As a rule, investigators are especially good in the campaigns they arrive in. And since almost all of Ursula’s reviews are from 2+ years ago, it’s worth revisiting her post Return to TFA.

Moving and investigating is great. You often want to move every turn, unless you have “In the Know and active teammates. The forgotten age offers a move that doesn’t seem like a move: the explore action. Multiple scenarios require you to explore over and over, with text like “when you successfully explore, reveal and move to a new location”. And if Jake Williams is around, you also draw a new card. Combine him with fieldwork, and you can move to a location your group no longer needs to be, evade an odious enemy you don’t want to deal with (Starting at a +6), and then come back and investigate again with Pathfinder at a cost of two actions. Just leave a clue or two around.

Over the course of a regular adventure, Ursula is going to be taking more actions, and when you take more actions in your specialty, you complete the scenario faster. You go faster, your see less of the counter deck, which means fewer obstacles.

That’s why Ursula is often pitched as the best solo seeker; she can outrun her problems, adequately deal with the encounter deck, and compress essential moves into essential investigates. (When she gets pathfinder, she can turn one free action into two. The expedition journal can turn a free explore into a move and an investigate.)

Now that Rex doesn’t get to clues for every investigate and Mandy has the least spend paid to make her infinite combos work, Ursula is back at the top. She’s a character who will make a new player feel very effective, especially when you’re busting out TFA.

(Also, if you’re curious about universities in Boston that would’ve existed in the 1910s and offered archaeology degrees, most likely Miss Downs went to Boston University. Go Terriers.)

With the 10/15/2020 taboo giving this card icon to activate instead of , the whole cycle is quite a bit more likely to see play.

Truth be told, this much was obvious. But I want to touch on a particular interaction that the Scroll of Secrets has going for it:

It can bury weaknesses in investigator's decks.

Now I don't necessarily mean "if you happen to hit an investigator's weakness in the bottom three, you get to punt it into their discard pile." No, what I mean is "My sick-nasty Winifred Habbamock deck happened to draw Doomed as her basic weakness, while our Rex Murphy player drew Offer You Cannot Refuse and I hate it."

Enter, Scroll of Secrets. Not ONLY do you have the option to dropkick these weaknesses into the Shadow Realm, you ALSO have the ability to effectively negate them by always choosing to put any player cards from the bottom of the deck to the top. In doing so, you end up 'pushing' any weaknesses not drawn closer to the bottom of the deck and away from the top, regardless of whether or not they're necessarily relevant to the scenario at hand. Because if it means you get another scenario out of your 30XP character who is waiting for The Bell Tolls, it's worth it.

Now I just need to convince our Rex player to pick up the second one so I don't hear that damn bell.

TL;DR interesting corner case in flipping cards from the bottom of your deck to the top to avoid being Doomed.

Getting three cards for an action and zero bucks is extremely powerful. It can protect you from the encounter deck in Dunwich and night of the zealot.

You’ll have to deal with the curse tokens sooner or later, which means spending experience points. Which makes total sense for a card with the keywords of both insight and cursed.

Django‘s review explains many many ways to play Amanda, but doesn’t answer why.

Amanda is the seeker equivalent of Calvin or Preston, with low stats that are accounted for with a special ability. And while Prestons makes a lot of sense (he’s a lazy guy who makes up for it with money), and Calvin’s is a bit more tenuous (looking at rotting remains gives him additional willpower?), Amanda’s is amazing.

For young people, college is a time of unparalleled opportunity. Especially for a woman going to an integrated college in the 1920s, there’s really no archetype to fall back on, how to act, or who to be.

So Amanda gets to choose. If Roland Banks gives her a machine gun, she can lay down brutal attacks. She can join the archery team with a bow and +8 to her agility but if she decides to spend her semester in the Orne library, she can equal the card draw of professor Harvey.

Unlike other adaptable characters, like Jenny Barnes, Amanda can be super good at what she needs to be when she needs to be it. No need to be broke to trigger dark horse, no need to flush cash into physical training or hard knocks. So what’s the downside?

Again, it’s like a college. You might run out of options and have to be someone else for a while. That someone else might be an ancient frog person. It could also be hard to prioritize playing assets, compared to using your high skills to just pass checks.

But as a seeker, Amanda is extremely well-positioned to cycle her deck and get her best cards back. She also has better self-preservation through most, able to raise her brawling talents or simply run away.

In solo, Amanda can hoover up clues, then deal with bosses. In multiplayer, she can carry fightier investigators without needing rescuing. And that’s a Major advantage.

I think this item will make Yorick good for multiplayer as main dmg dealer again. This was exactly what he was missing!

Act of Desperation should be your main interaction. You will use it to gain resources back, get finishing hit and play it back into your play area for free. How does this work? AoE first discard Chainsaw and after the fight is resolved Chainsaw should be already in discard pile to pick it up with Yorick ability back.

Then you can use Resourceful to get your AoE back. In emergency case it should be of course used to get back Chainsaw directly (even if less effective)

Still not enough charges ? Use Emergency Cache to put up to 4 charges into your Chainsaw.

Still not enough charge? Cheeze it out with Versatile + Contraband 3 base +4 from cache doubled by Contraband for 14 supplies thats 42dmg in your disposal by 3 card combo that cost 8 resources. Who can do that? :)

Not forget that Chainsaw has 3 icons for Well Prepared You will test for 9 without any other buffs.

If you just count how much dmg you can put into your deck with all those interactions its getting pretty crazy with how consistent it could be.