Summoned Hound

It's sad how Ikiaq still doesn't allow mystics an in-faction way to avoid the Unbound Beast. How else am I going to slot this dog into the latest fad Empower Self deck?

It's surprisingly viable on Sefina or Dexter running Geas and Crystalline Elder Sign/Tristan Botley now at least. With the Taboo'd scroll of secrets and promising never to draw, the odds of drawing the corresponding weakness is low indeed.

suika · 9498
Can always be Patrice and Chance Encounter the hound into play — StyxTBeuford · 13043
Eyup, Patrice was and still is the best Hound user. — suika · 9498
Yeah, I really think they should have kept Ikiaq as "non-signature weakness." Interesting thought with Geas. I did an Alyssa Graham based Summoned Hound deck, and if you're only drawing during upkeep you can pretty effectively use her to avoid drawing the weakness. Maybe it's time for me to delve deep into the jank tank and build a Summoned Hound Sefina deck. — Zinjanthropus · 229
Note that Dexter could use his zappyboi to discard the hound if he sees the Beast coming — Zinjanthropus · 229
There's also Archaic Glyphs: Markings of Isis as an option for Daisy. Bonus points for also buffing your free Hound action with Encyclopedia. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
I desperately want to use this card in Norman for flavor reasons, but sadly as far as I know there isn't a good way for him to circumvent Unbound Beast at the moment. Hopefully they'll print something that lets him do that down the line. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
Ikiaq would have been perfect for Summoned Hound Norman if they had kept her as "non-signature weakness" instead of "basic weakness" — Zinjanthropus · 229
Yes. I'm holding out hope that we'll get a higher-XP Summoned Hound down the line that comes back into play if you deal with the weakness. With the way this current one works, my feeling is that the added weakness is so harsh that you basically have to cheat the hound into play somehow. A higher-XP hound could allow for a more straightforward usage. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
Yeah, I don't think that Summoned Hound is very good if you aren't cheating it into play. It's really a shame that that is gated to such a small number of actual investigators. — Zinjanthropus · 229
Roland Banks

A lot has happened in the four years since Roland was released to round him out, and he’s a stronger investigator than ever.

Most of these cards are used by soloclue in his ARRR deck, which adds seeker splash for search and finances. There are new ways to increase your horror threshold and heal yourself as you go, like seeker allies, enchanted blade (3), or hallowed mirror, that weren’t available before.

Roland can also move lickety-split for a guardian, with copies of safeguard and shortcut. With a level zero deck, it’s possible for him to move himself and an ally to another location for zero actions.

A new wrinkle is that the “get clues by killing enemies” tech is even better. Grete Wagner and the updated evidence(1) combo well with Roland’s talent. Assuming you finish off four health worth of enemies in a turn, you can get four clues. Or use the Disc of Itzamna and On the Hunt to replace the encounter phase with "summon a two health enemy at your location, kill them instantly, get three clues.” Don’t mess with the Bureau.

MrGoldbee · 1484
Roland is still my favorite investigator. I can't wait for the parallel version; hopefully it's soon! — SGPrometheus · 841
It was! — MrGoldbee · 1484
Tommy Malloy

Why should you take Handcuffs just to handle Tommy? From a naive action-cost perspective it doesn't seem to make sense: you just spent 2 resources, a card, and an action to save yourself 2 actions, in a class that isn't known for having an excess of resources. Effectively you're playing a Swift Reflexes, which isn't even a particularly good card on Rogues, much less Guardians.

But there are three important reasons why you would do this. Firstly, Cho will almost certainly draw through his deck every scenario, meaning that there's a good chance of seeing Tommy twice if not for Handcuffs. Secondly, you only need to pass a single test, not 3, which is particularly important at higher difficulties. Thirdly, it means you can draw safely during your turn. Since it usually will takes 3 actions to clear Tommy (baring Beat Cop (2), Dogs, and One-Two Punch), it'll feel terrible taking a draw action and find Tommy while trying to refill your hand. Banking an action with Handcuffs will save you from being smacked around by Tommy for a turn, or deal with him easily if he's drawn by an Overpower or Glory.

