This card came out in the same pack as Bob Jenkins, and it’s a card about selling something, so obviously Bob should take it, right?

Surprisingly not! While it’s a good way to retain money in the party, you can already split the cost of items, and you get a free action to do so every turn. We slotted this in a four player campaign and it mostly stuck in Bob’s hand, especially when his signature came out.

But other rogues, especially ones who pack double assets for reliability but only slot one… this is upside. Winnifred can sell off her spare lockpick or Mauser to a seeker or guardian. Sefina can give a spare crystallizer to Nathaniel… or if there’s enough money around, double double and sell liquid courage too.

Smart use is giving people things they can’t normally play with (like guns to Preston and Lily). Genius use is using this with your survivor to give them a card that cost just as much money as they have, so they can trigger Dark Horse and you get a nice round number for well-connected. Plus, you draw a card for being such an upstanding player.

Fun fact: the quote for this card isn’t from game lore. It actually came from playtesting.

As dezzmont said, this weapon could be on the anti-taboo list someday, hopefully.

I think the intent of the Game Designers was to force Lily Chen to invest in multiple stats over the course of the campaign, first with Spectral Razor, Brand of Cthugha and of course take advantage of your Spells used to boost the Dragon Pole. Then transition to that helps for every attack, and end the campaign with for all the upgraded cards.

Butterfly Swords, Defensive Stance, Sweeping Kick, Dodge, Fang of Tyr'thrha, Combat Training are all focussed and this all goes to "Sounds good but I will most likely never use it" area as there is literally no reason to use any of these when the Cyclopean Hammer is better on every aspect and doesn't require you to transition from to .

So I was thinking of leaving a review about how I wish to make this weapon better, while still fair.

The Combat bonus:

When comparing to the Cyclopean Hammer, the Flamethrower, the Lightning Gun, Shotgun, the combat bonus of +2 on a Hand x2 lvl 5 card seems a bit minimal for a basic attack.

The exception is the Holy Spear but it comes in a deck that is suppose to pull a lot of to compensate for the low bonus.

Suggested Fix:

It would make sense to have "Add your " This would make it more balanced maybe in that sense, especially as only Lily Chen, Sister Mary and Mark Harrigan have 3 .

Synergy with Balance of the Body:

I like the idea that lvl 5 weapons are "tailored" for the they are released with, like the Holy Spear and Sister Mary and here, the lacks of synergy with Lily is striking.

Suggested Fix:

So how to make these Butterfly Swords more adapted to Lily Chen? A lead could be the Balance of the Body that allows you to make 3 different attacks, meaning use 3 different ": Fight." triggers.

If the swords would for example have the non-exhaust attack as a different trigger than the exhaust one that deals 1 more damage, that would allow us to use the 2 actions of the Discipline activation only with the Butterfly Swords, leaving us only with the 3rd attack to fill in our deck, with Sweeping Kick for example, that would find a good use here (when I would not add it to my deck otherwise), or Spectral Razor that I probably started with.

Let me know in the comments your suggested fix and I'll try to keep this updated!

Last little comment for anyone wondering: you can exhaust the Butterfly Swords on the 1st attack and keep using the normal attack for the following attacks. The only restriction is that you cannot exhaust them twice (unless you use Galvanize).

I love this spell, and I think it outclasses most other high level combat spells for general use.

For Mystics, one less XP than either Shrivelling (5) or Azure Flame (5), gets you three less total damage and one less +skill value. You also get a downside that is both less likely to trigger on its own and is completely mitigateable by spending other actions first.

But the real upside here is choosing how much of that 9 damage to spend on every attack. No more wasting a three damage charge on an enemy with only one or two health. Charges are also only spent when you succeed, so bad luck with the chaos bag doesn't waste charges. You will get the full nine damage out of this every time.

Nearly every other mystic combat spell demands you combine it with some sort of chaos bag manipulation to get the best results, either to find or avoid specific tokens. Brand of Cthugha works at full effectiveness straight out of the box.

The one downside is that Brand of Cthugha does not get as much benefit out of charge reloading cards as its higher level peers. Each charge is only worth one damage, so you wouldn't waste time reloading it with a Recharge or Book of Shadows. This is the ultimate Mystic sidearm, not a god slayer, so plan accordingly.

But let's not forget that this card is dual class, too! Most Guardians aren't doing much with their arcane slots, so Brand of Cthugha slots in nicely as a sidearm that doesn't take up a hand slot. This works well for any Guardian who would rather not dedicate their body slot to a Bandolier to hold a sidearm. Tommy Muldoon and his Leather Coat come to mind, along with anyone running Flamethrower looking to save supplies while picking off runts.

I am finishing up playing a campaign with this guy, I've never played him before and I kinded of questioned the viability of him as the main monster slayer, I never really experience playing survivors until recently and seeing the type of cards he takes,I was curious on how he performs. I guess I am extremely glad I decided to play him with a full collection. Especially with cards from the innmouth conspiracy.

Survivors, hands down, are the best when it comes to bless tech, and their ability to laugh at the discard pile makes this staggering. Ancient Covenant paired with favor of the sun is a power couple. Keep faith is excellent at generating the needed bless token to fuel your bless tech. This I knew from testing with other survivors.

My basic weakness I got for him was paranoia. A pretty bad weakness for somebody who wants to play play,play. I thought I was gonna have a lot of trouble paying for the items that he needed to be the monster masher, and I probably would have if his ability didn't allow him to play AN asset from his discard, or he didn't have guardian access.

Enter Rite of Sanctification.

I can fill the bag up with tons of bless token, so filling the 5 count is easy, the -2 is pretty bonkers, since it doesn't care what card your playing for. Keep faith? Free. Key of ys? 1 buck. Hunting rifle? 1 buck. Favor of the sun? Free. It also discards itself, so I can kill a target, and bring it back, ready for more discounts. The same is with Favor of the sun, play it back for more guarantees. There wasn't a monster I couldn't kill, a card I couldn't play. I had 6 resources, pulled paranoia during upkeep, and could still play weapons and event cards. It's silly, and strong.

If you haven't tried a bless yorick build, try it. It's loads of fun!

A new niche to the Cat could be Butterfly Swords Lily Chen.

Why her?

The reason is rather simple: the Swords make pull 2 tokens per attack and therefore this is that many more chances to pull a Symbol token that often results in very sad outcomes especially in Hard/Expert.

The cat mitigates this risk.

To make the best out of it, attach 2 Trusted to the cat, if you're really pushy you can get The Star • XVII and let the cat do his job. Then with all these tokens, you will eventually find the that you probably wouldn't have used as most of the time your Disciplines are Unbroken.