While Henry falls direly short of playable on his own, he's intended to synergize with Mystic cards that manipulates the chaos bag such as: The Chthonian Stone, Protective Incantation, and Seal of the Seventh Sign. You can potentially modify a chaos bag to have only a 10% chance or possibly 0% chance of drawing a symbol. Henry could, given the right circumstances, draw/gain 10 cards/resources in any combination of your choice. Henry's more of a theoretical 'this is very unlikely but amazing when it does happen' rather than reliable and generically powerful ally like Leo DeLuca.

Worth noting that the 2 Psychopomp cards in the set aren't the same. Card #36 of 42 is what's pictured. Card #37 of 42 is the same except horror has been substituted in for damage.

To understand this card, first you need to compare it to Shrivelling (3). The cards are extremely similar. The advantages of Shards of the Void are

1. Does not inflict horror upon you when you draw a special token.
2. Has a tiny chance of gaining a nice bonus by drawing a “0” token.

The disadvantages are:

1. You steal the 0 token from the bag, hurting everyone in the party every time they make a skill test, potentially for quite a long time.
2. Shrivelling can be upgraded to the mighty Shrivelling (5), Shards cannot be upgraded.

The advantages are rather modest. The disadvantage of stealing the 0 token is quite painful, but is proportional to the number of investigators. If you are playing solo, I could see Shards being competitive with Shrivelling if you are a mystic who is concerned with horror. If you are playing with 4 investigators, as I do, Shards is clearly inferior to Shrivelling.

However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a clear purpose. You don’t take Shards instead of Shrivelling. You take it because you are only allowed to take 2 copies of Shrivelling, and having only 2 combat spells in your deck is not a lot. If you decide your character wants more combat spells, you are going to have to take a combat spell which is inferior to Shrivelling, and by that standard Shards is looking like a very reasonable choice. It is still an accurate attack that does a reliable 2 damage and has a good number of charges.

Shards of the Void is meant for the dedicated combat mage who needs multiple attack spells. And once you have Shards of the Void, you want to be aggressive with it. You want to run around helping the party by taking on monsters, so you can use up the charges and return the 0 token to the bag. The last thing you want to do with Shards of the Void is to play it as a “just in case” defensive card, then go off and do other things, leaving it in play for a long time while it eats away at the effectiveness of every investigator.