- Q: How does this skill work in combination with the ally Yaotl (which has an ability that gives you skill boost based on the number of matching icons on the top card of your discard pile)? A: The abilities on skill cards are only active while they are being committed to a skill test, unless otherwise specified. In this case Curiosity will only have its printed icons while it is in your discard pile, hand, or any other state other than while it is being committed to a skill test. (This includes an effect that says something like "discard a card from your hand with at least X icons...")
Skill
Innate.
While you have 4 or more cards in hand, Curiosity gains (while you have 7 or more cards in hand, Curiosity gains , instead).
FAQs
(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)Reviews
Awful, awful card. Out of all the TCU skill cards, this one ranks dead last. (EDIT: See below)
The problem is that 3 icon trigger. To get 3 icons off this card and therefore make it trump Unexpected Courage, you need to both have 8 cards in hand and then only commit Curiosity. This demotivates you from playing skill effects like Deduction or Eureka! as you drop an icon as soon as you commit any card alongside this one. If you only commit this card, it becomes 3 for 1 card, but if you want to commit anything else with 1 , you drop to 3 for 2 cards, which is abysmal for a skill card that only gives icons and has no other effects. To add insult to injury, with 8 cards in hand you probably do have something like Deduction or Eureka!, in which case had you run Perception instead, you'd still effectively get 3 for 1 card, but you'd also get the trigger of the other card you committed. Situational cards that you run for icons most of the time like Ghastly Revelation or Connect the Dots become worse as well, as again you're demotivated from using them when they're useless.
All of that was just analyzing this card for when you get the most value out of it- at 8 cards. This effect get so much worse once we take ourselves out of being at 8 cards. At 5 and 6, you really don't want to use this card with anything else, and if you have a particularly hard test to pass and need to commit your whole hand, be ready for this to drop to 1 icon. To add insult to injury, the icons it gives are the most common across Seeker cards: and . It's incredibly rare you'll ever need the flexibility of Curiosity being able to commit to either test when your hand is already that full.
That said, I can think of exactly one investigator who could use it. Minh Thi Phan needs skill cards, and she could run a heavy card draw strategy with Grisly Totem, Laboratory Assistant, Cryptic Research, Glimpse the Unthinkable, etc. all of which help Curiosity's stock go up. She can even run Able Bodied alongside it, which covers all 4 icons, and Minh isn't particularly item hungry either. Outside of that specific build though, you as someone with access to Seeker cards are spoiled for choice: Inquiring Mind might as well be 3 (and occasionally even better than that), Eureka! is crazy good card filtering, and Deduction is almost an autorun skill card in multiplayer for the tests it saves you. I would take all of those, Perception, Guts, and Unexpected Courage before I took this card.
Avoid. If it helps, you probably are not the cat.
EDIT: Well fast forward six months and already we have a way of making this card work. Dream Diary has an upgrade that depends on you having 8 cards in hand (it also gives you Essence of the Dream automatically every turn to facilitate this); Dream-Enhancing Serum helps you maintain duplicates, which is particularly great for Myriad cards; and A Glimmer of Hope can, on demand, help fulfill the condition as well. Again, this suite seems to point to Minh Thi Phan as the best candidate for such a build. I'd still say outside of such a build you should avoid Curiosity, but in this build it could be an absolute cornerstone, much like Cunning in a big money build. I'm happy the card might have found a place.
Looking at this card more recently (TSK is the most recent release at time of writing) and I think this card has settled into an okay spot in the card pool. It doesn't stand out, but it doesn't stand out too much in some lists.
For one, "big hand" is now a well-established archetype, with cards like Laboratory Assistant and Dream-Enhancing Serum helping increase your hand size and cards like Dream Diary and Farsight rewarding them.
That being said, a skill whose only purpose is "having a bunch of icons" is usually a tough sell because it competes with skills that do something, even if that's just drawing another card. The fact that this produces a bunch of icons is at least a mark in its favor, since those tend to be broadly useful in most scenarios.
If I were to include this card in a deck right now, I'd want to lean into 's ability to manipulate skills with cards like Guided by the Unseen, and use something like The World • XXI to make sure I can commit this without going below 7 cards.
If I'm doing that, I think the Archaic Glyphs are where I want to be? And while this is most certainly not the best Glyphs deck, it could be a lot of fun.
Two final points both related to committing this to other investigators. One of the nice things about a triple card is that it can help lower- investigators help with getting clues. If you're playing Minh Thi Phan with her Analytical Mind, this isn't a bad card for that. And then there's the new Bestow Resolve which could turn this into . That's pretty nice.
Yeah this card is Deck filler, If you don't understand what it does, it's Steadfast and its just as mediocre. To be fair to Steadfast and Curiosity, it'll never hurt you to use it, the effect might be minuscule but every little helps. The problem is that there's better options like Unexpected Courage, Perception, Guts, And a whole lot of other Seeker Skill cards. Its not bad, Not good, just Okay. Whenever I got it I just used it instantly or just forgot about it until the Scenario as it rots away in my deck. I would recommend ditching it and getting better cards. Also the image looks horrible, it looks like a rejected KISS member. However this card has the best flavor text in the game. "What if you are the cat?" Beautiful