I tried with Preston Fairmont already. It always be the dead card. It's hard to use effectively. Because you need 2 Drawing Thin and a Double or Nothing to guarantee success.

• Example: Test Will 5: +4 Difficulty, *2 from Double or Nothing = Test Will 18 Then you take 1+18 Token from this card and Pay 2 resources to auto success from Preston Fairmont ability.

• If you have no Double or Nothing you got only Test Will 9. That's just around half of Chaos bag. That's mean it's only 50% to success.

• Compared to Eucatastrophe which can be triggered when you draw a -1 or more negative token. So you do not lost this card as Against All Odds. This cost you only 1 EXP for each copy Preston Fairmont was not allow to use level 3 survivor card.

• Summary: There's no advantage for this card except you need specific Chaos token. Or for fun, pouring all Chaos token on the table. But that's the best bet he can do

Updated 02-02-2020

Am I missing something? This seems like an underwhelming card even for Calvin Wright, whose base skill values are all 0, and completely useless for anybody else.

The ability to draw just one extra token for a card and two resources isn't exactly a bargain, so you'll want the difficulty to be at least two higher than your base skill. A few problems with that:

• A difficulty two higher than your base skill? That probably means your investigator is working outside of their specialty. Why would you take such a test voluntarily?
• If you're taking it involuntarily, then it's probably a willpower test - but don't all the Survivor investigators have at least three base willpower? How often do you run into a five-difficulty willpower test?
• Don't you need at least a +3 boost alongside Against All Odds to have a reasonable chance of success? With three token draws you can be reasonably confident of drawing a -1 on most difficulties, but not a 0.

So if Against All Odds isn't a good way to win skill tests, what is it good for? Maybe it would be worthwhile if:

• the investigator has access to amazing effects if he or she draws a special symbol, such as ; or
• the investigator is trying to fail the skill test by as wide a margin as possible, for some reason.

The former possibility doesn't really work right now. There aren't any symbol-specific effects so good that they're worth playing this card for a slightly improved, but still slim, chance of drawing that specific symbol.

The latter possibility is interesting but I don't think there are any cards that can take advantage of "failing harder" at the moment - and certainly not well enough to justify 2 resources and 2XP. On top of that, the minimum adjusted skill-value is 0 anyway, so what you'd really need is an effect that plays off of large negatives on the skill token itself, like Sure Gamble. Except also not like Sure Gamble, because this would be a stupid way to use it and your investigator probably isn't even eligible to buy both cards anyway.

So what about for Calvin? Well, it's mostly just a drastically weaker variation of Will to Survive. Sure, you can't use Will to Survive on Treachery cards, but there are all sorts of Survivor cards that do work in the Mythos phase, which are both cheaper and more reliable.

Do you see how badly this is wracking my brain? Even my most feverish hypotheticals are riding a long trail of "even if" before I can arrive at a slightly useful application for this card. Bottom line, I might include Against All Odds in a Calvin deck if its combined XP and resource cost were less, and wouldn't include it in anything else even if it were free. Someone please tell me what it is I'm missing.

I think this card is valuable and the comments don't do it justice because it is not being interpreted right (or maybe I am wrong). The key phrasing here is "X is the difference between the test's difficulty and your base skill value." The base value is the value printed on your investigators card. Because it uses that value before any modifications, you can technically have a higher skill value for the test and still draw extra tokens. You would then just pick the token that allows you to pass. Still kind of niche, but can be a life saver for Calvin or Preston. I plan on trying it out in Preston's deck. Really, this card is meant to be used for skill tests you need to succeed and used alongside other card abilities to boost your stats on those really difficult tests (like an elite boss enemy), it can be very useful and you'll be glad you have it in your hand.