Asset

Talent. Ritual.

Cost: –.

Seeker

Permanent. Limit 1 per deck. Purchase at deck creation.

Increase your deck size by 15.

During each upkeep phase, instead of drawing 1 card, draw 2 cards and discard 1 of them.

Derek D. Edgell
Edge of the Earth Investigator Expansion #31.
Forced Learning

FAQs

(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)
  • Q: If I have Forced Learning and I draw a weakness during my upkeep phase, can I choose to discard it? What happens if both cards I draw are weaknesses? A: Weaknesses cannot be chosen to be discarded from your hand. If you draw 1 weakness and 1 non-weakness card, you must choose to discard the non-weakness card, then resolve the weakness as normal. If you draw 2 weaknesses, you cannot discard either one, and must resolve both of them. - FAQ, v.2.0, August 2022

  • Q: If Patrice Hathaway uses In the Thick of It to purchase Versatile to purchase Forced Learning, how does she resolve the draw cards step of the upkeep phase? A: If Patrice Hathaway has Forced Learning, she decides which trigger - hers or Forced Learning’s - to resolve during the upkeep phase, because both her ability and its ability share the same timing point.

  • Q: According to FAQ 2.0 [see above]: When resolving Forced Learning you draw 2 cards, choose to discard 1 non-weakness card (if able), then resolve Revelation effects. What happens if you choose to discard a non-weakness card with a revelation effect, such as a Dilemma card from The Scarlet Keys? Does its revelation effect not trigger because it has been discarded, or does the effect trigger from the discard pile? A: To answer your question(s):

    • When you draw a Dilemma with Forced Learning, you must resolve the Dilemma’s Revelation right away (as a nested sequence), discard it, then finish Forced Learning’s discard (discarding the other card you drew if it isn’t a weakness. If the second card was also a Dilemma, instead resolve it too).
    • We will plan to update that FAQ entry to make it a bit more clear what was intended. It was just meant to comment on Forced Learning and Weaknesses drawn, not enforce a timing structure for all Revelation effects.
Last updated

Reviews

This darn review took like a week and a half to math out and write, with lots of scrapped segments because it's so hard to explain every permutation of how this helps and hurts your deck and doing so doesn’t actually help you understand this card.

It is a theorycraft puzzle, a little mystery, one that will stress you to uncover. One that requires you to suffer a bit to do so. And one that makes it harder for you to communicate your understanding of the world to others. And this was the most lovecraftian theorycraft puzzle to solve, because now I am at the end, knowing half way through there was no light at the end of the tunnel as I sought to find a way to convey the hidden knowledge I have uncovered through brute force with a calculator, knowing from the get go that I was doomed to write a TL;DR: of this card that would make all the work I put into delving deep into this card worthless.

Its just… kinda meh

All this theorycraft and number crunching to check for breakpoints where this can shine, where it helps you get what you need faster based on what you shove into those 15 extra cards, how late in the game you are, how little you drew with other cards, and in the end it is just... meh.

Along the journey there were little sparks, little lights of hope. ”Maybe it will be good for this?” I pondered. ”This is an interesting ramification of deck building I noted. But in the end, nothing.

I am a professional educator and writer, and this card broke me in trying to figure out how to explain why it is, at the end of the day, just a ‘meh’ card no one is going to think about. But it had to be done, because this blank review spot taunted me, and on my spot half way down the path of the madness that was analyzing this card I knew enough to know I didn't want anyone else to see this blank review space and start along it to try to figure it out on their own. So I finished this grim work, accepted it was going to be very incoherent and ravey with lots of odd choices for what numbers I crunched, and hope it makes enough sense to warn others away.


TL;DR:

Forced Learning is going to hurt 'That One Card' (ex: Seeker-guardians who want just two weapons, seekers trying to 'shotgun blast' clues out of locations with guiding stones but will generally increase your consistency in the back half of a scenario, or if you can afford to run 4+ 'hits' of a card, as even compared to a regular 30 card deck running x4 of a given effect it becomes more consistent faster. However this consistency is undercut for each card you draw outside of the upkeep phase, and overall it doesn't help your late game consistency so much that it is likely worth bricking early game, or the fact that it will be harder for you to get the cards you leveled up into.

The main value of Forced Learning is instead letting you really cram your deck full of redundant tools that you would normally mulligan for, without hurting your odds of finding stuff you normally wouldn't, and even allowing you to actively mulligan for marginal cards that support your ‘main’ cards confident you will find them quickly early on by using those 15 deck slots. However, doing so generally requires you to add inefficient ‘sidegrade’ cards that undercuts the benefit of more consistent access to supportive tools, and its hard to upgrade a lot of redundant cards.

