Ethereal Form

Ethereal Form

EDIT: Grammar

I foresee Ethereal Form (and it's counterpart Read the Signs) becoming a staple among mystics, mostly due to innate attributes. All classes have an best stat, but there are also rather well-defined second-best stats and worst stats, as tabled below, calculated through averages of investigators' attributes within each class:

: Best Stat: , Second-Best Stat: , Worst Stat:

: Best Stat: , Second-Best Stat: , Worst Stat:

: Best Stat: , Second-Best Stat: , Worst Stat:

: Best Stat: , Second-Best Stat: and tied, Worst Stat:

: Best Stat: , Second-Best Stat: , Worst Stat:

Mystic's in particular is quite special due to every mystic except one having exactly 3 in that stat. Combined with no below 4 (expect Diana, but only technically), means that Ethereal Form will be testing at 7 minimum in all but Jim's hand (same for Read the Signs in all but Agnes's and Akachi's hand). It is also a spell, meaning the staple (and only, until Scroll of Prophecies came out) lvl0 mystic card draw Arcane Initiate will readily draw it.

Ethereal Form is of interest to Agnes Baker thanks to Heirloom of Hyperborea, of particularly interest to Marie Lambeau, thank to her innate ability, and of ESPECIALLY particular interest to Sefina Rousseau, thanks to her entire event-heavy play-style and whopping 8 test base for the card. Other non-mystics who can take mystic card and test Ethereal Form at 6 or above by default include Patrice Hathaway, Mandy Thompson, Lola Hayes, and, strangely enough, every Dunwich Legacy character.

That's all before we even get to what it does. It's closest comparison would be lvl0 Survival Instinct: same evade one, disengage all effect, and similar prevent re-engagement effect. It even has the same downside of possible screwing over fellow investigators at your location. The main difference is a 2 cost difference, a boost of 3 (on average) instead of 1 to the skill test, and the persistent, double-edged sword effect until round end. Your mileage may vary on the usefulness of a Survival Instinctesque card, but it's consistency is unquestionable; testing at 7 makes its effect a likely prospect, even on hard difficulty.

Lucaxiom · 4471
I think my take is a bit more negative, overall. I kinda it suffers ( as does Survival Instinct and On the Lam , which is another good comparison) from the fact that evasion is generally less good than fighting so you really need to build around evasion to make evasion cards worthwhile or the cards need to be spectacular. I'd say for most of the investigators you mention, they'd rather fight. And even so I'd say this card has two really big disadvantages relative to On the Lam and Survival Instinct. One is that it's an asset so you have to pay its costs before you know you're going to need it, and the other is that clause about not being to deal damage until the end of the round. I think you're underestimating that. Once you're ethereal, it locks you into being ethereal to deal with enemies pretty much indefinitely and in some scenarios (e.g Undimensioned and Unseen) you flatly need the ability to deal damage to get anywhere. So it's a very action-intensive evasion-based way of dealing with enemies in a class that usually has decent combat options, with a hefty downside that needs to be carefully managed and that sounds like a fairly iffy card to me. — bee123 · 31
I disagree so heavily with bee. Ethereal Form is an amazing tempo play when you simply need to get from A to B. It’s not as good as Elusive most of the time, but it does double as an evade on one enemy. Think of any scenario where you meed to get to the exit through a pile of enemies- Ethereal Form can save you whole turns of actions in one card. Read the Signs is still probably better because 2 clues is more generally useful, but I dont see myself ignoring Ethereal Form in most Mystics from now on. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
Interesting! I'm glad to be disagreed with :) . I agree that escaping does seem like the best circumstances for it, but I'd guess I'd ask how many scenarios are like that? SPOILERS, The Doom of Etzli and the Unspeakable Oath seem like the big ones , (and 1000 shapes of horror, to an extent) but that's not many. And I'd say there are a lot of circumstances where not being able to remove an enemy from the table hurts. Not just stuff like U and U and The Wages of Sin, but enemies with doom , enemies that attack without engaging, the Echoes of the Past guys... It seems to me like a lot of agency you're giving up in exchange for a slower riskier Elusive, especially when, say Sefina or Mandy could just take elusive with those situations in mind anyway. So, it's not the utility I doubt, it's whether the utility's worth the downsides - especially when other cards can do similar things without those downsides. Maybe I should try it out, and see if it feels that scary in practice :) — bee123 · 31
Sure, but a lot of that feels more like a criticism of evading over fighting to begin with. Why do we ever evade in the first place? Because in some cases it is a better option than fighting. TCU and TFA in particular reward evasion a lot. Ethereal Form is crazy because it's not just an evade on one enemy, it's you being able to completely ignore enemies for a round. Certainly this has more consistently good utility in solo where saving your charges for a Big Bad or being able to get yourself out of a situation where you're engaged with too many enemies to reliably beat them all matters, but if you have Ethereal Form in multiplayer you can just straight up play more risky. You can let enemies come to you, live on the brink of death, then escape at the last minute, which is exactly what our Jim did in Wages of Sin and it netted us another Heretic. I think this card is crazy good. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
Also the fact that it's a spell isn't irrelevant. It's another target for Arcane Initiate, so it's fine even as a one of. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
Its better than blinding light in TFA cause it doesn’t kill those 1 hp vengeance vipers — Django · 5093
It's an event, not an asset. You don't pay the cost until you use it. And you're only ethereal for the round. I don't understand how that locks you into being ethereal indefinitely? You have only two copies of this, unless you're copying it with Sefina's signature or using Dayana Esperence to play it repeatedly. — Yenreb · 15
Spirita Athame is very nice for this and Read the Signs and Spectral Razor. — DocLeo · 680
Super useful in TIC. — MrGoldbee · 1468

Call of the Unknown

Call of the Unknown

Oh boy. I just finished a campaign of TFA as Ursula Downs

First off, the good stuff. The flavor on this card is right on. Like many investigator weakness, it slows down or counteracts what your character is good at, and I feel like 2 horror is a reasonable penalty for failing to satisfy the call. This would be a pretty light penalty except....

