Favor of the Sun

This card requires:

  • 3 tokens generated (although can be used with less, for less payout)
  • 2 resources

In return it gives:

Not a huge cost but a fairly mediocre pay off for the investment. For similar affect you could just run Unexpected Courage without the need for the setup.

However, alongside Ancient Covenant this card becomes a powerhouse.

This mini combo is available for just 4xp and is currently available to all Survivors , Agnes Baker, Father Mateo, Tommy Muldoon, Preston Fairmont and Minh Thi Phan.

With Ancient Covenant instead of 3 x Unexpected Courage you get 3 x guaranteed +2 tests.

This is a hugely powerful affect, +2 should usually translate into an auto success for most attempted skill tests. However, even if +2 isn't enough you'll know exactly how much you'll need to boost/commit.

It's also immensely flexible. You can pick the exact tests you want to succeed and the test doesn't even have to be on your turn:

  • Guarantee success against dangerous and difficult tests in the mythos phase
  • Guarantee success on an important investigate/fight/evade
  • Guarantee avoiding a disastrous cultist, skull or elder thing token in the last turns of the scenario
  • Guarantee a big combo/commitment play (less relevant in Survivor but huge for the Surivor secondaries Minh Thi Phan or Preston Fairmont)

For more power combine with Unrelenting (1) to seal the good tokens to get the draw 2 card effect knowing you're going to pass.

The only real limit is the exhaust stipulation so you'll have to pace out your successes over several turns.

Survivor has great access to easy generation with:

and also the neutral:

Summary:

  • Underwhelming card in isolation
  • Alongside Ancient Covenant and even a modicum of generation this card is a monster in almost any deck and is worthy of a taboo

P.S. I've now play tested this in Preston Fairmont and it's as degenerate as I expected it to be. Comboed with the success / over succeed mechanics in Rogue this effect is far too powerful. While occasionally being able to cheat the bag is fun, being able to reliably do it once every turn takes away a lot of what makes Arkham the experience it is (the chance of drawing the ).

Rogue is the most able to abuse this with big all in play, see my Preston - The Favoured Sun Over Succeeds deck for an example of what's possible.

However, it's way overtuned in any class and needs to be tabooed. I would suggest that Ancient Covenant needs to be only be usable on natural chaos bag draws.

bobblenator · 470
It's fast, no action required. — SSW · 216
yorick can replay this card after using this card to pass a test to guarantee playing this card to use it pass a test to guarantee playing.... — Zerogrim · 295
@SSW thank you, corrected — bobblenator · 470
Preston Fairmont isn’t on your list, but I’ve found him to be able to make pretty good use of the “Favor of the Sun/Ancient Covenant” combo. Keep Faith is also fast, so I like to wait until I have both Favor of the Sun and Keep Faith in my hand, then play both using Preston’s inheritance since they’re both fast. As a 3 card combo, it takes some effort. However, being able to guarantee a success is pretty nice, and Preston can get the cards out quickly. — ArkhamInvestigator · 305
@ArkhamInvestigator thanks for the heads up, I completely missed Preston. Or maybe I blocked the thought because the combo potential in Rogue when you've got regular guaranteed successes seems absolutely busted! — bobblenator · 470
The card is extra monster when paired with taboo'd .35 Winchester or with Shotgun and Ancient Covenant. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
@Death by Chocolate Nice suggestion! Very powerful with Tommy, it turns the 0xp .35 Winchester into a much higher XP weapon. For Shotgun even wth the guaranteed +2 it's still hard to see Shotgun outperforming Lightning Gun or Flamethrower as it still suffers from limited ammo, but certainly brings it up to being a competitive option. — bobblenator · 470
@bobblenator Shotgun is very much a build-around weapon, and between Venturers, Extra Ammunition, and 1x Custom Ammunition, I usually end the scenario with TOO much ammo on the Shotgun even though I used it on cultists several times just because. If you’re using 4-5xp weapons, the reload cards are all high value, and once you start reloading, the extra 1-2 ammo on other weapons disappears unless you are using Rogue reloads (Swift Reload and Contraband) that synergize with higher starting ammo. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
Favor of the sun, this ancient covenant and sacred covenant has worked wonders so far for Silas and Mary in their endeavours to thwart the Innsmouth Conspiracy!!! — gazzagames · 7
William Yorick, Favor of the Sun, Sacred Covenant, .35 Winchester. The guaranteed bless token lets you dish out reliable 3-damage attacks. Often the +2 combat from the bless token is unnecessary, so you can put it right back in the bag with Sacred Covenant. Then recur FotS with WY’s ability. I also recur Venturer to refill my ammo and Rite of Sanctification to enable Dark Horse. Unstoppable. — Runic · 1
The shotgun is easy to refill for Tommy. Just take two Ventures into your deck and "kill" them with Spirit of Humanity when their ammunation run low for a full refund on the Venturer.s — Chiungalla · 2
I don't think it needs to be tabooed because it can't be recurred easily. It's a pact (Mystic recursion is focused on spells and rituals), not a Survivor card nor level zero nor an item (so most Survivor tech can't touch it). The only card that can recur it is Shrine of the Moirai which is a bit clunky to use. I think the designers are being very careful not to let the Favors become easily recursible since this card would definitely become degenerate if, say, it were an item you could recur constantly. — MindControlMouse · 45
Crystal Pendulum

