Move aside Lightning Gun the new king of weapons is here!

Comparing it directly to Lightning Gun, you save two resources, get one more ammo and do one more damage. Note the damage is multiplicative with the ammo so you get potentially 16 damage to Lightning Gun's 9.

The first drawback is the body slot. Notably this rules out Bandolier. Thus a flame wielding Guardian will have to fully commit to exclusively using the Flamethrower by using Venturer, Extra Ammunition and Custom Ammunition. Contraband is also interesting if it is available to you.

The other disadvantage is you must be engaged with the enemy. Normally you do not want to risk shooting your friends with your high powered guns so you would want to engage anyways but this weapon actively requires you to be engaged. This may mean a loss of an action for a harried investigator. Also you may want to engage multiple enemies so its a good idea to bring Taunt along as well to avoid attacks of opportunity.

It still has one less fight then Lightning Gun but both are usually sufficient to guarantee success on all but the tentacle and the super negative token you get on Hard and Expert.

Overall I think despite these weaknesses this is by far the most efficient purifier of xenos scum, err I mean mythos monsters available today.

The M1918 BAR is also a very fun weapon and may become more efficient against very low health enemies, but there are too few of those around to compete.

Since no-one seems to have noticed, ill just point out that this card fits perfectly into any deck using Dark Horse, where it's restriction is suddenly "at least 1 higher". For Dark Horse Duke ("Ashcan" Pete), This is basically the perfect skill card to go with all your passive stat boosters.

Of course, Even for Dark Horse its basically a 3rd and 4th copy of Unexpected Courage.

Sealing specialist(s) - Can be splitted between two players, only the reloads should be combined on one player:

• Arcane Slot 1: Seal of the Seventh Sign (5). Seal the auto-fail token.

• Arcane Slot 2: Protective Incantation (1). Seal the worst non-auto-fail token.

• Hand Slot 1: The Chthonian Stone or The Chthonian Stone (3). Seal the second worst non-auto-fail token.

• Ally Slot 1: Twila Katherine Price. Return a charge to the Seal if it is triggered.

• Hand Slot 2: Book of Shadows (3). Use actions you don't need to the Seal. Get an additional arcane slot.

• Arcane Slot 3: 2nd Protective Incantation (1): Seal the fourth token.

• Accessory Slot: Shining Trapezohedron. Pay the costs of 1 protective incantation per round, because it's a resource cost on a spell.

Events:

• Recharge (2) or Recharge (4). Place new charges on the Seal.

Qualified investigators:

• Akachi Onyele: Extra charges.
• Jacqueline Fine: Cancel revelation effects.
• Jim Culver: Leave the skull with value 0.

Works well with:

• Ancient Covenant + Blessing Generator
• other mystics with spell assets and events with negative side effects on symbol tokens

I had a friend play this tonight when we were playing the second scenario of Forgotten Age, and he had a pretty clever use for it: he took the last clue off of a high shroud location (shroud 5) and put it on a slightly lower shroud location that had just been revealed (shroud 4). Why was this clever? Because the location we took the last clue from was worth a victory point.

Now, you can obviously use this card to lower the shroud of a location and make it easier to investigate for a turn, but I don't think that's terribly relevant. Why? Because, except for a few corner cases where people have extra actions, you are, at best, going to get two investigations with -1 shroud.

I think the best use of this card you are going to regularly get to use is taking clues from locations you don't want them and moving them somewhere else. And I don't just mean from high shroud locations. Some locations inflict a penalty for trying to move on to them or for trying to investigate on them. And I can think of three locations from that scenario alone that would fit the above description.

But the times you will be most proud of yourself will be the times when you spent one resource and net your team a victory point.

Hypothesis: Backpack is what's finally going to start pushing this card into relevance.

Analysis: There are two major issues with Relic Hunter that have always left it in the shadow of Charisma.

The first is that allies are just inherently more useful than most of the accessories. Holy Rosary sits alone atop it's throne for 0 XP accessories, whereas 0 XP allies includes powerful staples such as Dr. Milan Christopher, Peter Sylvestre, and even allies like Alyssa Graham or David Renfield that provide a flat stat boost along with a modest amount of damage/horror soak. Even Beat Cop (0) puts in big work, soaking one damage and one horror while providing the same +1 stat and while also having a useful sacrifice condition.

Those are just allies that provide at least one damage worth of soak and a +1 stat bonus too. That's not mentioning the more disposable ones like Art Student, Research Librarian, or even Arcane Initiate (0).

The second is that accessories haven't had quite the same support that allies have for a good while. Calling in Favors may not have been around for that long, but it's still a massive boon to Charisma decks. Again, even though we've had A Chance Encounter (both versions) for less time than Scavenging they're also just easier to use. The ally support also seems to consistently put the ally into play whereas item/accessory support doesn't.

Now however, we finally have Backpack. It doesn't dig as deep, nor does it put your accessories straight into play, but it does do something else important. It finds you multiple types of cards--and no, I don't just mean it finds you the types item and supply. It will help you dig up Flashlights, Lockpicks, or Magnifying Glasses so you can investigate, maybe help trigger that Scavenging easier? It can also help you dig up a weapon with which to defend yourself--and this is all in addition to helping dig for your accessories to put into play.

The only problem? We still don't quite have accessories on the same power level as we do allies. We don't have accessories with upgrade paths the way we do with allies. We don't even have anywhere close to the same pool of unique cards to choose from that aren't signature cards. There are only three accessories that offer any amount of horror soaking, and one of them costs a fair bit of XP. None of them offer damage soaking, which admittedly is fair from a flavour perspective (that's what body slot items should do). Even with how nuts Key of Ys is when powered up, you still defend it with allies. That card isn't that unfair compared to The Red-Gloved Man given the support that it has from the rest of the card pool.

Conclusion: We have the support we need for accessories in cards like Charles Ross, Esq., Backpack, Relic Hunter, and Scavenging. What we lack are the accessories that are worth supporting with these cards. Until that changes, accessories will be relegated to set and forget all-stars like Rabbit's Foot and Holy Rosary, with brief appearances from Cherished Keepsake or Elder Sign Amulet to help patch up the sanity of investigators vulnerable to horror.