Enemy. Weakness

Humanoid. Cultist.

Neutral
Fight: 3. Health: 3. Evade: 5.
Damage: 2. Horror: –.

Prey - Trish Scarborough only.

Hunter.

While Shadow Agents is engaged with you, you cannot discover clues except by investigating.

Forced - After Shadow Agents is evaded: Discard it.

Borja Pindado
The Innsmouth Conspiracy #11.
Shadow Agents

FAQs

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Reviews

I'm thinking this has to be one of the easiest investigator weaknesses to deal with in the entire game, short of the ones you can afford to outright ignore sometimes. Most of the cards that help Trish deal with this weakness are cards she would have strongly considered running anyway.

Narrow Escape is already fantastic for Trish, this weakness practically makes it a cornerstone.

Obfuscation also helps with this and slides right into a completely uncontested slot (arcane). Since it's Fast, she can hold onto it until she needs it.

Cryptographic Cipher helps as well. Despite making the resulting investigate slightly tougher, at any 1 or 2 shroud location it's hardly noticeable and it lets her grab a clue AND discard her weakness without spending a single action. If it's sitting in her hand she could always Sleight of Hand it out as well...

Shortcut helps her position herself on top of a clue if she draws into this weakness at a location with 0 clues.

...and if there are no clues around you could always stoop to the level of more mortal investigators and simply spend an action to evade it and poof, it's gone.

Pretty cool. Trish seems extremely hard to slow down.

gionazzo · 64
I couldn't agree more. This weakness is almost laughable at how easy it is to deal with. I expected the card to reshuffle into your deck after an evasion, thereby forcing Trish to step out of her comfort zone and do some fighting. Maybe they didn't want that because they don't want you using Shadow Agents to trigger her response repeatedly (and therefore being a help than a hindrance). But I feel like the high evade value would tempt Trish into trying to use them to her advantage only to be sabotages from a bad draw. — LaRoix · 1643
It is still 5 to evade, which is a lot even for Trish, so without a way to investigate skipping AoO you might have to suck it up and take two damage. If that investigate fails too, then you might be in trouble. I think this ironically hurts a bit more in multiplayer where you're not as concerned otherwise with AoOs, but I think even there you'll at least have Narrow Escape. So overall, not a nothing weakness, but definitely tame relative to Trish's power level. — StyxTBeuford · 12985
At worst, two damage. Oh well. — MrGoldbee · 1443
Play Decoy and they're outta here. — toastsushi · 74
Well no, at worst you fail the investigate and you have to take 4 at least. That can happen, don't discount it. That said, in multi you probably are taking good tech cards like Decoy, so you have that as an answer (and your friends can help kill it also). — StyxTBeuford · 12985
I've had someone else engage it at her location (Nate with Get Over Here), and he fought his entire turn. Then Trish just investigates to get rid of it. Additionally, you have Slip Away which puts you at 8 to try to rid of it. There's many options. — toastsushi · 74
Absolutely, there are several ways. Just be aware it's the kind of thing you do have to make sure you're ready for. If there's no clue on your location, or if the shroud is high, or if you don't have that evasion tech, you could be in big trouble. Even evading at 8 with Slip Away isn't guaranteed. Don't make the mistake that you can Hunch or Lola your way out of it, since you can't get clues except through investigating. — StyxTBeuford · 12985
In my brief TTS trial of Trish, I ended up getting kind of screwed over by this because I drew it late after all the clues were gone, 5 being a pretty tough number to evade with 0xp. Later I got Obol'd, so it was probably not a great deck, anyway, but point being if your counters aren't in hand, and you've already discovered all the clues it's pretty rough! One nice thing about Quick Study or Maleson. — Zinjanthropus · 227
Yeah it's kind of hilarious that you might take Maleson just to drop a clue to deal with this. I'm not so sure that's worth the ally slot compared to Milan, but his 2/2 soak is worth looking at for more violent campaigns. — StyxTBeuford · 12985
Stunning blow — MrGoldbee · 1443

An enemy signature weakness, designed to annoy Trish. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: There are three ways to deal with this weakness, the mug's way, Trish's way, and Trish's other way. The mug's way is to fight them; that is likely to be 2, maybe 3 actions, although another investigator can always do the fighting for Trish. Trish's way is to evade them. As a , Trish has a lot of evade options. The entries above give some good suggestions, and Slip Away, Slip Away (2), Stealth, and Manual Dexterity (2) can help with the test. Trish's other way mostly involves boosting investigation checks and using Obfuscation to ignore the AoO (or just eat the damage; Trish has 8 health) and relying on Trish's special ability to evade them. The real secret of the Shadow Agents is: why are they hunters? If they get discarded, they aren't going to hunt, and there aren't too many cards that move an investigator without bringing the enemy with them.

The discard condition: Evade them or kill them.

All in all, this is a below average signature weakness, like most enemy weaknesses.

There are ways to disengage them, such as Elusive, Stealth, or Cat Burglar. — Death by Chocolate · 1440
Breaking and Entering was basically designed to neuter this weakness. It' — DjMiniboss · 44
*It's incredibly weak, and sometimes Trish is actively happy to spend a Breaking and Entering on it. — DjMiniboss · 44
Death by Chocolate: I assumed that there was *some* reason, but I completely forgot about Stealth and Co.... Thanks! — LivefromBenefitSt · 1051
DjMiniboss: Thank you! I had noted B&E to include, then spaced it when the kitchen timer went off, so I'm glad you mentioned it. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1051
My personal favorite way to deal with this weakness is to start an Investigation action and trigger Mr. Rook for 9 during the free trigger window in the test. Pull the weakness from the deck, pass the test, and then Trish-evade it all in the same action! — Death by Chocolate · 1440

Fastest ways to deal with this (assuming you don't want to test versus 5 or spend ammo):

  1. Decoy
  2. Pendant of the Queen, though it's much more likely for you to find this enemy before the three segments.
  3. Let a friend engage it, then simply discover a clue at the same location.
  4. If your deck has Obfuscation you just investigate through the attack and wave goodbye.

Edit: I thought it was an extremely mild weakness at first glance (well I still believe so), there's just one situation where it is quite annoying: when you draw it in upkeep in a location with no clues. Then you have to actually overcommit to an evasion or move with the agents. So just try to make sure to anticipate this.

Erdjo · 323
Cryptographic Cypher also works well. — Xenas · 7
Even Faster: Draw it in the middle of an investigate action with Mr. "Rook", Lucky Cigarette Case, or Eureka! before you discover the clue! — Death by Chocolate · 1440
Don't forget Narrow Escape — StyxTBeuford · 12985
Disc of Itzamana. As the Beatles sang... "Hello, Goodbye" — Laerthes · 1
Does e.g. Perception while investigating kill it? (for the same reason Mr. Rook would work) — krzhang · 7
Letting a friend engage doesn't work.... you can't evade an enemy that you aren't engaged with. — tasman · 1
@tasman I can't believe your comment has been sitting here for a year, and nobody has corrected you. You can evade enemies you aren't engaged with. You can even evade enemies at other locations if a card lets you do so. You can't perform an evade ACTION with an enemy you're not engaged with, however. — eapfel · 6