Event

Dilemma. Fortune.

Cost: –. XP: 3.

Survivor

Max 2 Dilemma per round.

Revelation - You must decide (choose one):

- Place 1 doom on the current agenda. Each investigator heals 3 damage and 3 horror.

- Remove 1 doom from the current agenda. Each investigator takes 1 direct damage and 1 direct horror. Remove Fickle Fortune from the game.

Billy Norrby
The Scarlet Keys Investigator Expansion #118.
Fickle Fortune

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

Fickle Fortune is one of those cards that starts off interesting, and only gets better on analysis. At its very basics, Fickle Fortune is a 3 XP card that can either act as a powerful team-wide heal or doom removal - two very useful effects depending on exactly how your team is doing.

If you're choosing the first effect when you draw it, you're adding 1 doom in exchange for up to 6 healing per player. This is incredible action compression in some ways, since it is a rare player card that scales with player count, meaning it only becomes more impressive as you have more investigators. The downside is that it scales this way in exchange for doom, but the second half of Fickle Fortune will help you mitigate that. And, since it adds doom that doesn't advance the agenda, this can end up being free healing at the right time.

If you're choosing the second effect when you draw it, you're effectively removing 1 doom in exchange for some additional time. The damage isn't negligible, but it's also not too severe - it's what I would consider within the buffer of what most investigators try to keep to avoid going down to an unfortunate encounter card. This does remove Fickle Fortune from the game as well, so it shouldn't be picked if the healing portion will be necessary later.

Even before getting Survivor tricks involved, this is a powerful card that lets you choose if your team needs Healing or Doom more at any given moment. Neither of the choices involve costs, and the doom addition/direct damage means both options will always change the game state, so you can always pick the one that will help more or harm less. If you're going all the way and purchasing two copies, the net effect of both copies will still put you to a net of 2 health and 2 sanity per investigators for two cards and no actions - a reasonable exchange rate, even before getting extra value from it.

And, of course, survivor tricks like Resourceful and Shrine of the Moirai will only help to get this back in your hand hand at the exact moment where you can make the most use of it.

Of course, if you really have a lot of XP to spare, you could run this with Soul Sanctification in a 4 player game, draw this early, and grab enough offerings to last for a full scenario. Carolyn Fern and Vincent Lee get to throw a few more gifts around on top.

Ruduen · 978
I don't believe these trigger when being returned via recursion effects. The dilemma ability is a revelation ability, meaning it triggers when being drawn - NOT when being added to hand from one of these effects. — MisterRogers · 20
EDIT - just double-checked the dilemma rules, and they do indeed trigger on recursion — MisterRogers · 20

The longer you look at this card, the better it gets.

Say you're running this as a having option for your bruiser oriented survivor. Ru ln6 0 ok l

A single action 6 heal per investigator is huge and unrivaled by any card. Sure, you have to drop a doom. But I would challenge you and figure out any other way to heal 3 damage/3 horror from your investigator in under 3 actions. The doom also does not auto advance, so you can get lucky and suffer no downsides for this at all if you get a witching hour draw.

Then comes the other use for the card... taking mild damage and horror to push the clock back one. As long as you have another healing ability (like Spirit of Humanity) this is an outrageously overpowered option. Compare it to other cards (like Golden Pocket Watch) which require you to draw, play and pay for it, this only requires a draw, for five less experience.

Overall this is a very powerful card with a great amount of flexibility and very few downsides.

drjones87 · 190
The Gold Pocket Watch is a wildly unreasonable comparison -- Pocket Watch also skips *encounter draws*, which is often even the *primary* benefit of using the card. The correct comparison is Fortune or Fate. For investigators with Survivor-3 access, Fickle Fortune does look a lot stronger -- in exchange for the 1 damage+1 horror each, it has lower resource-cost, more flexibility (the healing option, which is great whenever doom doesn't matter, which is much more frequent than many people expect), and will generally work out to lower xp-cost. Besides access, the main downside of Fickle Fortune vs Fortune or Fate is that Fickle Fortune *must* be used. There's no option to do neither, which can matter in some circumstances, like a fresh Agenda. — anaphysik · 94
Ru ln6 0 ok l???? The fuck? — snacc · 981

This is the only Dilemma with test icons, though you cannot really hold a Dilemma card in your hand. Regular effects already have a lot of combo potentials and yet it is still waiting for brave investigators to take advantage of this secret commit icons.

Written in the Stars is one card I know can make use of this. (In addition to Darrell Simmons, Vincent Lee also could, since this card heals damage.) Maybe something can commit directly from discard pile after using the 3 + 3 heal option? Maybe something like Astronomical Atlas might come in the future for Survivors?

edit: There is no commit icon on this card!

5argon · 9823
It doesn't have test icons. It's a mistake on DB's part. — SSW · 209
Oh yikes I just looked at my physical copy, you are right! — 5argon · 9823

I just came from a 4 player game where we drew this when all investigators were under 3 damage/3 horror. The investigator who drew this was running Soul Sanctification and was at full health. Taking a step back, I can't imagine a 24 action swing being worth 6 charges + some incidental healing. We chose to remove the doom.

This seemed like a pretty chance situation, so I have a genuine question - is anyone taking the first option voluntarily? Depending on player count, is everyone healing 3 and 3 worth losing a turn vs. gaining a turn and taking 1 and 1?

In the ideal scenario with 4 players at full health all running Soul Sanctification still can't be worth 24 actions, right?

TheMathDoc · 15
First, healing 3/3 is sometimes more valuable spending 1 doom. If someone is defeated by damage or horror (or resigns due to its threat), they will lose future action and it might worth 24 actions. Second, first effect does not have the text:"this effect may cause the current agenda to advance". Thus, if we add Fickle Fortune in hand 1 round before advance, doom is no effective (like Arcane initiate). Last, first effect does not have "remove from game", so this card can be drawn second time. If second effect is chosen at the second drawn, this card gives 2 damage/horror healing with net 0 doom. — elkeinkrad · 485
What's with this mentality that somehow 1 doom ALWAYS equals all players total actions? Do y'all always finish the game on the very last round? From my experience, this card is insane, and the healing is a big part of that. I might write my own review but healing 3 damage AND horror from EVERY SINGLE INVESTIGATOR without costing an action is INSANE. It allows you to save so many resources and time not having to worry about cards that damage you. The fact that it can trigger on the witching hour is just icing on the cake. — Nenananas · 251
Both options are good but they depend on the circumstances. If I remember my play experience we would have coosen the doom removal most of the time since it was usually the bigger problem. — Tharzax · 1
@ Nenanas: that's hugely depends on the scenario. In "do as much as you can" scenarios, like "Midnight Masks", you often do. And there are high-stake scenarios, like "Doom of Eztly", where you rather not risk it, because timing can get tight, and the punishment for failure is severe. Also, some scenarios get harder, the more the agenda advances. Train cars get sucked into the vortex, enemies get +1 health, etc So preserving an earlier agenda as long as possible also makes the game easier. But in general, you are right. If you end the game with several turns to go, additional doom does not matter at all. — Susumu · 366
@Susumu I agree, it is very scenario dependent. But OP seemed to imply it's never a good option and I wanted to highlight the strengths. I'd even argue that in some circumstances healing 3 damage and horror is worth losing a turn for; and it's not really losing a turn because you don't draw extra encounters. On the contrary even! That amount of healing power allows all players to ignore several encounter cards and depending on the encounter deck arrangement could win you time. It's one of the few doom cards I think is actually worth placing a doom for without shenanigans. — Nenananas · 251