There are already plenty of good reviews for this card, so I just want to add a quick update. Though she can't take the card, Trish Scarborough would be very grateful to any who uses it. As others have noted, you can still engage exhausted enemies and drag them around with you. Handcuffs allow you to haul some hapless bozo around for the entire scenario, making it a lot easier to fire your Scene of the Crimes (Roland, standing over another half-eaten corpse: "Did you do this, too, you sick bastard??" Handcuffed Young Deep One: "Bluurgle... Glorp!"). But all that's pretty situational, and probably not worth the three actions it takes to play the cuffs, then attach them, then engage the cuffed monster.

BUT Trish would just love to frog-march a ghoul minion through a scenario, thereby ensuring that her special ability is in effect at all times: no need to flirt with danger to snag that extra clue.

Not that this is the forum for such things, but an upgraded version of this card that lets you detach it from an enemy, say as a ability, would be great (and maybe some other mechanic to keep you from attaching it and detaching it in the same turn). Then 's would finally have a compelling and reusable evade option. And it fits thematically. You just didn't quite have the evidence to take the suspect in, so you had to cut him loose. (Roland: "You're free to go, Mr. Marsh. But I better not catch you skulking around these caves again! It's for your own safety, you understand: there's a murderous fishman on the loose." Young Deep One: "Gorble!")

An unusual card for ', but not a bad one. One important detail to remember that you can engage the just-evaded enemy and drag them with you (they won't hit you, because they are exhausted).

This suddenly means that Roland Banks and William Yorick are interested in this card: both have effects that trigger when they defeat an enemy. While this is most certainly a case of police brutality, it opens up interesting lines of play.

Roland can drag an enemy onto a high-shroud location to trigger his own and cards like Evidence! and Scene of the Crime. Yorick can use his own to keep replaying this, moving it from enemy to enemy.

The biggest drawback is that this card needs humanoid enemies to work. Sadly, neither of the above investigators can take Adaptable.

I asked about handcuffs and other effects. The reply:

Rules Question: I am a bit confused as to how "Handcuffs" interact with some encounter cards. The Truth is Hidden says "flip" clues to doom, not "place" doom. Would it still flip the doom on Seekers of Carcosa? Mysterious Chanting and Dance of the Yellow King look for a cultist in play. If a cultist or lunatic is handcuffed they cannot ready, but they might be the only cultist or lunatic in play. Are those cards effectively negated?

Greetings,

1) Flipping clues to their doom side is not the same as placing them. In this instance, the token has already been placed on the card, so Handcuffs will not prevent the tokens from then being flipped over to their doom side. Note that the agendas in Echoes of the Past each read “After 1 or more clues are placed on an enemy in play: Flip those clues to their doom side,” meaning the flipping occurs after the tokens are already placed. 2) As for Mysterious Chanting and Dance of the Yellow King, the answer is… sort of. Mysterious Chanting simply adds doom to the nearest Cultist, so if the nearest Cultist is handcuffed, then yes, it will do nothing. Dance of the Yellow King is trickier. It reads: “… If you fail, the nearest Lunatic enemy readies, moves (one location at a time) until it reaches your location, engages you, and makes an immediately attack.” Technically, the movement, engagement and attack aspects of this effect are not dependent on the enemy readying. While typically only ready enemies can move, engage, or attack, there is no rule stopping them from doing so while exhausted if an effect explicitly instructs them to. So strange as it may seem, if the nearest Lunatic enemy is handcuffed, it won’t ready, but it will still move to you, engage you, and attack. (Note that this would be different if the effect used the word “then” somewhere in it, for example “readies, then moves…”)

I understand that both of these answers are tricky distinctions, so I apologize for any confusion.

Cheers, ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Matthew Newman Senior Card Game Developer Fantasy Flight Games

This has an interesting use case for investigators. The majority of the time any would likely remove the threat from the board instead of evading it. There are already quite the number of limitations to this card. But even if the targets in a particular scenario are plentiful, you need a reason that you would want the humanoid permanently evaded rather than disposed of.