suika · 9498
also handcuffs lets you spend actions on non critical turns to save actions on critical turns, and having them around for when annoying cultists spawn ain't bad either. If you ever find yourself playing with trish handcuffs are an amazingly good card to combo with her. — Zerogrim · 295
Don't forget that you can support your clever with scene of crime and interrogate during every scenario — Tharzax · 1
On Cho specifically though, despite the synergy with Handcuffs I'd actually advise against Scene of the Crime/Interrogate, or more generally anything that doesn't contribute towards defeating monsters or keeping Cho alive. Deck space is a precious commidity for Cho, and those cards can gum up your Fight event engines. — suika · 9498
Also, your second handcuffs can help get rid of other terrible monsters, deep one bull, yig's snake men, the goatmen from the core set. A lot of scenarios have horrible non elite humanoids who it's very nice to just completely shut down — NarkasisBroon · 11
@Narkasis took the words right out of my mouth. If I wasn't already glad enough to take Handcuffs for when Tommy showed up, Deep One Bull made me sure it was the right decision. — Pinchers · 132
I took this card as Nathaniel to help against Tommy (for all the reasons suika mentions in the review), and I was impressed by how useful the card was outside of that. Permanently locking down an enemy is no joke for a level 0 card. The up-front cost gets less painful once you have a Stick to the Plan/Ever Vigilant setup going, too. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
One correction. You spend 2 resources, a card and TWO actions, to save yourself ONE action. You need one action to play Handcuffs, and another action to activate its ability. — Killbray · 12351
You would have needed 3 actions to defeat Tommy normally, so you saved 2 actions in the future. I counted the action to play Handcuffs as part of the "cost" to gain 2 actions in the future. — suika · 9498
Another way i found is to take Versatile and Occult Lexicon. Reading the Rules reference, under the "For each" paragraph, I understand that each point of damage from Blood rite should be treated as separate damage. Therefore, you could play 2x blood rite to kill Tommy without any test, for 3 resources and 2 actions. For 4 resources you could use the fourth damage to damage another enemy, using chow's ability and turning it into 2 damage. And everything would be testless so it's good in hard/expert difficulties. — joster · 89
Mists of R'lyeh

I feel I need to provide the contrary viewpoint and say that this card, while usable, is really pretty disappointing. I want to like this card because it forms part of the major theme of mystics. There are spells like Shriveling that let Mystics use Will to be good at fighting, there are spells like Rite of Seeking that let Mystics use Will to be good at investigating, and this is ostensibly the spell that lets Mystics use Will to be good at evading. Unfortunately Mists is really weak compared to these other two. The problem is that Shrivelling is much better than a basic fight action (+1 damage), and Rite of Seeking is much better than a basic investigator action (+1 clue), but mist is not really better than a basic evade action. In theory it gives you an action compression bonus just like the other two (+1 move), but that bonus is far less useful because you rarely want to use it. Indeed, it is so much less useful that it is barely makes up for the penalty of sometimes having to discard a card.

The most important use of evade is to keep an elite monster distracted while the party fights it, but if you are doing this you do not want to move away from the monster. Evade can be good against regular monsters for many characters who are not fighters and find it much easier to evade and let other characters do the fighting. But if you are a Mystic you have the option of taking your fighting spell instead, and it is almost always better to do 2 damage to the monster rather than evade the monster. Evasion can be better against monsters with 3+ Health if you can just leave and ignore them, and the +1 move bonus of Mists seems primarily designed for that exact circumstance. But FFG seems really reluctant to put many such monsters in their adventures, it seems like the great majority of the monsters either have Hunter, or have doom on them, or are otherwise better to kill than leave alone. To be fair, there are some monsters you can run away from, and there are some monsters you are better off evading than fighting because you get a penalty if you kill the monster, and here is where Mystic evading shines. The problem is that even in these cases +1 move isn't a great bonus because often when you encounter the monster you are not done investigating or otherwise interacting with the location it is on, and you still don't want to move away. This is compounded by the fact that Mists is not an event, it is an asset, so while it is conditionally useful, you have to play it before you know whether that condition will be satisfied; once you have played it, you are likely to end up using it mostly at times when you don’t want to run away.

Despite all of this, mists would be fun to play around with if it didn't take up a slot. But the fact is that it takes up an arcane slot, a slot that is in very great demand for most Mystics. This means that even if you decide to have a bit of whimsy and put this in your deck, you often regret playing it rather than waiting for a better spell to put in that precious slot. Mists is best for characters who have high Will and low Dex who have access to Mystic cards but don’t really use their arcane slots and have the resources to fool around with conditionally useful cards. Not a very broad selection of characters, to say the least.

