Event

Dilemma. Tactic.

Cost: –.

Survivor

Max 2 Dilemma per round.

Revelation - If there are no enemies in play, draw 1 card. Otherwise, you must decide (choose one):

- Each unengaged enemy moves once toward the nearest investigator.

- Each investigator disengages from each enemy engaged with them and moves once away from the nearest enemy.

David Hovey
The Scarlet Keys Investigator Expansion #107.
Predator or Prey

FAQs

(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)
  • Q: I have a question regarding weaknesses and Dilemma cards with Revelation abilities: If due to card effects (e.g. Deep Knowledge), both Amnesia card and At a Crossroads are drawn, is it possible to freely choose their resolution order? If so, and I choose to resolve Amnesia first, can I choose to discard the At a Crossroads I just drew? If I choose to resolve At a Crossroads first, choose myself to immediately get an action and then randomly discard 1 card from my hand, could Amnesia be randomly discarded due to this effect? The reason I'm having a problem with this is because I don't understand where At a Crossroads is when I'm resolving Amnesia? Is it in my hand or in "Limbo"? A: Good questions. We are ruling that the Revelation ability on a Weakness (or encounter) card must be resolved before the Revelation ability on a Dilemma card. We don’t believe this is explicitly stated, but we would like to include that in the next FAQ update. And yes, if you resolved the ability on Amnesia first, it would be possible to discard At a Crossroads, since it’s a card that’s in your hand at the time. At a Crossroads isn’t in limbo until you’re resolving its ability.
Last updated

Reviews

Of the two level 0 Dilemmas that have been displayed so far, I believe this to be the stronger one. The basic use is obvious - if you have enemies in play, decide how you want to manipulate the scenario to handle them. There are a few major chunks to break down, and some interesting factors to consider for each of these.

  • If there are no enemies in play, draw 1 card.
    • On its own, this can be valuable. It means that your card draw will not be 'wasted' by this, and it can be thought of as either giving you a free draw or a free 'play' of its actions whenever it pops out.
    • In Survivor decks, even this case is okay - after all, it's putting the equivalent of a fast event in your discard pile in your discard.
  • Each unengaged enemy moves once towards the nearest investigator.
    • This often can be a 'do little' option. If most of the enemies around are already engaged or at locations with investigators they will just sit there.
    • Remember that when making a choice, you must choose one that will change the game state if possible. As such, if everybody is already at a location with an enemy, you must choose to have everybody move away instead.
    • If you draw this during upkeep, it means you will have already dodged the window for an attack, so there is less harm in drawing enemies closer.
    • If you draw this during the investigator phase, but you have already evaded an enemy, it's still fine - while the enemy is moved, it does not ready or attack, so it will not be any inconvenience.
    • This does not specify non-elite enemies, so in unusual cases, it can be used to move a large creature out of its normal resting place.
    • The main time this is a poor decision is if you were trying to keep away from a Hunter. (But if that's the case, the second option will more likely serve better.)
  • Each investigator disengages from each enemy engaged with them and moves once away from the nearest enemy.
    • A free disengage/movement is very valuable if you weren't planning on fighting, and can be especially helpful if a group is trying to deal with multiple enemies at the same time. This is especially valuable since it is a combination of non-action, automatic evades and movement.
    • Investigators only move away from the nearest enemy. This means that if you have two enemies in adjacent locations, you can disengage from your enemy to hop on to another enemy. This is more useful for monster fighters when they are swamped - they can look for better targets.
    • This option also allows for mass movement in cases where you have a non-hunter enemy stewing somewhere. In those cases, it gives everybody a free movement - and since you often no longer want to be at the location where you've left an enemy, that will often be in the appropriate direction.
    • The main time this is a poor decision is if you have a scenario where some investigators want to fight and others want to flee. From my tests, even these cases weren't a major problem. People who needed to evade gained more than what the fighters lose. The fighters can 'catch up' by only spending a single action - and it also means they will tend towards automatically engaging the target or being in the proper position to tank hits, rather than needing to make additional considerations for engage actions or dangerous attacks.

On its own, this card can be a little inconsistent, but can save plenty of trouble by giving the entire group a bit of movement or manipulation. I've found that even in situations where it's 'wasteful', those are situations that are often safe enough that the waste is not dangerous. But when it's useful, it's very useful, potentially giving an entire team safety and mass movement. Combined with Survivor recursion tricks, and this also adds the ability to manipulate enemies or protect allies with Resourceful or even Scrounge for Supplies. On its own, it's a reasonable card. With the tricks Survivors can pull, this can be a solid pick.

(Note that this works under the thought that Revelation abilities on these cards work the same way as on weaknesses - if they do not, survivor recursion tricks may not work in the same way, so figuring that out would be an entirely separate set of considerations.)

