This card has excellent synergy with Ursula Downs. Given that she’ll be moving around quite a bit to maximize use of her ability and investing in mobility upgrades like Pathfinder and Shortcut to further capitalise on that, it’s very plausible she’ll be scampering across the map at lightspeed, handily opening up locations left and right.

Getting this card is a further extension of that play style; finding one of these copies at or near the start of the game means that you can afford to keep moving off from high shroud or otherwise troublesome locations like Circuitous Trail or Serpent's Haven instead of staying to empty them normally and paying through the nose as a result. You can then play this card to grab the breadcrumb trail of clues you’ve left behind, sweeping off the last remaining clue or two off a whole bunch of locations at once, and minimizing the number of tests you need to make as well.

Mack gripped the railing tight as he peered through the pouring rain, the boat's lights behind him doing little to pierce the darkness. A crack of lightning was more effective--the massive shadow that was the island, and next to it, the silhouette of another boat, hastily moored to a rock. Good--he wasn't too late.

"Bring her in!" Mack shouted back to the captain. "Shore's just up ahead!"

"Are you mad?" came the response. "Nothing's supposed to be here! It's not natural! There's not enough money in the world to get me closer!"

"Yeah? Well I've got plenty more motivation if that's not gonna work. Bring her in if you know what's good for ya!"

There was a pause, silent but for the roaring storm, and the boat continued forwards. Within minutes, Mack had his feet back on solid ground. It was strangely spongy, and unpleasant to walk on, but Mack was too much of a professional to let something like that stop him. His ears perked up at the familiar sound of a gunshot from among the towers up ahead. They were some real ugly pieces of work, those. Whoever'd built them hadn't even managed to cut the stones straight.

Another gunshot, closer this time. Mack hurried forward, turning a corner to see his old 'buddy' Rex, apparently fighting some kind of octopus thing. Mack didn't hesitate, lifting his Thompson and unloading a full clip into the mass of tentacles. Storm must've been stronger than he thought if sea life was being washed this far inland. The octopus pulled away with a shriek that he hadn't known that octopuses could make, Rex turned in disbelief, eyes widening as they laid upon Mack.

"Oh, thank god! Listen, there's not much time left! We have to--URK!" Rex lost his wind as Mack seized him by the lapels and slammed him against the closest walls.

"Thought you could just skip town, huh, Rex?"

"W-what? What are you--"

"Boss doesn't take KINDLY to bums what think they can take his money and HIDE on some crap-ass island!" Mack's words were punctuated by further slams against the wall.

"What? No! No! This isn't-- I'm not--"

"Yeah? Sure LOOKS like you are!"

"That's not the--" Rex paled as the lightning flashed again and he stared off at something behind Mack in the distance. Behind, and far, far above him. "There's no time! We have to--OOF!"

"WE don't gotta do nothin', Rex! YOU, on the other hand, gotta pay up, or you're gonna regret it!" the enforcer lifted the reporter off the ground and them dropped him. Rex's wallet spilled out onto the uneven stone, and Mack flipped through it before pocketing the entire thing. "Yeah, that'll cover it. You better not make it so hard next time, or I'm not gonna be so friendly."

Rex blinked in disbelief. "Okay, sure! No come on, there's not much time! The world's going to end if we don't stop this from--" It was too late. Mack had already disappeared into the gloom, back down towards the beach. That sorry excuse for a ship's captain had run off, but Mack didn't let it spoil his good mood. After all, there was another boat right there.

((In conclusion, this is a pretty easy weakness to deal with--inconvenient, sure, but never too crippling. But boy, if the investigators could fight monsters with the same level of determination that O'Bannon enforcers chase debtors, the entire mythos would already be dead)).

This is a very very interesting card. It's utility isn't very apparent on first glance. In terms of straight value, Backpack is only ok. It costs an action, a card, and 2 resources in order to draw 3 cards. So basically you've spent an action and two resources to get 2 additional cards. That's not great value.

Where backpack becomes much better is if those cards that you draw synergize with each other. For example, if you're using a Jim deck with Grotesque Statue, Ritual Candles and Chthonian Stone, Backpack will increase the chances that you can have all three cards out at the same time. That is very valuable.

So look to put Backpack in item heavy decks in which the items themselves combo with each other. If the items do not have synergy with each other, I don't think Backpack is very good in terms of straight value.

The fun part is that when it jams, while shooting an enemy engaged with your partner, it still sort of "shoots" him :)

Dear FFG, this is a terribly Arkham-ish outcome :) C'mon, it jammed! It ain't gonna hurt my friend :)

But jokes aside. Is it any good? Well, it is very good at killing enemies with 3 hit points. Now this is of course great, since 3 is the new 2. And you're doing that with a bonkers bonus of +3 BUT:

• it takes 2 hand slots
• it is just so so bad, when it jams, with the enemy engaged

So not only you need an action to unjam it, that grants you a sucker punch from the enemy, but you also lost a precious shell and 2 actions. And recently enemies also like to Retaliate. So... it's a no-no in a lot of scenarios.

But let's find setups in which it may be good, I'm certainly not iterating through all possible options, but what I thought is:

• You're William Yorick in multiplayer, since your core ability let's you replenish ammo easily. Your company has to have options to help you out, when things go south. So advocate to go first on most occasions, which by the way plays nicely with Take the Initiative. Pack some options, for those corner cases, when your weapon will crap on you, like for example Stunning Blow, to shake off the enemy, or Dodge. You don't want to be that jerk damage dealer, that shouts "Mommy!", just because a mediocre mob got lucky
• You're Wendy Adams on a solo run and not really using hand slots a lot. Any weapon jams you can succesfully counter with her core ability. And all of a sudden you can deal with some enemies effectively, just like with your evade action. Only now it's for good.

Am I missing something?

Stealing a joke from the amazing podcast Drawn to the Flame (if you are a big fan of Arkham Horror and haven't heard of them, go listen to them now):

The flavor text should've read "Still no".

So, stolen jokes aside, this card seems like a pretty nice upgrade over the first. Barring Premonition it's hard to know what kind of token you'll draw. Mystic does have more solutions to this (Olive McBride and Dark Prophecy, for example) but Defiance will still miss from time to time.

This version is a lot more reliable, especially when using any mystic trick to draw more tokens, or maybe seal something. However, this card costs 2 XP, which is a big hurdle. The nice thing about Defiance is that since it's 0 XP, you can put it in your starter deck and replace when you get better cards. It having a icon also means it's never really dead: even if you don't have a way to see more tokens or manipulate the bag, you can just commit it and name the token you want to see the least.

For this card, you need to invest 2 XP. That's a big ask, especially on a skill card you'll use once per scenario at most. As such, unless you have a way to ensure you have a token to draw (Dark Prophecy) I don't really think this is worth it.

Oh, and since both Carcosa and Forgotten Age have ways of manipulating the chaos bag based on your choices, I think the 2 XP becomes even less worth it, as especially in Carcosa you will probably know what tokens are in there.