(EDIT: Updated for feedback and new FAQ.)

This is an older enemy, and a lot of this review may come off as obvious to more experienced players or has already been mentioned in reviews for other relevant cards, but I figured for the sake of those less experienced (or if nothing else just for fun) I'd write an extensive breakdown of this absolute monster.

First, the elephant in the room (the towering, invisible elephant): They can only be damaged or attacked with Esoteric Formula. The highest impact of this interaction is that your usual sources of extra damage are gonna get benched. I'll go into more detail on that, including a few workarounds, later on.

It has 6 Fight. That's a problem, but it's fair; your chance of landing a hit unaided against an invisible monster would probably be very low. Have your nimblest investigator pack the magic dust and grab some clues for those location effects. Mystics are at an advantage with their high , but with enough clues on your target, everyone should be able to hit consistently.

It has 3 Evade. That's a fairly lax difficulty for high investigators. Since it's Massive, and attacks for 2/2, you'll want someone to Evade basically every turn, if you can't secure the kill. Rita Young with Track Shoes and Peter Sylvestre is a star, she'll be able to dart around the map and keep threats down with aplomb.

Its health is 1 + 1. What this means is that in a 3-4 player game, at 1 damage per action, you won't be able to defeat it in a single turn. How do we get around that? If you're trying to get extra damage, you're gonna be ice skating uphill. (EDIT: No "additional damage"/"move damage" effects work.) Esoteric Formula uses , meaning Vicious Blow (and The Home Front) is out. Double or Nothing technically works, but is extremely inefficient—it brings the difficulty to an insurmountable 12, so you'll need a whole lot of clues or effects that can reduce the difficulty, all for one extra point of damage. Barring that, Zoey Samaras (via her ) and Lita Chantler seem to be the only ones capable of cheating out extra damage. Lita has amazing value here, but good luck getting her this far, un-sacrificed (to not one but two Ancient Ones!), with at least 3 mental trauma under your belt, and drawing her in time to make an impact.

For everyone who isn't a crazed zealot, leveraging extra actions is the way to go. Rogues should have no problem with that. MVPs here are Marie Lambeau, who can use Esoteric Formula with her free action; Stella Clark with Oops! and the usual gaggle of nonsense; and Tony Morgan, who in addition to being a Rogue can place bounties to get his free Fight action (but only on Brood that enter play after the game begins) (EDIT: He can use Bounty Contracts during scenario setup, thanks Nenananas!).

So that's some pretty sound strategy, but you're not interested in that. You came here for the jank, the cheese, the cherry-tapping, the Air Bud clause! Years ago, Django astutely pointed out the absence of the Elite trait, but at the time the options this opened up were less than stellar. Time went on, and more cards came out; these are mentioned in the comments of that older review, and have quite a few reviews of their own mentioning their use against this enemy. The two that take the cake here are Waylay and "I'll see you in hell!", because while the text on this enemy prevents it from being attacked or damaged by non-prescribed means, you can still defeat it any way you like.

Evade into Waylay + Resourceful is an easy combo for high Survivors (did I mention how good Rita Young is here?) that comes at a paltry two actions and a mildly spicy 3 resources. Mix in your favorite methods of guaranteeing success, keep the resources flowing as much as you can (On Your Own will help here, especially if your football friend ended up on the altar last scenario...), and if you’re feeling extra cheesy, recur it infinitely with True Survivor.

"I'll see you in hell!" is so-so by comparison given the cost, but with a favorable board state, it's a tactical nuke. Using it on as little as two Brood could still be considered a good value trade in certain circumstances. This is a questionable include for most Guardians, but Calvin won't hesitate.

If all else fails, swallow your pride and Resign. The better you did last scenario, the harder this one will be, and defeating all five is a tall order.

You might wonder, does the automatic success mean that I can’t apply skill cards to the first test? Actually, you can. You don’t skip:

ST.2 Commit cards from hand to skill test.

That means your team can pile on vicious blows, quick thinking, overpowers....Which means this is an excellent first attack against bosses. And the second hit, even if your boxing gloves are gone, it’s going to take you to a +8, a fighting chance to hit any foe in the game. With regular boxing gloves, that’s +9, advanced ones +10, and you probably have a beat cop or other ally to give you that +1 bonus...The cost of course is five experience points and two bucks.

The upside is you can recur it with Nathan’s elder sign. And it’s a tactic, so you can guarantee to have it when you stick to the plan. It’s an investment in xp, and shouldn’t be your first purchase because the level zero version of this card is pretty good. But when you need the bust the toughest of skulls, you’ll be happy to have this.

This card was bizarre before Nathaniel Cho arrived, but now it’s an interesting gamble. Before, it required investigators who are super good at using their weapons to succeed against a dangerous monster... Without using weapons. That made it good for conglomeration of spheres and little else.

The reason it’s a gamble is because Nathaniel, more than most investigators, has a lot of 1-2 XP picks he wants two of. Mano a mano, Radiant smite, vicious blow, lesson learned, galvanize... And that’s without getting into assets. But these all help you kill monsters, they don’t kill monsters directly.

