Terrible Secret

Treachery. Weakness

Madness.

Neutral

Revelation - If there are no card beneath Diana Stanley, shuffle Terrible Secret back into your deck. Otherwise, for each card beneath Diana Stanley, you must either discard that card or take 1 horror. Cannot be canceled.

Ilich Henriquez

The Circle Undone #15.

FAQs

(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)

Q: How does Terrible Secret interact with cards like Ward of Protection (cancel), Delay the Inevitable (horror cancellation) and Deny Existence (horror ignoring) A: Terrible Secret reads: "Cannot be canceled." at the end of its effect. This means that any card effect which would cancel the card or any of its effects would fail (such as Delay the Inevitable). However, card effects which ignore the horror, such as Deny Existence, would still work, because it is not cancelling anything.
Q: If I draw Terrible Secret with five cards beneath Diana Stanley and I do not choose to discard these cards, but choose to take 5 Horror, how much of it can I ignore when I play Deny Existence? A: For Terrible Secret, you may only use Deny Existence on one of the choices, essentially ignoring 1 of the horror you would take. (The card presents a choice for each card under Diana, so it “cannot be resolved simultaneously.”)

Last updated 1/13/23

Reviews

Doesn’t Deny existence only work on encounter cards and enemy attacks? I could be completely misunderstanding part of the interaction or encounter keyword- I’m still learning a lot of the technical side of the game

5/26/19

Skothu · 3

Yes, as Deny Existence states you can only play it on encounter cards. However weakness cards with encounter cardtypes, such as 'Treachery' and 'Enemy' are considered to be encounter cards. You can find it in the glossary under section: 'Weakness'. — Csys · 1 5/26/19

Thanks! I assumed the post was right, finding out why helps a ton with deck building, very much appreciated! — Skothu · 3 5/27/19

To clarify further, weakness cards with encounter cardtypes are considered to be encounter cards AFTER they are drawn. While being drawn, they aren’t encounter cards yet. — Death by Chocolate · 1440 5/27/19

So you can actually use "Deny Existence" to cancel all the Horror caused by "Terrible Secret"???? — Alogon · 1118 6/3/19

@Alogon No, but you can use it to IGNORE all the horror caused by it. This is an important distinction because Terrible Secrets is immune to cancel effects, so many cards, such as Delay the Inevitable, can’t be used to stop it. Really, FFG should add an FAQ entry clarifying the rules for ‘ignore’ effects because ‘cancel’ is covered in the rules reference and there has been very little to actually distinguish the difference between them besides this one card. — Death by Chocolate · 1440 6/3/19

I’m going to assume that there will be errata for this card to also prevent its effects from being ignored (Deny Existence). This weakness is a non-factor with Deny Existence and you almost hope to draw it eventually if you have Deny Existence (5) and Horror on you. — carlsonjd11 · 507 8/16/19

This is a very situational signature weakness. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Diana has to discard cards beneath her (reducing her and invalidating the Twilight Blade and her effect, otherwise, she has to take horror. The latter is somewhat fraught, as Diana is pretty average on Sanity, especially compared to other investigators. This can be bad, if you are playing a Diana who cares about or utterly irrelevant if you aren't. The horror cannot cancelled, but it can still be negated by Deny Existence.

The discard condition: One and done, unless the weakness will have no effect, in which case it gets reshuffled.

All in all, this is a below average signature weakness, way below if you have a Deny Existence in hand or don't care all that much about Diana's . Edit: if you really care about Diana's , this weakness's threat gets upgraded, although, as long as you can keep a Deny Existence in hand, it's extremely manageable.

4/25/21

LivefromBenefitSt · 1051

In general, I would care more about Diana's willpower than her sanity. Although, she has only 5, she doesn't take that much horror from the game with all her other cancel and ignore effects. On the other hand, if you have several cards in your hand to restock her ability, it is easier to let some cards under her go to avoid some horror. And of course, I would always spare a DE for that card, once I'm at 4 or 5 cards below her. This weakness ist most annoying, if you draw it in first upkeep phase and have to reshuffle it in your deck. — Susumu · 363 4/26/21

This can be a great enabler for her ability, if you have 5 cards below her and several counters in hand but didn't get the blade. If your deck is built around fight instead of will this is also less of an issue. — Django · 5070 4/26/21

I confess my experience with Diana has been in non-willpower builds where, if she gets cards under her, that's great, but, if she doesn't, it's not a crisis. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1051 4/26/21

I rather focus on her willpower and ability, for two reasons: 1) A 6 willpower mystic is infinite stronger than a 3 combat mystic. 2) She has a deck size of 35. That means, her deck is much more inconsistent, if you don't trigger her ability, that is also a cantrip. But even in willpower-builds, I found her weakness rather easy to come around. In particular after the release of the Jaqueline Starter Deck with "Azur Flame". She can get squishy with "Shrivelling", since you shouldn't forfeit "Arcane Research" either, imho. The horror, that comes from the encounter deck will hurt her only very rarely, if you pack enough cancel and ignore cards for it. — Susumu · 363 4/26/21

