Tristan is expensive, but Preston doesn’t mind expensive. For some, he can function simply as a Darkhorse that provides soak. (And they stack.) But the rogue card people associate most with two stats is lockpicks, which Finn and Trish would appreciate a perma +2 with. Playing him for free will require a table wide commitment to fill in the bag, or not trap all the tokens for other uses. At worst, it’s a little upside when someone pulls three blessed tokens in a row. If someone has two Favors in play, the trigger becomes “when a test involves a blessed or cursed symbol“ which is inevitable.
Tristan Botley
Fixer for Hire
Asset. Ally
Ally. Criminal. Cursed.
Cost: 5. XP: 2.
After your turn begins: Choose two skills. Until the start of your next turn, you get +1 to each of those skills.
After any skill test ends in which a total of 3 or more or tokens were revealed: Play Tristan Botley from your hand, at no cost.
FAQs
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Reviews
In case you haven't noticed, this guy does not have an ally slot symbol printed on him. Which makes him really great in my opinion. Yeah he is expensive, but you can pair him with other allies without needing charisma
With the release of Parallel Jim and the introduction of his SPIRIT DECK! I think it's worth considering Tristan in a new way. Para Jim provides curse payoff by recharging your assets and when you're going all in on Curse you may get a free play of Tristan.
However, I want to talk about the spirit deck. Every turn, Jim flips the top card and puts it into play WITHOUT PAYING ITS COST. Granted, if you're ever at 4 allies in play attached to The Beyond you're likely to discard him. Even so, you get to put him into play for nothing and get a +1 to two skills of your choice.
We can actually game this with allies like Beat Cop, Stray Cat, Mysterious Raven, and Priest of Two Faiths whom we can discard on command we can stretch the amount of time Tristan is in play for.
So for parallel Jim I'd say this: If you're going all in on curse, main deck this man and his dog, if you're NOT going all in on curse, turn him and his dog into helpful ghosts!
Some rough math on Tristan's reaction ability, ignoring bag-manipulation/Favor/Covenant/etc effects:
With 10 total bless/curse remaining in bag during the current test, there's about a 5% chance of triggering him.
With 15 total, there's about a 10% chance.
With all 20 in the bag, there's about a 15% chance.
(For a base 16-17 token bag.)
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(Personally, I've only ever seen him get played full-price, but even then the effect is quite strong and flexible, and is an especially reasonable choice for small-collection investigators looking for a generically-useful ally.)