Forced learning is compatible with other deck filtering tools, but makes them less efficient, especially early. For 'tutor' effects that aren't hitting your entire deck (ex: Prepared for the worst) hold off on playing them until say... turn 3-4. Due to the fact that Seeker-Guardian already has absurd tutor efficiency, I would not recommend it on this particular class combo. Instead, it makes sense on seekers who often aren't running filtering already and do not have specific cards they need to get.

Overall this card isn’t terrible, especially if you plan for it, but even if you don’t. It just… doesn’t really help any deck that seems like it ‘wants’ to exist.


My mad ravings In depth analysis.

Forced Learning increases your deck size by 50%. It increases your passive draw rate by 100%. Ergo, you are more likely to see the cards you want on any given draw with Forced Learning than without, barring the fact that it hurts your mulligan (Hard mulliganing for an 2 of in your deck hits 55% of the time in a normal deck, and 39% in a forced deck, for an x4 you hit it 81% of the time in a standard deck, and 64% in a forced deck), so you have 5 cards that are less likely to be what you want you need to 'get past,' not to mention the intangible costs of not getting a core tool (like an upgraded weapon).

This means forced is going to become stronger over the game, as your opening hand's loss in consistency matters less to the larger pool of cards you saw. An intuitive way to think about it is this: Your tutor shows you 10 cards out of 31 (not counting weaknesses), or 33% of your deck, and then 1 card at a time after that from a deck of 28 cards. Forced shows you 10 out of 46, or around 22% of your deck, and then 2 at time after that out of a deck of 43 cards. So on your first upkeep after your initial muli and draw, you get to see 3.7% of your deck with a standard deck, and 4.5% of your deck with a forced deck, so it looks like it would take 11 turns to 'catch up' right? Yikes!

But it actually is better than that in some ways, because the forced deck is actually also thinning your deck when it shows you cards, which is in many ways more 'powerful' than mulligaining them back into your hand. Because you're not just 'seeing' 4.5% of your deck on turn 1, you are culling 4.5% of your deck on turn 1. On turn 2, your deck is now 27 cards in a standard deck, and 41 cards in forced. Now in a standard deck you 'cull' 3.7% again, while in a forced deck you are at 4.8% per draw. Turn 3 it is 3.8% vs 5.1%, and on 4 its 4% vs 5.5.

This all doesn't look like too much, it is only a difference of a few percentage points, but by turn 4, the forced learning deck has gotten to see 20% of your remaining deck in the forced deck, while in a standard deck you only got to see 15%, which is extremely significant once you also remember the density of cards you want in your deck tends to increase with every 'miss.' This is what is called a Hypergeometric Distribution, and it is a huge PITA to really wrap your head around, so let's think of it this way:

On turn 4 of any given game, assuming you were looking for 4 specific cards in your deck, a standard deck has a 90% chance to find that specific card. A forced deck, assuming you don't use any slots to help you find the card, has an 85% chance to find it. By turn 6, it is 96% in a standard deck, vs 91% in a forced deck. So early on it's significant, but it gets less significant over time, eventually overtaking a standard deck in time for the scenario to basically be over.

So it isn't increasing your deck consistency in the first 6 turns (unless your using the extra space to run extra copies of things you want, which is also where this can shine, but we will get to that math in a second), but it won't hurt them that badly early, unless you are running huge tutor effects.

For example, turn 1 you will fail both your mulligan and prep search you stuck to Stick to the plan (Which I include only to make the math easier) to nab a 2 of upgraded weapon only 20% of the time in a standard deck. Meanwhile, in a Forced deck turn 1 you are failing to hit it 35% of the time. That is a jump to a miss in 1/5 games to 1/3!

It gets less bad if you wait a hot sec though: After 2 turns you have a 74% chance to snag that weapon at some point between mulligan, passive draws, and prep, while if you wait a similar 2 turns in a standard deck you have an 84% chance to see them. After 4 turns it's 82% on the forced and 88% on the normal deck. The gap basically becomes non-existent after that.

If you run 4 of, you also get way better, a non-forced deck sees a hit on 4 copies with a hard muli+prep opener 99% of the time, while forced sees it 87% of the time, but by waiting until turn 2 the forced is seeing what they want 93% of the time, a difference maker only in 1 in 20 instances. Overall though, you generally run a tutor specifically because you want to compress the value of cards: Guardians aren't using prepare for the worst over 4 weapons because it costs a lot of xp to upgrade weapons, they want that SPECIFIC gun, so utilizing Forced Learning in Guardian is fairly questionable.

However, these are the odds with you not utilizing those extra deck slots, applied to 'critical' tools. So what if we use those deck slots really aggressively? What if we, for example, are a mystic who normally runs 4 clue spells, and 4 attack spells mixed between events and assets? What if we used those 15 slots to increase that to 8 and 8 respectively? Sure we might not WANT a copy of Withering and Spectral Razor as our first picks, but lets ignore the fact that each 'sidegrade' is probably weaker than the last for now, Armageddon isn't THAT much worse than Shrivelling. Now we find them 90% of the time in our mulligan, much like a standard deck, and even assuming we got two in our opener, our odds of drawing another on our first upkeep are still 26%, increasing every time we don't get what we want.