Holy Rosary is a true classic, easily one of the best Mystic cards in the Core Set and still a top performer many years later. So when Crystal Pendulum came out, I was initially a bit resistant to switching over to this. Sure, for Jacqueline Fine with her built-in token manipulation and 9 Sanity, the Pendulum seemed like a slam dunk. But elsewhere, was it really worth giving up the concrete benefit of 2 Sanity soak for unreliable card draw? Most of my Mystics don't run a lot of token manipulation at lower XP levels. And this is the same class that must start every single campaign with 2 mental trauma (it's in the rulebook.)

But the more I weigh the Rosary and the Pendulum, the more I've found myself swinging in the latter direction, if you know what I mean. Practically speaking, even without any support, the Pendulum represents something in the neighborhood of 25-30% of a card every round. And the thing is... that's good! That does add up over time. I think it's at the least highly competitive with 2 Sanity. And that's just the floor for the Pendulum. Factor in the random token manipulation effects you may have wanted to run anyway (Diana likes her Dark Prophecies, for instance), and the Pendulum does better.

Moreover, the Pendulum tends to scale really well into the late campaign. Most Mystics want to pick up the really powerful token manipulation effects like Grotesque Statue and Seal of the Elder Sign because, well, those are great cards. And they certainly lead to more draws from the Pendulum. And in the mid-to-late campaign, you'll miss the 2 Sanity from the Rosary a lot less, because you'll have options like Deny Existence V, soak-heavy Charisma builds, etc.

So I think it's very close between the Rosary and Pendulum in the early campaign, and then as the campaign progresses, the Pendulum tends to get better and better. So I've found myself tilting that way recently, and I've been happy with the results.

A final note. The Pendulum is a fiddly card and does have the potential to seriously slow down the game in multiplayer. If you're going to run this, I recommend memorizing the contents of the chaos bag (which is helpful for good gameplay in any case), so you can be quick in making your predictions. Be mindful of your pace of play here. No amount of extra draw is worth dragging the game to a halt!

CaiusDrewart · 3183
I have not played this card outside of Jaqueline yet. But I would probably use it with "Scrying Mirror". Have you tried this combo? I would say, the horror you can take from mid- to late campaign due to DE (5) and all also scale with the horror you have to take, when upgrading Shrivelling (3) to (5). Unless, if you are Akachi, who has her Shriv-DE on a stick with "Wish Eater", or Diana, who rather takes "Azur Flame". That let me apreciate the horror soak of the Rosary even then. But I sure should give the Pendulum more of a try! — Susumu · 381
If you play it early without support, it's on average 2 extra cards, which IMO is a wash to 2 Sanity. But you play it late though, the value drops drastically compared to the Rosary. And in the late game playing Shriv 5 or Clairvoyance 5, I'd definitely still appreciate the additional buffer from Rosary. — suika · 9505
It works better if you're less dependent on horror soak, for example if you're playing Azure Flame instead of Shriveling, as you might choose to do on a Diana build anyway given her unimpressive sanity to begin with. — Achire · 563
Worth remembering that 2 Sanity might matter more if you’re taking two copies of Arcane Research, which almost every Mystic does. Personally I dont like the pendulum outside of a token focused build where you can consistently predict the outcome. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
Yes, I'm not trying to say the Pendulum has completely obsoleted the Rosary. I don't think that's the case, I think it's pretty close between them and it's certainly more than valid to take the Rosary. But I did want to make the point that I think the Pendulum is quite playable even you don't really build around it. You can still expect to draw multiple cards on average which is very good. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
And one more little point I want to add is that the Pendulum has really impressed me in multiplayer because of how it works on any skill test at your location. If you have a Survivor teammate who's failing to win, or who is spamming Eucatastrophe, or a Rogue teammate who's playing Three Aces, and so on, all this kind of stuff works really well with the Pendulum. I've been really surprised by how often my Pendulum users have picked up free cards with things like this. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
The Pendulum can also be quite Expert-friendly because the negative slant of the Expert bag, combined with the rule that limits your test result to a minimum value of 0. This means that the Pendulum odds may be heavily weighted in your favor. Like, say Daisy is at your location and draws On Wings of Darkness on Expert. Well, assuming she doesn't bother trying to boost and pass this test, which she generally won't as it would usually be a huge waste of resources, then there's something like a 3 in 4 chance she's going to get a modified result of 0 and fail by exactly 4. (And what could be more fun than auguring the failure of your friends for profit?) — CaiusDrewart · 3183
Yeah, it sounds like it's a lot stronger in multiplayer harder difficulties. On lower player counts I think I'll still swing more the way of Rosary, but I'll definitely be giving the Pendulum a shot next time in 4p. — suika · 9505
If you or a friend is running ancient covenant/favor of the sun, that's 3 guaranteed cards from this — NarkasisBroon · 11
@NarkasisBroon that reads almost like the tag of a prescription drug commercial. "If you or a friend is running ancient covenant/favor of the sun, ask your doctor about Crystal Pendulum" — StyxTBeuford · 13049
Sealed Passage

