Book of Psalms

In Arkham, we know that faith can keep us sane. The Holy rosary is one of the few zero xp sanity adding assets. But you can throw that on for one action before leaving the house. The book of Psalms is going to take us more effort. This is a support card. Generally, it’s not useful to take two actions to heal one damage or horror. (Every healing asset requires us to put it in play after all.) Every three actions you take, generally, the encounter deck is going to drop more problems, which means we need other reasons to play this.

First, we could be a therapist. Carolyn, being at the top of medical science in the 1920s, is willing to use Hypnotic Therapy and prayer. She gets a buck and can heal one or two san while adding bless tokens to the bag. Super effective: 8 bless tokens and a net profit for the team.

Second and more obviously, this is useful for a support Mary or Mateo. Most of the Conspiracy investigators have good sanity, but Silas has five. Keeping him alive while you feed the bag plays into the support archetype.

Least obviously but most thematically interesting is taking this card with Joe or Roland. As blue/yellow investigators, they find Astounding Revelations...and discover secrets in the writings of King David! The idea of secrets in the Psalms may make money indirectly, because people are still publishing books to that effect more than 100 years later.

Which is enough to cause you sanity damage.

MrGoldbee · 1493
I'd add that it's an interesting card for Parrallel back Daisy, or Daisy with Versatile. — mogwen · 254
Finally a cross-class tome parallel Daisy might consider. — OrionJA · 1
Yup, for Daisy it's WILD. — MrGoldbee · 1493
Good thing it uses a hand slot. Because Guardians don't use their hands..........GRRRRRRRRR — TheDoc37 · 468
I like this in Skids or Leo since Rogues get some extra actions. Otherwise it is too action intensive and competes for a critical hand slot for most. Carolyn is obviously a good target and possibly the others mentioned. — The Lynx · 993
Skids and Leo A. can Sleight of Hand this into play and spend a whole turn healing up while getting 6 blessed tokens. Perhaps not great, but compliments guns and Flashlights as SoH targets. — ArkhamArkhanist · 10
A blessed-token parallel Daisy Walker could consider this tome too... — Lilan · 82
Token of Faith

(1) I'm very surprised this isn't blessed-traited item like every other card that adds blessed tokens to the chaos bag.

(2) This is much better with a lower player count (1 or 2). After it exhausts, It can no longer convert tokens and becomes dead weight. "Ashcan" Pete can use his ability to ready it, and there may be a build here if he takes cards like Deep Knowledge, Faustian Bargain, and Tempt Fate.

(3) This works for any skill test. Not just your skill tests, or ones at your location.

(4) It takes an accessory slot and has to.compete against the card draw of Rabbit's Foot.

(5) I have a feeling this will become a staple in some solo survivor build. Perhaps a fail focused build that can benefit from having a lot of cursed tokens in the chaos bag. Currently the bless/cursed card pool is slim, so only time will tell.

Calprinicus · 6364
Saying Token of Faith is better in lower player count is like saying Shortcut is better in lower player count since you can only move 1 investigator. With more player you get more opportunity to trigger the card. — ak45 · 469
But more players means more tests for bless tokens to get removed, so it heavily depends. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
Look at the shadow for the reason it's not blessed. — Chained Dreamer · 1
It`s better with more players. 1.) You want to avoid the situation where the token isn`t used in a particular round. The more often you use it the better for you. 2.) The tokens get removed fast. But that is a bad way looking at this. The faster they are removed the faster they do your team good. After all it`s a co-op game. — Chiungalla · 2
Beloved

What was once simply a Toni Morrison novel is now an interesting pick for Silas.

My starting assumption is this: if you’re running a bless heavy deck, you probably have sister Mary.

(Predestination is not gonna fill up the bag unless you’re cycling it with resourceful.)

Now, Silas can give this a shot once a turn, hoping for the token, withdrawing if he doesn’t get it. It’s not the most efficient use of his time, but there’s no action loss involved.

The wild symbol is what makes it truly neat. Let’s say you’re using Olive McBride, a scrying mirror, and/or Jacqueline to look at multiple tokens. (Premonition also works.) You can play this on a teammate to make them automatically pass a check, something that would otherwise cost a lot of XP (or four resources). And with the wild symbol, it can apply to any skill. One of the ridiculously high ones in the circle undone. An evade of a brutal monster in the Yucatán. A sawn-off blast with double or nothing.

Sure, it takes a lot of time, effort, and you can’t do it alone. That’s how you know it’s love.

Edit: Now that we’ve seen the pact of the sun, this card becomes “use ancient covenant another time this turn, but a tad better“.

MrGoldbee · 1493
Auto success counts as success by 0 so it doesnt work with "succeed by X" stuff like any shotgun. — Django · 5163
That's incorrect. Autosuccess makes the difficulty of the test 0, you succeed by whatever your skill value is. So if your investigating a 2 shroud at 3 intellect, commit this to boost yourself to 4, and then draw a bless, you succeed by 4 because that's your final value against a difficulty of 0. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
I don't think auto success does count as a success by 0? It counts the difficulty of the test as 0, but that's different , right? And the example in the expanded auto-success rules, regarding Hope, explicitly says "However, the skill test still takes place. Cards may still be committed to the test, and the investigator’s total modified skill value is still determined, as it may have some bearing on other card abilities. " — bee123 · 31
This card (and Favor of the Sun) is great with any "succeed by X" cards, like Shotgun. For most Guardians you're getting the guaranteed max damage just by playing this. — Jaysaber · 7
Beloved

So +2 to will or dex, +1 to anything else and if you reveal a blessing you don't chain it on and empty the bag of more blessings.

If you have a lot of blessing in the bag then this card is good for saving them, if you don't have blessings then yea its just worse unexpected courage.

Simple, strong but not game breaking.

Zerogrim · 295
Rather than look at it as an Unexpected Courage replacement when there are no Bless tokens about, I think it is more accurate to look at it as a more flexible Guts or Manual Dexterity replacement. OK, you lose the card draw on a successful check, but that seems a reasonable trade for covering both types of checks equally as effectively. — dysartes · 1
Beloved

Previous review was based on wrong rules (my mistake) and edited.

The icon // seems good enough to counter many encounter tests. If you don't believe you'll reveal [bless] during the skill test commiting Beloved, one possible combo is Scrying Mirror. After you reveal bless token, you may commit this card for auto-success.

elkeinkrad · 497
Note that Scrying Mirror performs Step 3 (Reveal Chaos Token) early, but not Step 4 (resolve chaos token effects), so you will have revealed a Bless Token, but you will NOT have revealed any additional tokens yet. While it’s true that if you skill boost with Beloved and draw a bless, you might just succeed anyways, an important advantage of Beoved is that you don’t draw any additional tokens (so you don’t waste other Bless tokens if you have a lot) and the Bless you revealed doesn’t return to the Token pool (so it doesn’t reduce the number of Bless tokens in the bag). — Death by Chocolate · 1489
Thanks to comment @Death by Chocolate! — elkeinkrad · 497