In a standard deck this makes it significantly harder to get our cards that support our general strategy, but you aren't generally mulligaining for those (meaning the mulligan harming aspect of this card is less relevant) and we aren't altering the density of them at all (in fact, we still have 7 slots to fill up with those if we can find more!), so we actually will still find them pretty fast if we need them. For example, if we are running x4 accessory willpower boosters in this hypothetical, and we don't mulligan for them and don't see them in our opener, we will see them 33% of the time turn 2 in a forced deck, and 27% of the time turn 2 in a normal deck! Even if we run only x2 it's 18% in a forced deck vs 14%.

So the ‘optimal’ strategy of this card seems really clear: It allows you to push your deck way harder in a given direction for cards you actively want lots of, and positively affects the rate of finding support cards you aren't pushing into the deck. Heck, you can now mulligan for important support cards that don't do ANYTHING on their own, but which dramatically help you, confident you will find some tool that enables them, jumping your odds of seeing them in the first few turns from 20% to some odd 80%.

...Assuming you aren't drawing more cards via card effects (ex: Book of Old Lore, Lucky Cig Case, ect.). The benefits of this card weakens every method of card draw except upkeep draw. For big searches this doesn't matter, you're not really running them as 'draw' so much as 'get the thing I need.' But until your 15th upkeep phase (At which point your deck size equals out with a standard deck at 18 cards left), every draw effect is weaker. This isn't a terrible outcome if you are occasionally popping one card into your hand, and heck it can kinda work ok with old lore, but if you are very consistently just shoveling extra cards into your hand with non-upkeep draw you are really only going to hurt yourself. Mandy, for example, is going to likely be drawing as many cards with search effects (which are now less consistent), as she is by upkeep, so she really just struggles a bit more to find what she wants unless she really leans into what she wants via those 15 cards, which is hard to do when Mandy wants such specific things.

Is this worth it?

I don't think so, no.

Firstly, the idea of 'cramming' your deck full of sidegrades to an effect is viable if your running say... 4 of them. But 6 or 8? That comes out to 24 XP to upgrade them, so unless that is all your doing (Which likely trashes your deck), you are still going to have cards in your pool you would much rather see, and upgrading cards is important over the course of a campaign to keep up. Seekers have plenty of good level 0 stuff, but ultimately you are going to really struggle, especially because so much of Seeker's design space is already based around having good tutor to allow them to 'build around' cards.

I also can't think of any existing character who wants this card, and the strategies it enables are probably done better by other characters and cards: Alt Agnes is better at event spam with her native draws and ways to stack her deck, Akachi is probably better at spell asset spam. Daisy wants to run lore and doesn’t really want a ton of spells anyway, Guardian-seekers hate this, Many REALLY hates this, Trish is at the limit of what the pool supports already in her main archetype so she really can't fill out those 15 cards, Minh draws a lot already and it has anti-synergy with skills tending to draw you cards, her use of Old Tome, and her desire to get her signature. Rex REALLY doesn’t like this between having a specific setup and his use of lucky cigs. Ursula… might want this? But it's hard to see what she would really do with it.

So this, more than the other 'deck modifiers' is kinda a gimmick card. I could 100% see an Underworld Support deck that is very serious and tuned showing up, because it asks way less of your build and it is less anti-synergistic with rogue's native card pool.

This is 100% to make a 'wacky and wild' deck, or to deliberately harm yourself a little bit to let you try as hard as you can on lower difficulties without ruining the game for others: If your able to get through Cthulhu's Awful Dinner Party on Super Double Secret Probation difficulty and you start playing with newbies who want to play their own decks on standard or easy and they do cute little things like giving Wendy a switchblade, this is a good way to allow you to keep your deck relatively strong without letting you take over the experience.

But in the current gator-pool it probably... isn't good. I would say, despite the negative effects on your deck, again, being not that bad. Even if all these added cards were literally blank 'commit 1 wild' cards it would not totally ruin your deck (And one potential path could be ‘shove the 15 full of 6 cards to do ‘your main thing’ and then overloading on skills on the rest) but I still wouldn't ever choose to add this at the moment for raw power.

