Olive McBride

I updated foobar's excellent jsfiddle from their Olive McBride (0) review to include Olive McBride (2) as well. You can play around with the chaos bag to see specific values. However, to summarize:

  • Olive McBride (0)'s weakness was that she was often not worth it. If you were up by 2-4 on a skill test, which is common on Standard difficulty, Olive's ability would often lower your chance of success. The same is also true if you were even (up 0) on a skill test and didn't have Father Mateo's auto success on Elder Sign to save you.
  • Olive McBride (2) does not have that weakness. Using her ability raises your chance of success for almost any chaos bag and skill value, sometimes up to 10-20% more.

Even without considering token-hunting shenanigans (Elder Sign for Father Mateo, Skulls for Jim Culver, Bless/Curse in general), Olive McBride is a considerable upgrade just for passing skill tests, and should be prioritized accordingly.

blackjet3 · 11
Amazing, I was terribly sad that it wasn't accessible anymore. One thing, it asks for a login at the moment when I click on the link — Valentin1331 · 67694
@Valentin1331 Thanks for letting me know. I don't see a way to make the full-screen view visible without login, so I changed the link to the editor view which should work. — blackjet3 · 11
Terrible Secret

That is a terrible rulling. Deny existence shouldn't negate Diana's weakness. The point of ignore vs cancel is that if a card has multiple bad effects you simply ignore one of them and do all the rest. It wasn't written that way to wiggle out of a signature weakness such as this. If you want to use bad templating as an excuse to give yourself an easier time that's fine, you can play the game however you want. But it's pretty obvious this isn't what they had in mind with Deny Existence and simply forgot to to add "or ignored" to the weakness.

cabalpaxiarch · 114
I mean... they literally came in the same box. If you wanna make the argument that they didn't design the mystic cards in the box with the mystic investigator in the box in mind. Then I can't stop you. — NarkasisBroon · 10
Im not sure how ignoring one horror out of potentially 5 is also that extreme. When it outright negated her weakness, I felt it was too strong, but now Deny doesn’t help her all that much. — StyxTBeuford · 12985
I disagree with Styx here. Deny (0) is still pretty good. Diana takes max 5 horror from her weakness anyway, Deny saves her 2. One because of the card effect, and one, because she can let a card go and replace it with Deny. TS isn't the hardest signature weakness to beginn with, as you can always discard cards or take horror accordingly. Deny (5) is overcosted, if you use it on TS. 5 XP for just one more horror is not worth it, but you could of course try to heal excessive horror dealt by TS elsewere, in particular, if you stick it on Dayana. — Susumu · 363
I agree with you Susumu, I just meant it’s not absurdly powerful at negating it, I think it’s super fair and also always a good card to run with her anyway. — StyxTBeuford · 12985
Yeah, that I'm agreeing on. I've read often people writing: "Now, after the errata, DE does not work on TS anymore", which is not true. It is still good, just not annihilating the weakness anymore. — Susumu · 363
Luke Robinson

From the above official answers:

Q: Luke plays Read the Signs to investigate a connecting location with a ready, unengaged Young Deep One. Does he take 1 horror? (I think no, because he is considered to be engaged with enemy, but there is no timing point of engagement.) A: Luke playing Read the Signs on a connecting location would not cause him to engage Young Deep One or take 1 horror.

Ouch. Although technically correct, this answer fails to address the fact that you would still incur 1 damage and 1 horror in the form of an opportunity attack from young deep one. Failing to include this information in an official answer just leads to confusion and could cause players to incorrectly assume they can play this card and other events without possible attacks of opportunity. They wouldn’t get the 1 horror since there is no engagement timing point to take it, but they are still considered engaged with young deep one and therefore will incur the opportunity attack.

No, you would not. You are not engaged, nor considered engaged with enemies at that location — Adny · 1
nvm, it says so on the card :D. still, you only asked about engagement, not about, so they answered your question — Adny · 1
Wasn’t my question and you missed my whole point about the answer. They are usually more thorough. — rainman1646 · 2
Case in point, you were confused. — rainman1646 · 2
Dr. Charles West III

After some testing, Dr. Charles West III is... inconsistent.

There are two main benefits to the doctor. The first is that he gives an additional hand slot, which can only be used for tools. This means you're trading an ally slot for a tool slot, and which encounters the usual problems of cards that take up slots for slots - you need extra actions to fill up those slots. Now, Seekers will effectively have a free hand slot, since most can justify running Magnifying Glass to fill it, and there are other useful tools that could be use - but that still needs you to spend more resources and actions to fill the slot, which is never great when your actions can always go towards investigating.

Second, on some successful investigates, he can exhaust to deal damage - but only on investigates that only succeed on 1s and 3s. This is two levels of specific - first, you need to succeed by 1 and 3. This is doable, but rather inconsistent - sure, you could use Steady-Handed to improve your odds, but it's hardly a guarantee, and Steady-Handed (and its other synergy, Chemistry Set) already encourages you to succeed by a certain amount. Second, this requires you to be at a location which has an enemy that can take one more damage.

There are very specific cases where he can be useful, but they require some fairly niche builds. If not for the differing classes, I'd be hard-pressed to find a case where you'd want to use him over Alice Luxley. His Science trait is the only notable one, and that's of limited use - he's not even Miskatonic, so he won't be getting any Miskatonic Archaeology Funding And with so many good Seeker allies available as is, you'd want a pretty specific place to fit the doctor in.

Ruduen · 974
Waiting for Dr. Charles West IV. — MrGoldbee · 1444
Kate Winthrop

Here's a gist of Kate's usage of clues :

Get your 1st clue and put it on Flux Stabilizer to flip it active. This one won't get you the +2 yet, just the flip. Don't forget to put version of Aetheric Current you like into the deck.

Play some Science or Tool assets in different slots. (e.g. Flashlight/Magnifying Glass on Hand, Dr. Charles West III on Ally, Chemistry Set on Accessory, or even First Aid on no slot?) Each one let you get +2 on demand when putting a clue on them. It means she can get 4 or 4 from time to time too, or even more if you place 2+ clues on different assets at once.

Try to make the asset clue-less again, so you can do more +2 :

  • Spend clues as a part of scenario progress, and choose the clues on assets rather than on the investigator card. So turns out, if scenario allows multiple investigators to contribute the clues to advance, Kate want to spend exactly clues on her assets and not clues on her investigator card, so she is ready to do +2 for whatever coming up. You can do that more if other players can flex to get some clues.
  • Find the jackpot Aetheric Current in the deck and an unlucky enemy to unleash the current on. This makes all assets clue-less, provided that you have 1 clue to flip back Flux Stabilizer.
  • Get to make one asset available.
  • Failing Failed Experiment and choose the clue drop option. You can drop clues placed on your assets, and use some left over clues on investigator card for the +2. (Not necessarily for picking the clues back up.)
  • Other creative plays, like picking Magnifying Glass (1) up and immediately play it back to make use of your leftover clues. (If dropping the clue that was on it is not a problem.)

If you put a clue on limited use assets like Flashlight, beware if you spent all the supplies then you want to switch to other Hand asset wanting to replacing it, the clue on the empty Flashlight would drop. Same for clue on Chemistry Set then it get discarded due to its own effect.

On testing Failed Experiment, placing a clue to get +2 would be effectively just +1 because test difficulty also increases. For this reason it might help to pack other boosting solution into the deck like Inquiring Mind, Esoteric Method, etc. Or simply heal the horror back with Steady-Handed, Logical Reasoning, etc.

5argon · 9632