As far as I know, this is the best place to identify your Ancient Stone! How you pass a difficulty 12 intellect test on scenario 2 (which doesn't even have any clues on it, so you're truly just swinging for the fences) is left as an exercise for the reader.

KasaiAisu · 41
Favor of the sun is a start. — MrGoldbee · 1485
what is the Key of Eztli? — BoomEzreal · 8
Th Key of Eztli can be obtained if you have a canteen and you use it in a specific location of Heart of the Elders B and during the resolution of an Agenda of The Depth of Yoth. — Killbray · 12357
@Killbray so the ability on this card is only relevant in Turn Back Time, and does nothing in Doom of Eztli, correct? — curtek · 1
Déjà Vu

I would caution outright buying this on Yorick (unless you are using a boring Flare deck). At first this appears to be a great card for William as it makes Leather Coat(1) and Cherished Keepsake(1) seem like a no-brainer as the fear of them being used up and exiled goes away with Déjà Vu. However you're less likely to actually burn through an entire upgraded Coat(1) or Keepsake(1) and need Déjà Vu on Yorick than you think. You should totally buy the Coat(1)/Keepsake(1) upgrades, those cards are amazing, but hold off on Déjà Vu on Yorick unless needed. Let me explain:

If you have a basic 12xp drawing/cycling engine on Yorick with Emergency Cache(2) and Lucky(2), and Resourceful (to pull back Lucky) and use Cornered (2) to let you commit any item from hand into discard pile, then you will probably see two of either the 0xp Coat or Keepsake. At this point I would upgrade to Coat(1)/Keepsake(1). If you play smart asigning damage to your assets (like Guard Dog and Peter), you can easily cycle between each copy of your Keepsake/Coat by killing monsters and installing the other already discarded copy of Keepsake/Coat from your discard using Yorick's fast character ability. You would be surprised how long you can keep this loop going on Yorick. Sure, you are not getting the entire 4 soak out of the Coat(1)/Keepsake(1) upgrades doing this, but 3/4 aint bad for a 0 cost install item. You shouldn't need to soak more than 3points before you kill a monster anyway (unless it is an emergency).


So when should you buy Déjà Vu on Yorick?

Well, Déjà Vu can be bought after a scenario in which you just exiled cards (to free-buy them back), so you should only really buy Déjà Vu AFTER you exile cards. So Déjà Vu becomes a backup plan. However I've found on Yorick you don't actually get around to exiling cards that often (unless you have a Flare deck - then you'll need Déjà Vu!). If you are mid campaign and just exiled 2 soak cards, re-buying those exiles is still cheaper than outright buying Déjà Vu. For all you know the next 2 scenarios you might not exile any cards, so your total rebuy of exiled soak cards on Yorick can often work out cheaper than 5xp to buy Déjà Vu. Also exile cards can be sort of cheap gap filler cards to get through particular tricky scenarios - you may revert to the 0xp versions even, as 2 soak cards often do enough most of the time for Yorick anyway!

Things to ponder!

