I want to make a point about this card, and it's three cousins "Watch this!", Eureka!, and Resourceful, skill cards with three, fixed, distinct icons.

These are, in essence, win-more cards; cards that get their value when you commit them to tests you're already likely to succeed, and will fail you should you be looking to even the odds against a skill test that's beyond you. They will only ever add +1 to whatever test you perform (save for some fringe cases where two attributes are being tested in one skill check), and they pile on the pressure to pass that test, as the gap in outcomes between success and failure widen from committing this card.

Skill cards lie on a sliding scale between improving your odds of succeeding versus increasing the rewards for doing so. Cards like Cunning and Inquiring Mind occupy the former extreme, Inspiring Presence and its ilk occupy the later, and the core set neutral skill cards (e.g. Perception) define the middle ground. When picking which skill cards to include in your deck, you need to be mindful of which extreme they lean towards.

If you're planning to make use of an investigator's base attribute of three, then forget about win-more skill cards: your success will never be guaranteed without a +2 boost to that attribute MINIMUM. If you have base attribute of 4, the odds will be on your side on the easiest of tests (i.e difficulty 2 and below), but if you have an attribute value of 4, then you're likely expected to take on the harder tests (i.e difficulty 4 and above), for which win-more cards alone won't cut it. If you rock a base attribute of 5, then you're golden; include these cards to your heart's content...

...Which leads to the catch-22 of Inspiring Presence and co.; that they have three skill icons for different attributes, but will only really find use in test with base attributes of 4 or above, of which no investigator has more than two such attributes, and only a handful have more than one. You'll do yourself a dis-service should you spread yourself too thin,.

So here is the big conclusion of this review; the flexibility of this card exists NOT at the game stage, BUT AT THE DECK-BUILDING STAGE. In essence, these win-more cards are almost identical to Vicious Blow, Deduction, Fearless, and Survival Instinct; they just have a place in more decks thanks to the icons. Using the example of Inspiring Presence, most Guardians would compare this directly to Vicious Blow, but other takers, like Jim Culver or Joe Diamond, could very well make the case of replacing (or complimenting) Fearless and Deduction respectively in a more ally focused deck (like for instance, Olive McBride and Dr. Milan Christopher post Taboo List).

These cards are easy includes into decks that can make use of them, their power deriving from benefits that require no actions OR resources to play. Just, take care to not fall into the trap of thinking your deck is now all-purpose; just because the deck-building metrics tell you you've got a lot of , , and icons in your deck, doesn't mean you're going make use of all of them.

Good for Beat Cops, Aquinnahs and Duke. If you are playing those, you probably want to try this.

That means Yorrick REALLY likes this one, as do most Mark Harrigan decks that run ally heavy.

If you are playing those two characters check it out. Otherwise, I would skip this.

I think this card very much needs a taboo of either (max once or twice a round) Because it’s a level 0 card which with the right set up can lead to spiraling combos.

“Inspired by the stars”

I’m sure there are other ways to recur this card, but the one which I think has the largest impact is its synergy with written in the stars. There are ways to facilitate making sure this is the card which you discard off the top of the deck, characters with access to scroll of secrets, rogues with friends in low places, or mystics with scrying. Because the card is committed each test, you can even continue past deck draw as long as you reshuffle while inspiring presence is in the limbo state outlined in the rule book. (And the horror soak doubly encourages this)

From there, it’s just a matter of deciding what ally you want to target with the refresh. The two which I think have immediate potential: Abigail Foreman and Chuck Ferguson as these both give access to fast abilities which give you a chance to take a skill test. It’s not fully infinite but the longer you can keep passing those skill tests the longer you can go.