First I just want to say I absolutely love the art on this card, maybe my favourite in the pack. The whole theme of the card is just fantastic all around.

That out the way, I think the most obvious comparison for this card is Logical Reasoning as they are the two cards in the game that can testlessly discard a treachery in play. I think when Alter Fate was revealed a lot of people saw it as a less flexible Logical Reasoning, due to them both being able to discard one of the worst treacheries in the game and Logical Reasoning having the added benefit of horror healing, but I dont think this is entirely fair. Alter Fate is fast, useable outside your turn and doesn't require you to be at the location of the player you're helping. Not to mention there are a fair few pretty nasty non-terror treacheries you can hit.

I think Alter Fate really shines in the second half of Forgotten Age where it can deal with Words of Power, Yithian Presence, Entombed, Creeping Darkness (surprisingly) and Frozen in Fear when you have 2 willpower, all of which can require a significant investment of action or cards to deal with otherwise.

I also think it does a lot of work throughout Dunwich where between Arcane Barrier, Locked Door, Cursed Luck, Beyond the Veil and the campaign's liberal use of the Striking Fear encounter set, every scenario has at least one target and usually several.

Ultimately the value of Alter Fate is very dependent on the campaign and the investigator choice. If you are playing through Dunwich with a group containing multiple low willpower investigators they are likely to thank you for running it. If you are playing Forgotten Age and some of your investigators are worried about the agility test on Entombed it may be worth it.

A few investigator specific notes:

Father Mateo can take this card, as it is Blessed, and since its a spell he can dig for it with Arcane Initiate. This is dubiously worthwhile as Mateo has lots to spend exp on and can already take Ward of Protection but it could be interesting in a very supporting control focused build.

William Yorick has only medium values for both agility and willpower, which makes him vulnerable to a lot of the treacheries that Alter Fate is useful against.

Calvin Wright may specifically find it useful for dealing with Curse of Yig and Dreams of R'lyeh which can be brutal for him, as a form of virtual damage that bypasses and soak he has in play, though he can also play Ward of Protection which does a mostly better job.

The long awaited final event in the Improvised cycle is here! And... its a little underwhelming?

In theory the advantage of the improvised cards is twofold: one they provide a "skill-bonus" in the form of a test difficulty reduction, and secondly they provide action compression when played from the discard by allowing you to double the action (gathering two clues for Winging It and dealing two damage for Improvised Weapon).

Impromptu Barrier does fine at providing a skill bonus, though there are very few evade 1 enemies and so you are pretty unlikely to get the "guaranteed success" that difficulty reduction can sometimes provide. A resource and a card to get effectively a +1 to two evade tests is probably a bit worse than the same rate on investigating and roughly the same as that rate on combat, purely based on how frequently tests come up. So on that front barrier isn't too much worse than the other improvised cards.

Where the card really falters for me is in the second effect. Doubling up on a combat test is frequently valuable, Improvised Weapon allows you to deal with a three health enemy in two actions, or split its effects and deal with a 1 health enemy and a two health enemy at one action each. Winging It lets you double the most important action in the game, working like a survivor version of Deduction. Doubling up on a successful evade action is simply less valuable than either damage or investigation as rather than requiring a two clue location or two health enemy (both very common even in solo) it requires you to have two enemies at your location, and for you to want to evade both of them.

If this card simply let you evade a second enemy at your location without the X or lower requirement, I think it would be niche but playable in investigators who like to evade a lot and can struggle to deal with multiple hunters. As is, not only do you have to want to evade two enemies at the same location but you also have to over-succeed by enough to evade both of them, otherwise the card essentially does nothing and you wasted your resource.

It's a real shame since I feel the other two are really home run designs and it would be nice to have a solid third to round out the set but, but I feel this falls more than a little flat.

I've found this card pretty useful with Norman Withers as I'm running double arcane research. I knew I'd meet the 2x mental trauma threshold form the start and i quickly upgraded into two copies of Shriveling(5) which has a decent chance of popping me for 2 horror. Thermos will undo that with one action. Lastly when thermos shows up on top of my deck I can get it out for 1 fewer resources which helps mitigate the high cost.