I mean, does anyone ever not just Deny Existence this? I honestly think the build doesn’t matter- you want cards under Diana to be able to reuse them with her signature anyway, so there’s no instance I know of where you electively take either side of this card. DE destroys it entirely, might as well save 1 for it. — StyxTBeuford · 12985 4/26/21

Yeah, DE destroys it, and you will normally save a copy for it. (Or a secret on Dayana, if you have her and the level 5 spell.) But even in the circumstance, when both copies are at the bottom of your deck and you don't get them before TS, you can normally handle it easily. — Susumu · 363 4/26/21

Man I don't think I've ever had that happen, but it sounds like a bad time unless the scenario is about to end, in which case sure, dump all the cards and keep moving. — StyxTBeuford · 12985 4/26/21

It's not that bad, because you can choose for each card individually, if you keep it below her or discard it. So you can ponder, based on how much horror you can take or how fast you can recover her willpower with the cards in your hand, how many you let go. — Susumu · 363 4/26/21

Just a quick follow up on Deny Existence. With this weakness, is the discard/horror sequential or all at once? If she has 5 cards under her, do you pick through and say discard 2 and take 3 horror, or do you look at card A, keep, take horror; look at card B, discard; card C, keep, horror, etc? If the latter, wouldn’t deny existence only ignore Horror once? — BroodyGambit · 9 5/18/21

@BroodyGambit It's sequential. This is because of the "for each" text - it instructs you to make a separate decision for each card under her. — snacc · 980 7/19/21

Deny Existence was recently clarified to not work for this (much like Sister Mary's weakness no longer works with Deny Existence).

This has made this weakness the main difficulty in playing Diana, which is intended. She has a lower than normal horror value for a mystic, and depending on when this card comes out it can be absolute debilitating.

She doesn't have a good way to fish it out, and it is scenario failing to drop all of her willpower off especially if it comes out late. So the best strategy is to build her soak heavy and just hope you see this early. Brother Xavier is very attractive for this purpose, and also boosts her willpower.

After it's drawn you could play "Fool me once", but Diana will typically have low cycling power and it's unlikely you're going to run into this again. If you do find yourself somehow cycling rapidly with her you should consider Fool Me Once, as getting hit with this a second time will probably kill you.

Overall this is a swingy weakness, akin to Wendy's. Draw it early and it's probably just a foot note, Draw it late and you're going to have a bad time if you aren't prepared.

12/26/23

drjones87 · 189

Strong disagree. You are correct about not being as readily able to deny it, but unlike mary theres no reason to take horror much from this in the first place. The trick with this weakness is learning that Diana's ability isn't "+x will" its "draw a card and gain a resource once per phase". If you have enough cancels in her you usually use this to drop all the cards out from under her to make space for more. This isn't even close to wendy's. This "weakness" may as well read "draw 5 cards gain 5 resources" if your Diana has enough cancels — NarkasisBroon · 10 12/26/23

I normally wouldn't drop ALL the cards below Diana, but you can scale it accordingly to the situation. Also, it's not true, that DE "does not work" with TS, it just does not work AS GOOD as before. You can negate two horror with it. One by the cancel effect, and one by dropping another card below her, replacing it with DE, so you stay at the same willpower. That's still excellent value, at least for the level 0 version. The level 5 version is imho too expensive in XP to be wasted on TS, because it just gives you one additional horror spare compared to level 0. — Susumu · 363 12/26/23

That is a terrible rulling. Deny existence shouldn't negate Diana's weakness. The point of ignore vs cancel is that if a card has multiple bad effects you simply ignore one of them and do all the rest. It wasn't written that way to wiggle out of a signature weakness such as this. If you want to use bad templating as an excuse to give yourself an easier time that's fine, you can play the game however you want. But it's pretty obvious this isn't what they had in mind with Deny Existence and simply forgot to to add "or ignored" to the weakness.

10/4/24

cabalpaxiarch · 114

I mean... they literally came in the same box. If you wanna make the argument that they didn't design the mystic cards in the box with the mystic investigator in the box in mind. Then I can't stop you. — NarkasisBroon · 10 10/4/24

Im not sure how ignoring one horror out of potentially 5 is also that extreme. When it outright negated her weakness, I felt it was too strong, but now Deny doesn’t help her all that much. — StyxTBeuford · 12985 10/4/24

I disagree with Styx here. Deny (0) is still pretty good. Diana takes max 5 horror from her weakness anyway, Deny saves her 2. One because of the card effect, and one, because she can let a card go and replace it with Deny. TS isn't the hardest signature weakness to beginn with, as you can always discard cards or take horror accordingly. Deny (5) is overcosted, if you use it on TS. 5 XP for just one more horror is not worth it, but you could of course try to heal excessive horror dealt by TS elsewere, in particular, if you stick it on Dayana. — Susumu · 363 10/4/24

I agree with you Susumu, I just meant it’s not absurdly powerful at negating it, I think it’s super fair and also always a good card to run with her anyway. — StyxTBeuford · 12985 10/5/24

Yeah, that I'm agreeing on. I've read often people writing: "Now, after the errata, DE does not work on TS anymore", which is not true. It is still good, just not annihilating the weakness anymore. — Susumu · 363 10/6/24