Ruduen · 891
So good in Midnight masks! — MrGoldbee · 1391
Just a small addition so that is clear. This choice contains the word must which means you have to choose an option that changes game state. If the first option doesn't move any enemies you have to choose the second — NarkasisBroon · 10
"If there are no enemies in play, draw 1 card." is player card lingu for "this card gains surge". If there are no enemies in play, the effect would be useless, so you draw 1 card instead. There is no survivor recurring synergy in that, though. Drawing the card from the discard pile does not trigger the revelation. — Susumu · 330
Thanks for the reminder, NarkasisZBroon - I'll edit that one in! — Ruduen · 891
Dilemma works with recurrsion card like Resourceful or Scrounge for Suppplies. The rule of Dilemma (revealed with Dilemma cards) states "as with revelation abilities on other cardtypes, these abilites resolve when the card is drawn or **otherwise enters your hand**,". In addition, Card Ability Interpretation point 2.14 states that some abilities such as relevation abilies on weaknesses and **dilemma** cards trigger regardless of whether the card is "drawn" or "added" to your hand. Thus, the relevation ability should be resolved when we add the Dilemma card from the discard pile by Resourceful or Scrounge for Supplies. — elkeinkrad · 468
Yes, on further rules reading, I agree, I got this wrong. I mixed it up with the clarification for the case, that you draw more than 2 dilemmas in a round. Then you have to put the excess into your hand as a dead card. So this made me believe, that there is no way to time the relevation of a dilemma, when it is most apropriate. But there obviously is with recursion. And since this had been a signature for survivors for some time, this is clearly intentionally so. — Susumu · 330
I would like to add that when this card backfires, it backfires spectacularly. My buddy pulled this card during the final agenda of The Vanishing of Elena Harper and we pulled so many fish people onto the location where the four of us were at. It also doesn't play nice when you're trying to avoid drowning and need to advance instead of retreat. I'm eager to see how it plays out in Horror in High Gear. This card can really add some zazz to your play session! — cheddargoblin · 86

EDIT: Ignore all of the following, apart from maybe the bit about Dunwich Legacy... after not playing for several months, I completely forgot how SttP worked. It can't work w/ Predator Or Prey, so everything I wrote is irrelevant.

+++

A lovely Guardian card! Guardians have relied on their teammates to push them around for months; finally they can give a nudge back.

The obvious combo is with that staple of all sensible Guardian decks: Stick To The Plan. Since drawing this card at random from your deck literally turns it into a signature weakness, you just need to put it where you can see it 100% of the time.

So, Zoey/Tommy/Marky likey! Other Guardians too, tho they sort of need 1 more combo piece.

Once it's Stuck, your Guardian now has a 0-cost party-wide Elusive-lite, a map-wide Get Over Here-lite, or in some rare circumstances, (DUNWICH LEGACY SPOILERS) a straight-up scenario breaker. (Serves him right. He knows what he did.).

Lastly- and this is just sort of an esoteric novelty for the sake of being thorough- Survivors can take it too.

HanoverFist · 660
We cannot play dilemma card since no cost is defined. Thus, we cannot resolve the dilemma attached into the Stick to the Plan. — elkeinkrad · 468
Wow, I've been out of it. My memory was telling me that SttP's ability was to draw an attached card; I forgot that it was play-as-if-in-hand. So yes! Scratch that idea. — HanoverFist · 660

This is fake Dilemma card, I think. It seems we can choose one of two choices as the meaning of Dilemma. In practice, one choice commonly make no game change state, so we're compelled to resolve one effect due to "must" rule.

Predator or Prey, however, has really high potential. It is the first player card that forces massive elite enemy moving to desired location. Now we can play Extracurricular Activity infinitely. Note that it's not hard to do, since we can easily draw Predator or Prey via Resource or Katja when we want.

elkeinkrad · 468

Background: I played Predator or Prey in a Stella Clarke deck with emphasis on Dilemmas and Katja Eastbank. We played a two-player campaign of Path to Carcosa and Stella joined the campaign after the Asylum. My partner played Joe Diamond.

Overall, we found Predator or Prey to be a difficult card to make good use of. More often than not the card was drawn without the option to stick it to Katja Eastbank and resulted in Hunter enemies moving an additional step or enemies considered evaded and moved-on became quasi-hunters. Due to our team composition, our capabilities to handle enemies was limited compared to a pure fighter-cluever setup. We rarely managed to make good use of either option of the card.

I think the card shines when you have the choice between both options, i.e. some investigators are engaged with enemies that they can't handle and some investigators are trying to get to an enemy. In our case we were often forced to take an option which hindered us more than it benefitted us. I expect Predator or Prey to become more useful with increasing player count, where investigators encounter a more diverse set of challenges at the same time.