If you don't have many expansions, Mists is a better card because you do not have many other options, if the only way you can fight is with the two copies of Shrivelling in your deck you may want to put this card in just so you can do something when you don't have Shriveling. On the other hand, if you have lots of expansions, the real nail in the coffin for this card might be Sword Cane, which lets you use Will to evade without spending charges or using an arcane slot.

ChristopherA · 113
I totally agree. There are always exceptions, but in general, fighting is much better than evading and fight spells are much more useful than evade spells. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
It's much better in true solo where the move action is much more reliably useuful. — suika · 9498
That is definitely true. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
I also take a fight and an investigate spell as my main arcane slots. But I do see some value in evade spells, if you have a build with 3 arcane slots. In particular in TFA but there are also enemies in other campaigns, like the Spectral Watcher from TCU, who are better evaded than exhausted in fight actions. Mists let do that relyably. The move is not always usefull, but more often than the damage ping from Ineffable Truth. Right now, I think the cat is the best option for that. I used her in Akachi through TFAm albeit I used Suggestion instead of the Mists in that case. With "Return to: TCU" we will get more excitng options to increase arcane slots. Although, I have to agree, Sword Cane might be the card, that makes these builds obsolete. I have not played with it yet, but it uses only a hand slot, and can also serve as Mystic's Garotte Wire" to conserve Shrivelling charges. — Susumu · 381
One disadvantage of Sword Cane seems to me be though, that it has no upgradeed version with willpower boost (yet). You also can't push it with Spirit Athame, so from my experience with Shrivelling (0) et all, it should get worse the later in the campaign you are. — Susumu · 381
Mists is an absolutely stellar card in solo where fighting everything is not as practical or as efficient of a solution. Your deck has to be more generalist, so an evade spell will let you save time and card slots from fighting. Mists is particularly great because of the move compression- evade+move is about as good as just moving if no enemy spawned on you. I adore this card in solo. It even gives you 4 charges for a very cheap price. You don't necessarily a spell slot really to investigate in solo (might take Sixth Sense) since 2 clue locations are rare, so it's not unreasonable to pair this with a combat spell either. — StyxTBeuford · 13043
Necessarily need* — StyxTBeuford · 13043
Will concur that Mists is crazy good in true solo. In particular, had a Marie deck in TFA who had Spectral Razor and Blood-Rite, which were plenty for must-kill enemies, and evade+move was often as good as not drawing an enemy, because I would have had to move anyway (actually, even better because I could use her free action for it). Patrice loves it because of the cheap cost and, again, the free move. — Zinjanthropus · 229
For a bit more janky application, you can combo it with Torrent of Power, especially the L2 that comes with 5 secrets. You could even refill it with Enraptured. This is probably only sensible in Patrice, though. — Zinjanthropus · 229
I’ve done exactly that with Patrice and it is great — StyxTBeuford · 13043
How are the opinions on this card with Norman? I have not played him, because I don't go for the novellas, but I think with 4 will and 4 books, RoS and friends are not that apealing to him, even though 3 clues per action are always great and he probably could make it work. I would probably build him with fight and evade and without investigate spell assets, if he gets a regular release. — Susumu · 381
I tend to just punt on evading. One of the joys of Norman though is that there are so many options for that second Arcane slot. The last time I played him I tried Twila Katherine Price + Scrying III (this was in 3-player) and it was great fun. But if you do care about evasion he can run Mists while giving up much less than other Mystics, yeah. — CaiusDrewart · 3183
Stargazing

Worth noting this card can have extra value in Return to The Forgotten Age, where the updated explore mechanic means you'll either get to this card faster, or possibly even shuffle it into the Exploration deck for a nice surprise while exploring. If it goes into the Exploration deck, it's also protected from encounter deck shuffling and can be searched using Exploration deck supplies.

Time4Tiddy · 248
I have not played the "Return to" version yet, but are there special rules, what happens, if you draw an event from the exploration deck? Otherwise I would say, the effect would wiff. Even, if it doesn't, it would still likely be considered an "unsucessful exploration", you would get the benefit from the card, but loose an action compared to when you would draw the card from the encounter deck. — Susumu · 381
I don't see why it would wiff - it doesn't when it's in the encounter deck, which is also not designed to pull Events from. You do get the unsuccessful exploration, but you immediately get another action, which you can use to explore again, 1 resource and 1 card richer. — Time4Tiddy · 248
Consider that you would have pulled a treachery from the Exploration deck instead of this card, the action loss is happening either way, and would have a more negative outcome. — Time4Tiddy · 248