dezzmont · 212
Discarding cards pairs incredibly well with Scavenging. This isn't Seeker exclusive as it's level 0, so you could throw this into Pete or Finn. Minh is also a big fan of utilizing the discard. — StyxTBeuford · 12985
How does this work with Patrice if I use Into the Thick of It to purchase Versatile then Forced Learning. What's the draw look like each upkeep? — jdk5143 · 98
My favorite thing about this review is that the first few paragraphs read exactly like the beginning of many a Lovecraft story. — SGPrometheus · 809
While discarding cards does work neat with Scavenging, remember Styx that the math assumes 'A card I need' is in EITHER of the drawn cards. So while scavenging helps you turn the cards you discard into resources, it doesn't help ensure the cards you are seeing are the cards you want, which is what I was checking. Worse still is the fact that you are up against that '2 of needed tool' problem in a scavenging deck where you are delaying the cards now doubly so: You need to first find scavenging, which is now harder, and the cards you want, which is now harder, and then you need to set up later in the game which is even slower now. Minh does have a deck archetype based around playing cards from discard, but that isn't a deck that is trying to fill its discard as a resource or use a wide variety of cards. It is a combo deck, meaning it wants to find its very specific list of tools very consistently, which is why it tends to run a solid 5th of its deck slots as tutors. I actually think Minh specifically is the second worst gator to run this on, after Mandy of course, because of this fact. — dezzmont · 212
The simplest way to think about this card is that the less draw (or tutoring, or pseudo draw, etc.) you have the better it is, and the more draw you have the worse it becomes. Most good decks already contain significant amounts of draw to thin the deck and increase the chance of getting the strong XP cards in the deck, so it'll be rarely worth it for them. For weak or mediocre decks with low draw, it won't hurt too much. — suika · 9392
Mark my words, in a future expansion we're going to see support added for big decks based on cards in deck! — suika · 9392
For Patrice, not sure, but reading the guidelines of Instead: The word "instead" is indicative of a replacement effect. A replacement effect is an effect that replaces the resolution of a triggering condition with an alternate means of resolution. If multiple replacement effects are initiated against the same triggering condition and create a conflict in how to resolve the triggering condition, the most recent replacement effect is the one that is used for the resolution of the triggering condition. The word "would" is used to define the triggering condition of some abilities, and establishes a higher priority for those abilities than abilities referencing the same triggering condition without the word "would." (For instance, "When X would occur" resolves before "When X occurs.") If a replacement effect that uses the word "would" changes the nature of a triggering condition, the original triggering condition is replaced with the new triggering condition. No further abilities referencing the original triggering condition may be used. I don't think there is anything that dictates the order of operations (both are same trigger), so there is flexibility in which to trigger, i.e. can choose to replace all 5 or draw 2 discard 1, usually the former is better until she hits key cards. I am not sure whether her build will change drastically if this combo works (maybe can add more situational cards like lucky), but the flexibility looks very good. — Hulahoop12 · 1
...this is going to sound a bit stupid, but I can see the expanded deck size itself being useful for a very draw-heavy deck that expects to cycle a few times by the end of a scenario, but also takes a lot of cards out of play (either by holding them in a big hand, or putting assets into play)> — MrButtermancer · 55
Scavenging isnt inherently a combo deck card though. If im filling my discard and drawing every turn, in a deck only 50% larger than standard, and I have a sufficient number of cards I am either A. Willing to grab later with scavenging/resourceful/scrounge etc, or B. that directly benefit from being in the discard like Fortuitous Discover or Winging It etc, then there’s really little value lost and a lot of value added. Ive hit my combo potential for specific cards at the benefit of more variety and options lategame. With Ashcan specifically, I think that’s super worthwhile, and it’s even easier to enable with short supply. Idk, I think a discard based deck with this in Ashcan just makes perfect sense. — StyxTBeuford · 12985
I may have a slightly different perspective as I mainly this game with a solo with a single investigator, but the big value to me is being able to choose one of two cards that will best in a given scenario. In my opinion having the right card at the right time is often better than a card that is objectively stronger most of the time. — RobertLefebvre · 1

A more beginner-friendly way to describe this card is that it allows you to flex "live" depending on the current situation, instead of at the time of deck building. Making highly situational cards shines a little bit more.

In terms of emergent story, your character may looks like he always has something very specific to deal with a very specific situation, making him looks cool as if scripted in a movie scene. Because if it were characters that don't have this card, the situational cards wouldn't be in the deck in the first place and instead is full of staple must-include cards.

For example, the healing. When deck building, you don't want to include many healing cards as they are anti-tempo and somewhat situational. You also don't know if anyone would need any healing cards due to random basic weakness in EotE until you finished building the deck. You don't know if you will be hit by trauma early along the campaign and really need some preemptive healing to continue or not. Or even, you don't know if your cousin will join in the campaign half way with a character that needs some healing or not. Now you can include Medical Texts "just in case" and bias to discard it if it isn't needed while playing. This may also extends to movement cards where they may be needed in big map scenario, and not needed in a brawl scenario.

One other notoriously situational card that comes to mind is Barricade. Imagine if Barricade has a that let you discard it and draw a new card to replace immediately, it would move up from "no, thanks" tier to "sounds like fun!" tier. By modifying yourself with Forced Learning, you add this kind of flex ability on all the hard-to-use cards.

