This is a good card.

That's my opinion to begin with. It's good. Not exceptional, not great, not an auto-include. And yet, I've seen this card on a list of worst cards in the game, and I've seen people argue it isn't even worth running with Practice Makes Perfect despite the synergy. Naturally, I disagree.

Obviously, the reason people are so down on it is that it compares poorly to Eureka!, to Perception, to several other excellent Seeker skills, and even to Unexpected Courage. The problem is, while Plan of Action is good, those are great, excellent, or auto-includes. It can be a Perception, with one less icon, with a limited window to be committed. It can be an Unexpected Courage, but not in the mythos phase, and not if you want to test certain skills first or last. Eureka is almost a wild icon, and does better than draw you a card.

However, while you could simply see it as a worse Perception, Eureka, or Unexpected Courage - something I generally agree with - it is important to note that it is all those things simultaneously. If you need a worse Unexpected Courage, it's there. If you need a worse Perception, it's there. Is that versatility worth a deck slot? Maybe. Is the versatility worth anything if you're only planning to use it as a deck-filling cantrip? I think so.

Talking theoretically, we can imagine a practiced skill with a single that draws you a card if you succeed. This card would be objectively a worse Perception, and yet I think it would still see some play in a number of Seeker decks. I would certainly run it on occasion. Expand this out to be a icon instead, and it this theoretical card would be a much more likely include. It would still mostly get thrown onto investigates to be a +1 in most of the decks it ended up in, but it would be a skill that competed with Eureka - a worse draw effect, but its ability to be committed to , and its traits would see it out. And there's no reason you couldn't run both. This theoretical card is still not objectively better than Plan of Action. It does have less versatility, and it isn't hard to engineer a second action investigate in Seeker. Any deck that would run this theoretical card - at least at level 0 - has a reason to consider Plan of Action. Any deck that wants to go skill and draw heavy for whatever reason should at least consider it.

And if you need to fill a 45 card deck with as many cards that replace themselves as possible, you can do a lot worse.

Amazing card for investigators with weakness in hand, such as Agnes or anyone with dark pact 200characters200characters200characters200characters 200characters200characters200characters200characters 200characters200characters200characters200characters

Fixing Decks with Exile cards is something I rather like doing, the few times it comes up it feels like cheating the system, spending 1xp to swap in a level 0 card you forgot sucks, but spending 1xp on flare and getting the swap for free is a good time all round.

Burn after reading removes two cards from your deck for 1xp and gives you testless clue gathering, it also allows something more interesting, the removal of high level cards, i don't think I have ever even considered swapping an XP card out for another one, I generally just ride it out even if the card seems to be close to worthless, but now you get to remove an XP card in your deck in exchange for the most powerful effect in the game, doom removal.

I think in a Deja Vu deck this card in a no brainer for easy clues and effectively adaptable (more than what Deja Vu already allows), if you have two Deja Vu's you could even run two of these and use them every game for 2 extra rounds and free clues, which may be worth the steep asking price. (12xp for the combo and another 4xp forany two level 2 cards)

As someone who adores gold pocket watch at its extreme cost I see myself having a lot of weird experimental fun with this.

I figured most people know the optimal policy for this card by now, but getting it into a review of the card itself will help out newer people.

TL;DR:If you are using this to run only two weapons and benefit consistently from high XP weapons, you should mulligain discarding anything that is not a weapon if you didn't open with one, and then on your first turn spend all your actions drawing, and then your second turn spending two drawing and then playing this card.

Most modern guardians run 2 weapons (maybe 3 if a signature is a weapon) and two of this early, and then sometimes going down to one of this on Stick to the plan because, if you use it correctly, you will have a 90% chance of getting one of your two weapons in the first two turns using this card.

If you 'hard mulligan' (discarding literally any card that isn't your weapon if you didn't open with a weapon) you have a 55% chance to find one of the two copies of your weapon in your deck. If you don't find it in that pool, and then go for it with prepared for the worst, you have a 55% chance to find one of the copies in the top 9 cards. This means that you have an 80% chance to find the weapon, but that means 1-2 games a scenario you will fail to have your weapons in the first two turns of the game, which can get... rough, especially because if this card misses you didn't thin your deck and now will have a hellish time finding your guns.

But if you instead take your first turn entirely drawing cards, and then on your second turn draw 2 cards and play this, your odds increase, and Prepared for the worst plus the draws will find your weapon 79% of the time. Combined with the hard mulligain and you will be starting with your weapon, which means you find those guns 91% of the time. If you really slow-roll and play this turn 3 (perhaps playing an ally on your 6th action, but still getting your upkeep draw) you will nab it 95% of the time, meaning you will proably never fail to get your gun by turn 3 in any campaign, though this may lean on your flex-evader in a 4 man group.

Compare to just trying to draw into your weapon manually using the same policy. On your mulligan you got the same odds, but if you spend an entire two turns drawing you will only find a copy of your guns around 40% of the time, meaning in total you have about a 20% chance to brick out on the first two turns. So you are probably going to fail to find your weapon once, maybe twice in your campaign before turn 3.

What is worse is that the realities where you brick your mulligan can be far worse. You will fail your mulligain about 50% of the time. If you do, you still find it by the end of turn 2 50% of the time, but you have a 20% chance to take 5 turns to find your gun, meaning that a little under once a campaign you will be unarmed for half a scenario, if you can even afford to spend 4 turns doing nothing but drawing! Once you need to start doing a bad Nathaniel Cho impression your rate of finding your weapon becomes much worse and it becomes realistic you will never see a copy in a game if you need to give up by the end of turn 2.

And if you fire this off turn 1, you have a 60% chance of bricking there, and if that happens you enter the 'draw and pray' statistical reality and suddenly you start risking trauma once or twice in your campaign because your gun never shows up. So really, take it slow and don't Hail Mary Prepared For the Worst turn 1 hoping your weapons are in the top third of your deck, get it to the point where they only need to be in the top half and this card will make you a much happier camper.

This card is a huge difference maker in 2 weapon decks if used right, it is probably Guardian's most meta-defining card to the point it makes it really hard for the designers to make any sort of 'mid-grade' or 'backup' weapon in Guardian and heavily warps the card pool, but if you use it wrong it is going to make you miserable compared to running 4 weapons.

Given the arrival of crafty there is something neat about the humble lantern that allows it to shine above all other investigate tools.

Lantern is the only tool which investigates your location without having uses or exhausting, this means that along with crafty you always have a reliable, repeatable source of tool based investigate actions that also has the benefit of reducing the difficulty by 1. I tried a crafty Bob Jenkins with Scavenging and boy howdy, does having a never ending supply of free key rings, flash lights and lock picks while still be able to boost yourself by an effective 3/5 in an investigate (if you have two copies of crafty) make a pretty reliable investigator.

So lets all give it up for the humble lantern, which can be a zero cost, bonus action to play asset that even allows you to deal with the occasional annoying odd health enemy.