There are plenty of cultists that accumulate doom, but they are usually easy enough to remove from the board except for maybe Brotherhood Cultist. That makes dealing with him much easier. I think that the real use case for handcuffs would be in multiplayer formats or scenarios where the deck shuffles itself from the discard pile often. If are placing handcuffs on the enemy, then they will remain in play and never get shuffled back in. So you will only see that threat once. While not as good as adding it to the victory display, this can still be helpful for some of those pesky humanoids you might hate seeing such as Seeker of Carcosa.

Even non-fighting splashes for a card would likely have many other options to consider over this one.

This is a very situational card, as unlike something like Blinding Light or Bind Monster, you need to spend two full actions to evade the enemy (one to play Handcuffs, and another to use its Evade ability). In addition, it only works on Humanoid enemies. Given most campaign's tendencies to bounce between scenarios with a lot of humans and little/none at all, it's hard to justify, with the notable exceptions of The Circle Undone & Murder at the Excelsior Hotel. Even in Circle Undone I only put one in my most recent deck, but if you're a low-agility character going into it like Leo Anderson, Joe Diamond, or Roland Banks and your team doesn't already have a good way to evade enemies, it may surprise you and be the best card in your deck for a scenario or two!

Another minor thing to mention is that this can be a great enabler for a few cards like Interrogate, Scene of the Crime, and Eavesdrop - with Interrogate & Scene you can engage and drag the enemy around with you (while taking no attacks), whereas Eavesdrop will only work for the location that you originally handcuffed them since it references an unengaged enemy rather than an exhausted one.

Pretty fun tech card for Parallel Roland! He can accurately 'cuff enemies thanks to Directive - Due Diligence then proceed to drag them around the map like cans on a just married car. Keeping a waifu around provides great emotional support for Roland, since he can use Due Diligence again for a minimum of +4 Evade, +2 Investigate, and +2 Parley once per turn for the rest of the game. It also gives an incredible buff to Scene of the Crime, since it will now always rip 2 clues from whichever location you start your turn from (turn it into a fast action with Directive - Red Tape for extra fun).

Now, this combo typically costs 3 actions to pull off, since you need to Play Handcuffs, make the Evade check, then re-Engage the enemy. This is incredibly slow, but you can mitigate the issue somewhat by playing Ever Vigilant + Red Tape to play the Handcuffs as a fast action (provided you have not and will not be playing any other cards this turn). If, for whatever reason, you do not want to re-engage the enemy you can still use the aforementioned combo to effectively turn Handcuffs into a 1-Action kill, which helps out Parallel Roland a lot since he is locked out of some of the Guardians' best weapons.

Overall, 5/5 - would drag a snake man through the jungles of Mexico again

Looks really bad to me. Two actions, 2 resources AND a non-boosted test on a specific enemy type to lock down a unit. Locking down a unit is essentially killing it, but probably a bit better since it doesn't go into the discard pile to recycle and come back. It has also has a bunch of niche uses like Trish Scarborough or Tommy Malloy that others have mentioned. On the flip side based on the FAQ, there are few, rare situations where the enemy can still hurt you while in play.

Surprisingly in faction I think this card is most similar to Monster Slayer. Both require a Strength test, and some resources to insta-kill an enemy. Handcuff requires an additional resource and action but costs 5 exp less. Unfortunately Monster Slayer (5) is pretty bad and I'm guessing probably never used. I'm thinking it might see more play around 2 exp.

I say this because Fang of Tyr'thrha exists at 4 exp. That essentially kills the enemy at any revealed AND lets you teleport, AND gives you stat boost. Out of faction, survivors have Dumb Luck which also removes an enemy from the board after a skill test with a generous margin and that only costs 2 exp.

If you look at Heroic Rescue vs. Heroic Rescue, for 2 exp you pay 1 less resource and can use it in adjacent locations (which I'll indirectly proxy as 1 action to move). Going from handcuff to a hypothetical 2 exp Monster Slayer, it has the same upgrade value, you would pay 1 less resource and use 1 less action.

Personally I'm not a fan of Handcuffs though, 2 actions to 2 resources to kill something seems way too slow and inefficient. I compare it to Spectral Razor which only takes 1 action, has an easier test, gives you a free engage and will kill most things already. Guardians likely have better ways to deal with enemies and only targeting humanoids (and non-elites) really makes it hard to slot into your deck if youre going in blind.