When beginners wanted to try out all the shiny cards or is going to blind run a campaign, this card speed up this learning process by letting you include them all and pick the right combination as you go. When you realize what situation you are in in the scenario, then you can "turn off" part of your deck that isn't matching with the situation as you draws.

5argon · 9865
Your review is the one that closest resonates with my experience, although the reason I almost always include it in a deck when I can is a weird one: I am having a hard time deciding which cards to omit from my build. In my opinion, with an ever-growing card pool there are rarely obvious choices. If I went around showing people my decks in question I bet there would be strong believes concerning the value of one card or the other. Of course, my inability to "let go" does not concern every deck I build, but sometimes it just feels like they should all be in there. To conclude: My awe of Forced Learning comes solely from its capability to let me include all the cards I want to, in spite of the normally too limiting deck size. The draw effect I actually find more backfiring because of weaknesses. Ever heard of "Tekeli-li"...? — AlderSign · 269
Brilliant reviews, and comments. I completely agree with you @AlderSign that is great for testing out what works in a deck, especially blind playthroughs. I too really can struggle to "trim the fat" and get a deck down to 30 cards as it feels like you can only run a few cards and ideas max. Forced learning I've found after many investigators playing it, can enable some very wide and sometimes complex deck builds too. — Quantallar · 7

This card is best with some cards. Many of you already told with Scavenging, but there are more survivor cards you can get bonus when discarding.

For example, if you discard Improvised serises (especially Winging It), you can trigger powerful ability from discard pile. The main problem of thoes card is the way to discard without playing, but Forced Learning is good solution. Another one is Moonstone; you could play Moonstone by Forced Learning without any action. I think A Glimmer of Hope is another good canditate.

elkeinkrad · 485
Odd Minh deck possible. — MrGoldbee · 1449
In pure Seeker it also has synergies with the new ally "Professor William Webb" for discarded items and with "Eidetic Memory" for Insight events. — Miroque · 25

One problem not covered by dezzmont's otherwise exhaustive analysis is the fact that you're forced to choose your Weaknesses. You're more likely to hit them from the get-go (~2/22.5 versus the normal ~2/30), and this relative drawback only gets magnified as the campaign progresses and more weaknesses get added to your deck.

This might be slightly better in Norman Withers than elsewhere, since he at least pops weaknesses off the top of his deck for free (i.e. he's only half as likely to get his upkeep draw nuked, compared to other investigators).

VinnyB · 158
How could I forget to mention that? It was literally on my mind as part of why I considered it fairly 'meh!' as I was doing all that math! — dezzmont · 212
Not only does this mean you hit your weaknesses more often, but on those turns you will be forced to discard the non-weakness card even if it's something you desperately need. — OrionJA · 1
Oddly, it's not FORCED. — MrGoldbee · 1449

Here's a trick: you totally can discard weaknesses with this card! This is legal as long as you're not lactose intolerant.

Of course, you can't choose to discard weaknesses from hand. That's illegal and heretic and the Arkham Police will bust down your door and confiscate your collection. But the trick is, you're not discarding weaknesses from hand. You're discarding them from play or from your discard. Forced Learning never specified that you can only discard the cards you drew from hand!

See, when you draw Paranoia as one of your two cards over upkeep, you immediately resolve its revelation effect. It's then discarded and goes into your discard pile. You then choose paranoia as your card to discard from Forced Learning. Good thing it's already in your discard pile, so you keep the other card you drew.

Alternatively, you draw Internal Injury. Even better. You resolve the revelation effect of internal Injury and put it into play. Then you choose Internal Injury as the card you discard from Forced Learning, and discard it from your threat area. Hurrah, you just cleared that weakness without spending an action! This also works for enemy weaknesses!

Don't actually try this at your table unless you enjoy rule arguments.

