Not saying that this is a great card, but it's a fun challenge during deck buildung (and upgrading) and makes every opening hand draw exciting. I had some success with Geared Up and Rex Murphy, but most things I noticed should work with different investigators as well.

1.) Try to find cheap items rather than pricy ones. Costs of 1-3 are the right spot. In fact, my Rex' deck contained no items more expensive than 3. You should be able to pay for ALL your items from your starting hand.

2.) Upgrade your items as soon as possible. Not only will it makes your early game more powerful, upgraded items also have better icons for committing into skill tests. Sometimes they get cheaper too or have abilities.

3.) Mulligan hard for items, even if it hurts.

4.) Because you pack lots of items and often two copies, clever ways of discarding copies (with bad icons) from your hand or from play helps your mid-/late-game where you already have your assets out. Examples are Cornered, Occult Invocation, Blood-Rite, Act of Desperation or even mitigating discard effects like in Divination or Mists of R'lyeh. I paired Geared Up with Forced Learning to get rid of double items during upkeep. Items which go away or go empty like Disc of Itzamna or Scroll of Secrets allows you to refill the slots. Investigators like "Ashcan" Pete and Wendy Adams (Hello In the Thick of It / Versatile) for discarding cards from hand, but also William Yorick and Dexter Drake should find ways to utilize left over items.

5.) Remember that you still can play fast cards or use actions on your items in turn one. That's why I love Eon Chart, because as a item it grants free move and/or investigate actions right at the start. The tabooed Scroll of Secrets (all versions) helps you refilling your hand for the mythos. Fast Events like Working a Hunch or Shortcut (2) also are playable in turn one. Funny: If you happen to find No Stone Unturned (5) in your opening hand, you could play it right at the beginning of the investigation phase (but before your turn begins) to catch Schoffner's Catalogue, a critical weapon or signature item or Backpack (2) for playing it for free with Geared Up.

6.) To get the most out of it economy wise, non-fast items comes to mind. But don't be afraid to include fast items like Magnifying Glass, Ice Pick or Segment of Onyx. You will get the resource reducing anyhow. Also fast items don't slow down your mid-/late-game if you draw them late.

7.) The most difficult part for me to make Geared Up work is to find items with different or no slots. Because if you have a pile of cards which required hand slots you'll end up drawing them as essentially dead items slowing down your game. Relic Hunter is a possibility to play more accessories. If you look closely, there are neat items with no or odd slots: Dream-Enhancing Serum and Talisman of Protection just use arcane slots, if you have no spells to prepare. Slotless mentions are Handcuffs, Mk 1 Grenades, Bandages, Tennessee Sour Mash and Liquid Courage. And then there are the great Schoffner's Catalogue and the footwear items, of course. The true winners in my Rex Murphy deck though were 2 Strange Solution, which I upgraded with the help of Into the Rabbit Hole and Shrewd Analysis. 3 Segment of Onyx (also slotless) were fun, too. You shouldn't play much body slot items, because Backpack is the best option here (if it works with Geared Up, playing the item assets one at a time, which I think it should). Once I were able to play all items from one Backpack, followed by another Backpack.

8.) Be aware that there could be a few locks in scenarios, but also cheesy benefits to consider. In Curse of the Rougarou I started the game at a location were I was not allowed to play any assets at all. If you use the tarot deck from Return to Circle Undone, there are all sorts of silly interactions: One tarot card that forbids to play assets turn one, another steals slots or cards in your opening hand, starting resources or your mulligan. On the other hand, “2 fewer actions” don't hurt you at all, and 2 additional mulligans or 2 additional cards in the opening hand get very powerful.

This card is an instant classic in big money Sefina, but even better in Underworld support big money. (Why would you run that? Because it gets you a smaller deck which gets you closer to Double, Double.) With scroll of secrets, tennessee Sour mash or any number of spells, this is free real estate. And you can even use it during the encounter phase to boost a well-connected. Definitely worth one XP. And the flavor text is fun.

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.