But the only way you’re getting your monster slayer five* back is with an elder sign on a fight check. Unless you do something very weird and add quantum flux with versatile.

But when you play this and invest in it, you have a 90+ percentage chance of getting the monster into the discard pile. No more “if I hit him two out of my four tries“. No retaliates. And you can even use it on enemies engaged with your allies for one damage on a miss, which you can’t deal with the Lightning gun.

so this card might be an interesting Late campaign pick, or a fun card to really gamble with.

(*Not like the cryptkeeper five, which is the band from the Monster Mash.)

The basic idea of this card in a Cho deck warrants pointing out I think. Cho always wants to use events to damage stuff to pop his ability. Sometimes all you have are events which deal more damage than necessary, but you couldn't deal enough without them. Relentless lets you pay into those overkill events, making sure you get the kill without "wasting" the extra damage output. Thematically, you're giving a good show and bringing home extra cash from tips or bonuses or whatnot.

It also lets you pop your trigger at points when it's not necessary to do so in order to get the kill. Since it's once per phase, it'll be ready for the enemy phase if you do. When you have enough events to kill a baddie sufficiently, just trigger your ability and you've banked another resource essentially.

The discard is a downside for sure. Would be nice of course to just exhaust it and pull money from it but oh well. It's probably balanced as it is.

For it to be worth it, you need at least three resources to equal an emergency cache (which is upgradeable as well). It does give you freedom to overkill and overspend on events without wasting it though, so there's extra utility. Plus it's simply thematic, so even if it's equal or slightly worse than ecache, it's still fun.

I haven't played extensively with this yet to judge actual play, but I wanted to point out the obvious for it, especially since this is from a deck for beginners anyway ^_^

To assess this weapon, you need to see it for what it is.

1) This is a weapon, it gives a fight boost and some random bonus damage. Random bonus damage is not hugely viable.

2) This is a Bless token generator, as of yet one of rather few, it will generate an inconsistent volume of tokens (more consistent at higher playercounts, but then it's also harder to maintain a high density of the tokens in the bag).

So, Blessed Blade is a card that does 2 things, cards that do several things are allways interesting because if just 1 or more of the mechanics are useful, the card will see play.

Bless tokens vary a lot for different playercounts. A lone Bless character in a 4 man team isnt able to keep up the bless volume, cashing in on a Radiant Smite for example is tricky, for the big team bless tokens will generally be quickly found and generate a few extra successes per map, which is nice. On the flipside a Solo bless character (or someone in a duo) can hog all the tokens for synergies (Radiant Smite).

As a weapon, the Blessed Blade depends on a high percentile of Bless tokens to be lethal, otherwise it's just a fancy knife! The blessed blade synergizes with it's own tokens, so as explained above, a solo character is more likely to be able to build a bag full of Bless and stand to score bonus damage on half or more of all his tests.

TL:DR from the above. Blessed Blade is essentially a team-support weapon in big groups, and a bit more of a killer in small groups. But when is blessed blade a good choice?

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Blessed Blade is a good choice when you need a sidearm or backup weapon, often you will find an enemy with an awkward health total or a very low health total, where taking a series of random swipes with the Blade is more useful than swiping with a Timeworn Brand (because it generates a bless token) or conserves your charges on Enchanted Blade, Shrivelling or any guns you might have. You might take 2 in deckbuilding, or stuff just 1 copy in your deck because it's just a backup weapon.

To synergize the blade, any bless generation is good, Sister Mary is a natural fit, I think at least 1 copy is almost mandatory for her. Any cards that build up the token bag with bless (Book of Psalms for example) will really buff up the blade and cause you to land 2 damage hits.

A trick to use when you use this weapon is to find circumstances where you'dd be fine with or without bonus damage. Often this involves playing 2 weapons together, for example Enchanted Blade and Blessed Blade together. If you encountered a Ravenous Ghoul you could lead an attack with the Blessed Blade to see if you got bonus damage and exhaust for a bless token, then finish with Enchanted Blade one way or the other. Then with the same sword combo you might encounter a bigger Icy Ghoul and this time swipe twice with the Blessed, and if the Ghoul survived, finish with Enchanted again.

The bless tokens in of themselves are useful in general, especially if you have some mediocre stats at 2 or 3. With a decently bless filled bag a 3 character stands to pass a couple tests that you've given up on in the mythos phase, 3 will go much further when trying for clues and 2-3 stands to get out of trouble in a coupele tries. Building towards this game-state is a useful benefit of Blessed Blade by itself.

Last but not least, as of writing this we've only seen a few Bless cards, and Blessed Blade + Sister Mary + Radiant Smite is already a rather cool lineup, I cannot wait to see what else is coming. Every new method to generate Bless tokens is going to make Blessed Blade that much more lethal and every new source of Bless tokens will make it that much easier to set up the next bless-themed combo card.

Blessed Blade will see play, and you should try it, even if only to push the Bless gimmick.