suika · 9392
Obvious incoming FAQ on this aside, under this interpretation one presumably this means that a weakness that takes effect in your hand would not be valid, meaning that the rules weirdness for this card in Patrice, who already is weird with this card, just got 5% weirder. — dezzmont · 212
Patrice does not work with this card at all, because it says "Instead of drawing 1 card durring upkeep phase. And she does not draw 1 card, she draws 5. "Internal Injury" looks like a good catch to me. But Paranoia should definitely not work. It does not change the game state to discard a card from the discard pile into the discard pile. — Susumu · 366
@dezzmont: for all you know this could be completely intended behavior to compensate for the mediocrity of the card! — suika · 9392
@Susumu: perfectly legal as long as you apply Forced Learning before Patrice's ability. — suika · 9392
@susumu: Changing the game state is only required if we need to determine something with "must" word, play or trigger some ability, or we need to select a target with "choose" word. It seems that this case isn't included all condition, so that it seems be legal to select Paranoia to discard. — elkeinkrad · 485
@Suika I did think about it. Forced Learning basically shutting down Seeker's search power in exchange for heavily limiting how bad weaknesses could get might be fair for seekers who tend to run strong draw engines, but allowing anyone with seeker access to totally shut down their signature weaknesses probably won't fly, as seeker already has some extreme power level issues even outside of draw power. @Susumu: As has been stated, it is an order of opperations issue. This entire thread just goes to show this card is gunna need an FAQ or five because of how many different ways it could in theory apply (And, again, it tickles me that Patrice rubs up against how it works in one way, while in another being the only unambiguous case on discarding weaknesses). — dezzmont · 212
I don't want and I can't read this (English is not my native language), so can you tell me: can I discard weaknesses like Internal injury by Forced Learning? — Pawiu14 · 184
We do not know, and need an FAQ. It is not likely. — dezzmont · 212
It's possible case that we should draw cards, discard cards, and then resolve revelation effect. I agree that we don't know about this. — elkeinkrad · 485
@ suika: "When a player draws two or more cards as the result of a single ability or game step, those cards are drawn simultaneously." So, no. You can't apply "Forced Learning" after drawing the first and before drawing the second card from Patrice' ability, because all 5 will be drawn simultainiously. — Susumu · 366
@Susumu: That's not what you replace, you replace the card draw that Patrice would have replaced (with, I should note, exactly the same "instead of ..." text). — Thatwasademo · 58
That said, the rules aren't entirely clear about what happens when multiple replacement effects *from static abilities* try to change the same event, especially when both those replacement effects began the game in play — Thatwasademo · 58
If they were both from Forced abilities or both from reaction triggered abilities, you'd obviously get to choose which one to apply — Thatwasademo · 58
If you read the rules carefully than you know how Patrice works. Instead tells you that only the latest effect applies (so Patrice or Forced learning, which entered play later) as these happen at the same time first player chooses, but has to stick with it for the whole game. So unless FAQ-d you choose one at game start and stick with it. — vidinufi · 68
Until we get an FAQ to confirm, I think with how things intertwine... A weakness's discardability depends on the specific weakness. Weaknesses tend to discard themselves from play, so we know it's a valid mechanism. In addition, based on Amanda/Grisly Totem's ruling, it is likely that 'hanging effects with indefinite timing points' linger until a card leaves play - and a card being played does not cause it to leave play, while a card that goes into the discard does. So if a Weakness is a "Revelation - Put <x> into play" Weakness, it is still 'in play' and therefore is valid to be discarded. However, if it is a Weakness with a Revelation effect that will do something (Amnesia/Paranoia), it will do that thing and then be out of play (in the discard) and therefore no longer be valid to be chosen. In addition, cards with a "cannot leave play" option (Daisy's Necronomicon, Minh's King in Yellow) cannot be discarded from play and therefore cannot be chosen since it will not cause a change in the game state, so they will also force the other card to be discarded. And, of course, cards that remain in hand (Dark Pact, The Tower) cannot be chosen as the discard unless you happened to have drawn two of them. So Forced Learning is likely capable of dodging SOME weaknesses, but not all of them. Of course, since you need to have Forced Learning before you know what your weaknesses are, that's more of a useful fact if it helps you dodge a particularly nasty personal weakness. — Ruduen · 978
"When a player is instructed to draw one or more cards, those cards are drawn from the top of his or her investigator deck and added to his or her hand." — NIEDZIOWIEDZ · 1
"A player may not optionally choose to discard a weakness card from hand, unless a card explicitly specifies otherwise." — NIEDZIOWIEDZ · 1

This permanent was really fun with Mandy Thompson (30 cards). Every line on the permanent worked to her advantage.

+15 deck size? Great, I can fit in three sets of Myriad cards, Segment of Onyx, A Glimmer of Hope and Astounding Revelation while not feeling like I have a bloated deck. 6 spots leftover for me to fill in with Seeker allies (tons of great options).

Draw 2 cards per upkeep? Great. Procs my Ancient Stones twice as fast with no action required.

Discard 1 of them? Great. Lets me discard allies, survivor cards, item cards.

What to take with Survivor subclass as Mandy? Winging It, Impromptu Barrier, A Glimmer of Hope, A Chance Encounter. Three of these are playable from the Discard Pile, while A Chance Encounter lets you play discarded allies.

Don't forget to take Calling in Favors to be able to put 2 allies into play using Mandy's ability. You can even use it on the "A Chance Encounter" target.

For upgrades, take Charisma/Miskatonic Archaeology Funding to facilitate more allies. Ancient Stone to utilise the Draw 2 effect. Versatile + Scavenging to recur any items used up or discarded during upkeep. Protecting the Anirniq works wonders with Ancient Stone/A Chance Encounter.

Conclusion: Don't take this if you were hoping to be flexible during upkeep and "choose" which cards to keep based on the situation. Don't take this if you care about your opening hand either.