Antiundead · 31
Was going to counter with some cool exile card for yorick but turns out all the super powered stuff I thought exiles just doesn't, though test of will (1) looks like an obvious include if you did get the package anyway. — Zerogrim · 295
Hmm I personally would not get a test of will on Yorick, his decks already feel very competitive for card slots with loads of assets. I would often go for Cornered (2) and just outright discard assets in hand cards in hand to beat a test. I feel like denying treacheries isn't a job for Yorick. Plus the upside of discarding cards with Cornered is you can then free play them when you trigger your ability. — Antiundead · 31
Lucky Cigarette Case

I'm not exactly breaking any ground by saying Lucky Cigarette Case III is good. But I did want to take a little bit of time to write about what has proven to be a rather dominant card. I've noticed that at my table just about every Rogue deck takes this card. And people are choosing to play Rogues just because of this card. It's that good.

Lucky Cigarette Case III does not need a lot of support to be awesome. You don't need to be a dedicated "oversucceed deck" to make this card great. Passing skill tests by 1 or more is something most investigators will routinely do almost every round. This will draw a lot of cards, with the upside of a fair amount of selection, for just about anyone. Of course, if you are playing oversucceed enablers, like Lockpicks (and why not? These are some of the best Rogue cards in any case), all the better. You can find some extra synergy for the Lucky Cigarette Case here and there among the Rogue class (Trish with her Myriad cards, Winifred with her natural emphasis on oversucceeding, Parallel Skids with his free skill test every turn), but really, this card is good for just about everybody. A Preston deck aiming to avoid the chaos bag probably doesn't want this, but in my opinion that's really about it.

A particularly common setup is to use Relic Hunter to get two Lucky Cigarette Case IIIs in play. It's a truism in card games that a great strength of card draw is that it draws you into yet more card draw, and so on. (This is probably even more true in Arkham than other comparable games because here the penalty for drawing through your whole deck is so minor.) So, you'll find that once you have two Lucky Cigarette Case IIIs in your deck, you're much more likely to get one into play early, and once that's in play, you can use to to quickly dig out the second. Then you'll just fly through your deck.

What can you do with all this card draw and selection? Well, whatever you want, really. The sky is the limit. I'll say that there's particular synergy here with the Myriad cards like Three Aces, Astounding Revelation, Segment of Onyx, and so on. Also, once you have a ton of draw, be on the lookout for cards that are useful but cheap in resources and actions. Cards like Shortcut or Quick Thinking, where the primary cost is the card itself, look quite appealing when you draw tons of cards every turn. Also consider ways to efficiently turn a surplus of cards into money--stuff like Cryptic Writings and Easy Mark. I'll also mention Dream-Enhancing Serum. Obviously, when you have tons of selection from a couple Lucky Cigarette Cases, it's not going to be hard to get yet another card out of the Serum every turn. And when you have that much draw, the extra hand size will matter.

Also, don't be afraid to intentionally draw weaknesses with this card. Some investigators, like Trish, have weaknesses that are very mild if drawn in just the right situation. So if the opportunity arises, it can be a nice play to cheaply dispose of a weakness like that.

So, a really great card, almost regardless of what your deck is doing. In fact, as far as my group is concerned, the other Rogue accessories might as well not exist. Is that a healthy balance? Perhaps not. But it's nice to have a card that makes people want to play Rogues, and this certainly qualifies.

