Cool art, cool flavor, paired with a cool mechanic dripping with theme. I like Deliverance.

Deliverance most obviously avoids encounter card draws, where the more players you have in a game the better it is. At 1 player, it saves no encounter draws- at 2 it saves 1, 3 saves 2, and 4 players you save 3 encounter card draws.

Avoiding encounter draws isn't it's only strength though:

1. The player playing Deliverance is usually better suited to draw encounter cards (high , solid and some enemy control, staples of the Mystic class). Having them absorb the encounter deck can be better for your weaker investigators, for example.

2. Much like weaknesses, drawing encounter cards earlier is usually better than later. It gets the encounter cards out, leaves less to chance, and gives you a clear two rounds to deal with the fallout of the encounter cards.

With point 1 in mind, this card is clearly intended for an Calvin Wright, but investigators like Agnes Baker, a prepared Gloria Goldberg, Akachi Onyele, Amina Zidane and Father Mateo are great targets too. Again, mystics are really good at the Encounter Deck.

Do I think it's a good card in solo or two player? Not particularly. Three or four players? Yes, Deliverance is a simple and effective method of controlling the encounter deck.

....If you're brave enough to play it.

By the way, this card has a mechanical resonance with the weakness Overzealous that I like. The guy in Overzealous thinks he's the lady in Deliverance, but he actually just drew an encounter and gained surge for no reason.

I am wondering if I upgrade "Distract", could I automatically evade an enemy engaged with another investigator at this location? Or do I have to engage the enemy first? Hope someone could please clarify my question. Thanks in advance.

I didn't see this combo in other review so I wanted to add:
Sefina is the only 'gator that can take one copy of Stargazing, Double, Double, and Drawn to the Flame, to generate a free action and massively increase the odds of activating it and the value of skipping an encounter.
If you were going to play Double, Double absolutely consider using 1 xp for this.

I am usually doing extensive reviews, but here I think the main combo hasn't been mentioned by other reviews yet, so I'll make a short one.

This card should always come with its symbiotic partner: Persistence.

Joking, I can't keep things short, so let me develop.

Phase 1: Play Gift of Nodens and thin your deck.

• Short Supply is a tremendous help to start with a far thinner deck
  • Add Resourceful and Scrounge for Supplies to your deck to make sure you don't discard Gift of Nodens without any options to get it back.
• At a Crossroads and Unrelenting also help a lot, and any other draw card your investigator has access to

Phase 2: Loop and never re-shuffle

Initial State

1. One Persistence in your hand
2. One Persistence and one Resourceful in your discard pile
3. You have Gift of Nodens on the table.

During any

1. Commit Persistence from your discard pile
2. Use the of Gift of Nodens
3. Discard Persistence from your hand
4. Commit Resourceful from your discard pile

Results

1. +2 skill value to your test (if it wasn't )
2. Resourceful is placed at the bottom of your empty deck
3. Persistence is then shuffled with Resourceful, into your deck
4. Resourceful brings back any card to your hand
5. As soon as you draw Persistence again, you are back at the initial state of 1 Persistence in your discard pile and 1 Persistence in your hand.

This is so strong because:

• Once you set up Gift of Nodens, you really don't want to shuffle your discard pile into your deck. This would remove all the targets of both Gift of Nodens and Resourceful.
  • Persistence is the easiest way to add a card to your deck to prevent it from happening.
  • Persistence is also the easiest way to commit a card to a test, to trigger Gift of Nodens's , since it has a and doesn't even require you to have it in your hand.
• Resourceful is the most versatile target for Gift of Nodens, but if you want to use Resourceful to recur a skill card like Contemplative, Long Shot, or Brute Force, you can target it right away.
• If you draw exactly 2 cards per round (1 during the upkeep and one other), you have an unbreakable loop where you can basically use Resourceful or any other skill every single turn until the end of the scenario.

The last question is:

Why not simply using Gift of Nodens on a chosen skill card, place it at the bottom of my empty deck, and draw it during the Upkeep phase, rince, and repeat?

This doesn't work because Gift of Nodens wants you to:

1. Commit one card to a test
2. Discard a card from your hand

So you need an input of 2 cards in your hand every turn to feed Gift of Nodens, which would require you to draw more than the 1 card placed at the bottom of your deck.

This card allows some funny interactions with Eye of Ghatanothoa (2), Alyssa Graham (0) and all versions of Scroll of Secrets (0)/Scroll of Secrets (3)/Scroll of Secrets (3):

There are many, many treacheries with designators like "Limit 1 per investigator." (e.g. Calcification), that stay in your threat area. When you already have one of these, you are safe from getting additional copies.

You can use this to trigger Shrine of the Moirai "for free".

You can also use the shrine in the window of a skill test on a treachery during the mythos phase to prevent another player from drawing the next (already known) treachery or enemy.