This is possibly one of the worst weaknesses in the game.

• location furthest from you, which isn't the worst in multiplayer but can be devastating in solo, especially if you're in the final stages of a large scenario.

• to trigger on top of what it takes to get to that location

• it's an investigate test which means even if you have the fortune for it not to land on a 4 or 5 shroud location (which it totally can) you can still fail the test and end up having to spend an additional . I can't think of any other weakness which takes for a chance at discarding it.

• trauma, especially mental, remains one of the more punitive negatives in the game. Sure it won't kill you, but it will put pressure on all further scenarios down the line.

The only real positive for this card is that it is 'effectively blank' in the final scenario (assuming you are not on 6 mental trauma already) which is right when you want to ignore it most. That is a fairly good upside actually.

So it's swingy, but even on a good day it's pretty darn bad. I'd say equivalent or right behind Cover Up in terms of severity for many of the same reasons (CU being usually much easier to handle, but mental trauma being a much bigger problem for Roland)

Nearly all Jenny decks will want two copies of Elusive at all times to mitigate this card.

I think this card is thematically great and that an evasion-first Finn deck built with Illicit cards is extremely fun to play and very formidable in solo standard and hard. I concede that you generally only want to bring one pair of mulligan-worthy economy cards and that most rogues will want to opt for Lone Wolf. Even with Finn, especially on higher difficulties, using Lone Wolf for consistent stat-boosting is a pretty tried-and-true strategy. That said, when played early, the additional actions and advantage managing opportunity cost provided by Fence is a huge boon, especially in a lean Finn deck where nothing costs more than 3 anyway and a couple of Pay Day or Emergency Cache is usually enough to play a few key assets and a stream of cheap events. While Fence does share the same drawbacks as other economy/set-up cards (bummer if you don’t draw it until late, bummer when you draw the second one), the cards it interacts with are quite good on their own and there’s nothing sitting in your hand waiting for a dependent combo.

Playing Fence early has generally provided me with three to six additional actions in the scenario. With Finn, they’re often used after evading an enemy when getting a few things done and moving on in the same round is crucial.

Some synergies with Fence and Finn:

Pay Day - upgraded from a more complicated Emergency Cache to an actionless 3+ resources

Smuggled Goods - from a somewhat lackluster draw to the same as drawing the Fenced-up version of Lockpicks, Lupara, or Pay Day

Lupara - obliterate the enemy and still move or investigate in the same turn

Lockpicks - this card just seems to love being fast; sometimes with a good opening hand, you can start on a 1-clue location, play Fence, draw a resource, then drop Lockpicks and get the clue before your first round is up

The interaction with Finn's Trusty .38 and Switchblade is less significant but helps to mitigate the initial cost of Fence.

The opportunity cost consideration is hard to quantify but feels very real when playing. The easiest example is when the encounter deck is throwing Corrosion at you and discarding Lockpicks feels a lot less painful when you didn’t already pay 3 resources for it. In smaller ways, it helps with managing resources and hand slots throughout the scenario.

As a side note, I don’t think the upgrade from Sleight of Hand is painful or that the card is particularly missed. The only really great SoH combo is with Lupara and I’d rather not wait on drawing both cards. (Lupara is still excellent with Fence, dependably performing its task of killing most enemies in one or two actions.) I know some rogues like Sleight of Hand for Lockpicks but with Finn investigating at 8, I’ve never run out of supplies before the scenario ended or the encounter deck ate the card. Just playing Lockpicks fast is the better option. I found that Sleight of Hand would often sit in my hand or get used for the heck of it and that I would rather have drawn one of the many available skills or events that more directly help me kill things or turn bad results into good ones (there are really so many to choose from for rogues).

There is definitely a fun factor element to this card but having Fence out provides a ton of benefits and feeds so elegantly into the Finn solo experience of rushing around and mostly leaving enemies in the dust except for a few big offensive rounds that I would highly recommend giving it a shot if that style appeals to you.