• Q: There are some basic weaknesses that award XP to the player. According to the order of deck creation, you randomize your basic weakness after deck construction. Is the intention that a player cannot spend this XP until after the first scenario? Or does gaining such a weakness (ie Offer You Cannot Refuse) create an opportunity to upgrade before the first setup? A: If a weakness you added to your starting deck grants you XP, you can spend that XP right away if you wish.

While this weakness may seem relatively benign, as others have mentioned - 2xp and 0 resources at the start - my recent playthrough as a clue-ver Mystic was completely derailed by this card. It's minimizing to say that you just start with 0 resources - if that was how this card worked it would be a non-issue. The issue is that you can never drop below the required resources if there is a card draw coming. In the second scenario, I once (once!) dropped below 5 resources (to 4) and this was the very next card I drew. Upkeep is "draw a card, gain a resource", so you can't count on the upkeep resource to help. You have to guard against treacheries that lose resources, locations that need resources, etc. Once the second version is in your deck, it's even worse as you don't have enough resources in turn one to avoid an unlucky first upkeep (or to play any "draw" events/items), without a hard mulligan for resource generators. God forbid you get the third one.

As a Mystic, I could not get my set up in place for at least 3 rounds due to needing to hoard resources and play resource generators rather than assets, which essentially locked my player down. All of my early xp had to go to fast (and free!) resource generation instead of upgrading spells, which dramatically changed my build.

As weaknesses go, I feel this is one of the harder hitting, mainly because it requires you to both change your playstyle and change your deck to manage it. Most basic weaknesses slow you down, but few actually require you to build around them like this one does. Best recommendation to manage this one is to get the resources in hand, then lean into card draw effects until it's gone. And if you are a high cost build (like most Mystics), good luck to you.

A pretty cool random weakness.

The safe way to read this is "Gain 2 experience. At the start of each scenario, you have no resources."

You basically never want to have less than 5 resources in your pool unless this weakness is in your discard and you're far away from recycling. Play with that handicap and this weakness is actually fairly benign and can be a boon.

But buyer beware. Each time you fail to have the desired number of resources when your patron comes calling, it gets even harder to meet the offer the next time. You basically get three failures over the life of your investigator, and then your goose is cooked.

A neat thematic weakness. Do take note: you cannot choose to put this weakness in your deck, but since Arkham is heavily open to table rules I imagine some folks will still sneak it in.

Hello, I just have a couple of basic questions:

Rules book: Effects [...]

• Once initiated, players must resolve as much of each aspect of the effect as they are able, unless the effect uses the word "may."
• When a non-targeting effect attempts to interact with a number of entities (such as "draw 3 cards" or "search the top 5 cards of your deck") that exceeds the number of entities that currently exist in the specified game area, the effect interacts with as many entities as possible.

--> Does it means here, that if you loose less than 5 ressources the "If you cannot" effect triggers ?

--> Does Deny Existence still triggers the "If you cannot" effect triggers ? (I cannot imagine that it doesn't trigger)

Cheers,

I have a question about this basic weakness.

Right now the rules say the random basic weaknesses are added at the end of the deckbuilding process. Does that mean that the 2 experience you get from becoming the bearer of this weakness can't be used until the end of the first scenario? With the rules as written, that seems to be the case, but I wonder if that was the intention.

I haven't played with this weakness yet, but it seems debilitating if your name isn't Preston Fairmont. I think most investigators would prefer Paranoia. These campaign weaknesses that evolve to create disastrous consequences just seem mean in general. Having 2 experience here is at least nice little bit of compensation - if you could use the experience before the first scenario, it would seem more like the game was saying "here's a challenging weakness, take some experience to see if you can fight it off." However, since it seems like the experience comes after the first scenario, it feels instead more like the game is saying "this weakness is ultimately going to get you so you might as well live fast, here's some experience to see how far you can level up before you go."