Instead, take it if you're like me and actively WANT half your deck discarded and to proc Ancient Stone. The only things I didn't want to discard were Talents, Skill Cards and the cards that let me do ally shenanigans. Everything else was fair game.

Oh, and who cares if you drew Shocking Discovery during your upkeep phase? You lose the other card which you can probably get back and it's considered a dead draw which doesn't matter for a Big Hand Mandy deck. As Mandy, I almost never draw Shocking Discovery because she has plenty of ways to proc it on her own terms via Search.

kongieieie · 13
I played this without Ancient Stone and it was still incredible. Used Versatilex2 to get Quick Thinking — Maseiken · 1

Tried this out a few times and the results were quite underwhelming.

A few things you don't think about...

1.) This magnifies the intensity of a weakness. Per the rules, you can never willingly discard a weakness. So, when you draw your weakness, it basically has an additional revelation effect: discard the other card you just drew. This messes with just about everything in your deck.

2.) You would think the double draw during upkeep makes up for the +15 cards, but nope. It essentially just dilutes out your deck, and makes any draw action half as effective when it comes to milling.

I've tried just about every scenario I can think of. Using the boosted deck number to avoid Beyond the Veil, trying it out in gators that can take level 0 seeker cards, etc. The result is the same...

The +15 is just simply too punishing to make this worth it. Even if it was just draw 2, the extra discard with each weakness can really bone you. Skip.

drjones87 · 190
Did you try it with any card that cares about the discard pile? cause thats what you should have tried. — Zerogrim · 292

The limits of Mandy's deck size just got a whole lot larger. Starting out with a 65 card deck is sure to make the other players at the table question how much horror you've taken. But combine it with two Versatiles to make a 75 card deck and the others will surely drive you to the asylum for the clear bout of insanity that you're experiencing. Then, combine that with Ancestral Knowledge to make a pseudo 80 card deck. What does one even put in an 80 card deck? Everything? At least the Dunwich encounter deck will lose much of its power. These combos would probably make activating Beyond the Veil an achievement in the most draw-heavy class but it would also make it a challenge to find the cards you need. Have fun shuffling this monstrosity! Combine it with the other new permanents for even more deck shenanigans.

Tay5967 · 19
two cards in your now 83 card deck are weaknesses, enjoy the one game you actually draw both. — Zerogrim · 292
Aren't there 4 weaknesses in her deck due to the scaling of her signature weakness with her chosen deck size? — Tharzax · 1
That's her signature (good) card, not her signature weakness — SnowOnACactus · 1

Other people are writing interesting analysis and ideas. I have something different for you all to consider. Let's take a look at 3 notable permanents that we can combine to create the dumbest build in the world.

In the Thick of It

Versatile

Forced Learning

Now why are doing this you may ask? Wonderful question, but I'll need to bring up an important ruling first. Crystallizer of Dreams has a clear ruling in its interaction with The Painted World that says that forced abilities take priority over other replacement effects.

Now let's consider Patrice Hathaway. By using Versatile to bring in Forced Learning (thanks to the xp from thick of it) we are able to replace Patrice's signature ability with "Draw 2, Discard 1". You'll also have a 62 card deck size. To be clear, this is not a good idea, but it is hilarious and does allow you to laugh at both the watcher and much of the Dunwich encounter deck. If you actually decide to do this, please let me know and let me see your deck because I am sure it will be amazing.

I have not played Patrice in Dunwich yet. People said, they handled her there quite well. For the Watcher however, Patrice has plenty of ways to deal with it in faction. Other disadvantages, you did not mention: her handsize still goes down to 5 in this combo, that sentence is not replaced. And you would probably never ever use her elder sign ability with it, or you would never see the cards, you most want to get. — Susumu · 366
From the FAQ: "since The Painted World’s replacement effect is forced and Crystallizer of Dreams is optional, the forced effect would take priority" By my read, neither Forced Learning and Patrice's effect are optional, so I don't think your example applies here. As far as I can tell, these effects would both be considered "Constant" effects seeking resolution "during" the same time, and thus would fall under the "Priority of Simultaneous Resolution" section. This would mean that every time she tried to draw, the lead investigator would choose which way she would draw of the two options, which is honestly even more funny. I'm not completely sure on this, but I'm...pretty sure. I highly suspect there will be an FAQ on this within short order though. — Ironman_MK11 · 17
"If multiple replacement effects are initiated against the same triggering condition and create a conflict in how to resolve the triggering condition, the most recent replacement effect is the one that is used for the resolution of the triggering condition." There's also this under multiple replacement effects which potentially applies — NarkasisBroon · 10
@Susumu: this is 100% bad, I was just making a joke about the one use case I could think of where it might be useful. You would still have a max hand size of 5, though you would avoid the discard every turn. @Ironman_MK11, you are 100% correct that I misread why Painted World vs Crystallizer worked the way it does (unfortunately) but I believe this still works and the fact that you can choose which one you want might actually have some value. @NarkasisBroon I think that you get to choose the order of the triggering events since they are attempting to trigger at the same time which would give you some amount of choice. — scaredyshark · 7

I think best use is for a seeker/survivor with scavenging+resourceful (so you can pick back scavenging) and pair this with short supply, and a lot of survivor cards that can be used from discard or gets advantage of discard cards.