CaiusDrewart · 3183
Tony digs the skull. — MrGoldbee · 1485
It's pretty funny how seeker-centric that synergy section looks. — suika · 9505
... for a Rogue (3) card which has all of one Rogue that can effectively make use of those seeker cards :) — suika · 9505
:) — CaiusDrewart · 3183
I did have another section on there about Sefina using LCC to find Double Double without getting owned by Stars of Hyades. But I cut it because the review was getting long. You're right that this review probably does read a little Trishy. LCC is for everyone, after all! — CaiusDrewart · 3183
I understand the rave, but I do like the Crystalizer a lot, too. Of course, it is only good in an event-centric deck, while LCC needs no support to be great. The upgraded Skull is pretty much an Akachi card for me. She will feed it plentyful with her ability, Arcane Initiate and enemies, then likely find the one-off Empty Vessel with it, which is als a great card for her. She needs (prefeably double) Relic Hunter for this, and to much XP for a Dunwich run. But in later campaigns, I would always go for that build again. — Susumu · 381
I would still likely at least pay the 9 XP for 2 Skulls and 1 Relic Hunter in a Dunwich-Akachi. It is still a very strong economy card in her without the Vessel. — Susumu · 381
LCG(3) is a shoe-in for the next taboo I’m sure, and deserved. I imagine it’ll get bumped to 5xp and honestly it’s probably a good thing since it depresses the xp cost of decks anyway — Difrakt · 1319
@susumu: To be honest, I've been really unhappy with the Crystallizer when I've tried it. But I think I must be doing something wrong because other people speak highly of this card. Where have you liked it? — CaiusDrewart · 3183
It was in my solo standard difficulty Carcosa run with Sefina. I had (excluding TPW) 23 events in my level 0 deck and 21 in the final one. I also had zero skills, all along, which is quite uncommon for my builds, but works fine with the Crystallizer. To be honest, LCC might even have been subpar in this deck, because I did not that much oversuceeding. Sure, I had Lockpicks, but with Sef's base skill of 2+4 she is far from guaranteeing an oversuccess without support. She is mediocre in that regard compared to other rogues, that have a base value of 7 or 8. But I was fine of breaking locks. I still got enough clues out of it, paired with events like "Read the Signs" and "Breaking and Entering" and even got most VP locations cleared. If I wasn't playing solo, I would have included "Rite of Seaking" (2) for more clues and likely still be fine with the clues Lockpicks were netting me, so even then I likely wouldn't build more on oversuccess. Not every event has to be double icons to be good for the CoD. For example, "Easy Mark" was a must in this deck. I soon got Chuck, so even one copy could be frequently played fast on turns, I did not need his ability for Backstab or Sneak Attack or other more urgent tasks. Always getting an extra (relevant for Sefina) icon out of it was real candy. Other events, like "Sneak By" I more had for the reason, that they were usefull for playing the event, but great for the icons you get afterwards. — Susumu · 381
Ive user Crystallizer with Tony and it’s stellar there. I also think it might genuinely be best for Trish as you can rely on Seeker draw anyway. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
I think there's a really interesting discussion about the Crystallizer to be had here. I'd say that I must be underrating it or misplaying it a bit, if good players such as yourself and susumu have liked it. I'd just say that in my experience, I think getting to commit an event you've played is so much weaker than just drawing a card. To the extent that I would actually prefer the level 0 LCC to the Crystallizer in most decks, and even if the Crystallizer didn't have a weakness attached I would still feel that way. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
About Trish and card draw: I wouldn't take the attitude that Seeker tech makes the LCC redundant for Trish. First, the LCCIII is as good or better than most Seeker draw; second, Trish can't access the best Seeker draw anyway; third, I think card draw often makes other sources of card draw better, not worse. Obviously there's a limit to this, you don't want your deck to be literally nothing but card draw. But in this game, a deck with tons of draw and relatively few action cards actually tends to be really good, because you can cycle through your deck a bunch of times and play your best cards over and over. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
I think the difference in opinion re: Crystallizer comes from difficulty. Crystallizer's icons are better if you are able make arbitrary skill tests with just a bit of boosting. For example if you play an Intel Report or two Easy Marks on Sefina, and you get a 2 book icons that you can use later to get to 4 Int for investigation on 2 shroud. This might be a good deal on Standard, but won't be something you'd do on Expert. — suika · 9505
It's true, I played only on standard. I'd like to play harder in multiplayer, but my friends still not want to leave their comfort zone, although we are mostly rocking all scenrios, and I think we could definitely need some more challenge. Playing solo on the other hand is much harder on it's own. It took me two atempts to win Dnwich and three for Carcosa — Susumu · 381
... to finally beat them in solo on standard. (Carcosa on the mentioned run with Sefina.) Still, even on standard, I normally won't do a standard investigation with a 2 intelect character. And I normally try to avoid all the special effect tokens, so push higher than just +2 even on standard quite frequently. — Susumu · 381
If you’re running cards like Deep Knowledge and Dream Enhancing Serum, you really dont need LCC, and you can always Relic Hunter for both. Crystallizer gets you double use of cards which is also a kind of draw, so if your base — StyxTBeuford · 13049
draw is high, Crystallizer can heavily increase your effective card advantage, way more than LCC can with 1 card a turn even at level 3. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
The key is running enough events with enough icons- Trish is great for this since she can easily specialize in Intellect icons (and agility secondarily). A lot of events people already want to use with Trish have those icons. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
I am actually a bit less hot on this card than I was after the first couple of plays, because, without research cards, or stuff like Three Aces/Segments, maybe DES, searching is only a little bit better than simply drawing most of the time. I do like being able to tutor Finn's weakness to save an action I would have to spend moving to a Hunter enemy, though. — Zinjanthropus · 229
I should say that I do really like it in Sefina to the point where it's worth building an over-success deck to enable it, though. — Zinjanthropus · 229
Absolutely love this in Jenny Barnes sitting on some big stacks, searching through most to all of your deck every time you got the Elder Sign token during any still test. Like having many LVL 5 No Stone Unturned in your deck. — Quantallar · 8