I think the biggest problems are the weaknesses. Basically in 15 rounds you go through the same size of your deck with this card as without it (not counting tutoring). You get +15 cards but mill 15 more so it nets 0. So it is nearly the same chance to see your weakness. But if you draw your weakness you have to discard your other card (as you have to discard 1 but you cannot discard weakness) so you lose your chance to choose one. So the main problem is if you draw your "best" card and a weakness at the same time.

vidinufi · 68

I would replace "During each upkeep phase, instead of drawing 1 card, draw 2 cards and discard 1 of them." to:

"During each upkeep phase, instead of drawing 1 card, look at the top 2 cards of your deck. Draw 1 and any weakness among them. Discard the rest."

It seems fair middle road to me. I think both other interpretations are unbalanced. If you draw a weakness with it, then allowing to discard that weaknesses (right after the revelation) is too powerful if it's a crippling asset or enemy. Then there's the other way, forcing a discard of the other card makes it near unplayable. You would not only be getting the activation of a weakness, but also losing a (good) card!

Weges · 92
How does forcing a discard of the other card make it 'near unplayable'? It just means that once or twice each scenario you will get a weakness during your draw step instead of a card - same as for everyone else. I agree that the ability to discard weaknesses after revelation is certainly not intended. — Death by Chocolate · 1447
With 'near unplayable' I meant: The card is only worth getting if you massively value the flexibility. — Weges · 92

Increasing your decksize hurts your mulligans, but being able to pick your cards in the draw phase negates the issue of diluting your deck pool with extra cards. Essentially, this card allows you to pick a lot more of those niche, great-in-one-situation cards, and then toss them aside for your normal good cards if that situation doesn't seem likely. Enjoy the power of Fine Clothes in Carcosa and when the Parleys aren't in the scenario you can shunt em. Have Roland bring Handcuffs to the dance and toss them right back in the trash where they belong when the tentacle monsters come out to play.

Notably you will draw your weaknesses faster since the rate of draw is higher than the rate of deck dilution, and in that highly improbable and inevitably Arkham fashion you can draw two of them at a time (which then leads to a choose and discard situation, which assumably means you keep them both).

Also notably, your upkeep phase will take longer than everybody else's and you'll have to make a higher amount of choices each round, a situation that is all fun for some players and sheer decision paralysis for others. But if you're up for that enhanced complexity, this is a permanent that gives you a higher quality draw at the expense of a slightly lower quality deck with a more inconsistent start. If you're taking the rounded approach, this card is perfect, and discard synergy and interaction make it more so. If you need a particular start: Tarot, key assets and signatures, weapons of choice - this is more likely to be a pass.

LocoPojo · 239
The math of this doesn't work out great for wanting to find that One Specific Card for most of the game. For example, this decreases your odds of finding your fancy clothing in the Carcosa scenario up until turn 8 assuming you never draw a single card outside of upkeep. So trying to use it to snipe 'once a campaign' cards is not a great use for it compared to just running those cards when you need it and upgrading out of them later. This card is good for filtering 'away' from things, more than 'towards,' them, if that makes sense. "I have 12 combat tools and 12 clue tools, this card lets me push away from one of those when I don't need them." — dezzmont · 212
1 draw out of 28 cards is worse than 2 draws out of 43, if you assume the deck is fully shuffled and each draw is random, you have a higher chance of drawing any one card from forced learning at any given time than you would normally. once you throw weaknesses in the math's gets a lot more tricky but feels like at worst you'd break even but have room for more situational tools. — Zerogrim · 292
@Zerogrim, the problem is that you start the game with 5-10 draws out of your 33 or 48 card deck. It takes a lot of upkeeps to make up for what you lose on the mulligan. — OrionJA · 1
Forced Learning works with Dream-Enhancing Serum, doesn't it? You draw 2 cards during upkeep, then the Serum's additional draw effect may kick in before you discard one of the two upkeep cards. That way you could discard the copy of a card you already have and also draw another one... — Miroque · 25
Yeah, it does. — puert · 48

Quite fun in a Short Supply, Forced Learning Ashcan Deck... Hopefully you discard some Glimmers, Winging It's, etc... but if you don't, your deck size really isn't effected, but now you gain the 2 for one deck draw.

dlikos · 151
Question for the userbase - How does this card interact with the new revelation cards from the scarlet Keys expansion? e.g. making preperations etc.? — Rayleigh101 · 1