The bad stuff. When you fail, you shuffle this card right back into your deck. On average, you'll draw this maybe once or twice a scenario and eat 0-4 horror. I had a few cases where I thought "tempo is more important than 2 horror, I'll just tank it" and draw the card again within a few turns. In other cases I drew or a -5 token and botched the investigate check. This led me to quickly nickname Dr. Elli Horowitz "Dr. Horror-soak". This is all well and good for a rough weakness, except....

The worst stuff. Spoilers for The City of Archives ahead. The fact that this scenario is part of the same campaign where Ursula debuted is a kick in the nuts! Not only are you stuck taking 2 actions to move and investigate, you still have to pass the investigation check with your measly 2 . They were at least fortunate enough to have Lost Humanity as part of the encounter set, unless like me you were unlucky enough to not remove Call of the Unknown from the game. Then you become left with a really small deck where you either keep paying 2 actions or keep taking 2 horror in quick succession. The only saving grace here is that Towers of Pnakotus exists to beef your deck back up, but even still, you want to be drawing lots of cards in this scenario. The Call will find you soon enough.

Ultimately, all I would want is some (reasonable) way to get rid of this card for good. Maybe something like "When you succeed on this investigation check for the first time in a round, place a resource on Call of the Unknown. Then if there are 3 or more resources on this card, discard it".

TheMathDoc · 16
Yeah unfortunately the card is really wordy to begin with. I think it’s telling however that Ursula is considered by many to be one of the strongest solo investigators, usually second only to Wendy. Her weakness is incredibly rough, but it seems fair considering how much tempo she saves. Just finish the scenario quickly. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
^ Incidentally, Wendy also has a pretty brutal weakness. I had a lot of skill cards in my deck in all of my TFA campaigns, which helped out with the weakness in City of Archives, but i still had to sack a Laboratory Assistant to it pretty quickly. Was lucky enough to not draw it like a million times — Zinjanthropus · 229

Death's Approach

Death's Approach

[Review not free of SPOILERS so you might want to not read this before you played it]

In my opinion, this scenario has a balancing issue. As I will try to describe, [The Wages of Sin](/card/05161) during Agenda 2 has a difficulty set on static numbers (4 heretics) who have a bit of a variable health, but that does not change their parley action or the unresolved business. Most often a scenario features a final boss with health or you have to gather clues or something else that is mostly dynamic based on the number of . Here though, the number of Heretics is 4 period.

In my experience, it is possible to get all 4 Heretics down with a highly specialized duo and a bit of luck, so I did it with [Rita Young](/card/05005) and [Ursula Downs](/card/04002) and 2 [Shortcut](/card/03232) on the VP Locations. With all the free moves of [Rita Young](/card/05005) and her combat strength on the one hand and [Ursula Downs](/card/04002)' free investigates on the other hand I was able to get all 4 Heretics but usually with investigators, 2 seems to be a good result. with 4 Investigators, you could reasonably hope for 3-4 while with one investigator you have a hard time to get just 1.

Now, having that said, this scenario is often compared to [Undimensioned and Unseen](/card/02236) which in my opinion is not completely true, since [Undimensioned and Unseen](/card/02236) provides the investigators with a map that makes it easier to move around and plan, the opponents come one by another and their health (which is tied to ) is the only obstacle, you have to defeat them and you are done, there is no Unfinished Business, so in my experience, it is manageable, even solo. Basically you have to have patience with [Undimensioned and Unseen](/card/02236) and wait for the best moment to strike and you actually have a good chunk of time. Now with [The Wages of Sin](/card/05161), this is not true, you have almost no time to gather the 3 Clues to even start the work to be done, and than very soon you will be plagued by [The Spectral Watcher](/card/05086), Haunting abilities, a very punishing spectral encounter deck, especially those enemies that die only of specific weapons and than on top of it all, you are dealing with the Heretic's effects once they are defeated (their Unfinished Business)- punishing you and also requires you to even fulfill others tasks that requires moving, clueing and sometimes fighting.

Also it should be considered, that the number of Heretics is fixed, so while playing with 4 Investigators, looking at the other side of the Heretic's cards is way more easy, especially since it always just costs 1 Clue. You get 4 Encounter Cards a round, that's true, but to fulfill the Heretics Unfinished Businesses you need to plan and intel provided by parleying helps a lot. Getting swarmed while an Unfinished Business is active while solo could possibly cost you the game. In a nutshell, with my experience, information I gathered by watching youtubers trying it and also expereinces shared by friends I cane to the conclusion that the more investigators you are having here, the more easy it gets. If you have specialized builds for this, at it becomes to easy (even though I doubt it) you can always play on hard difficulty but compensating difficulty with more players is not to my liking.

In my opinion this can and should be fixed by manipulating [Death's Approach](/card/05163), that's why I am writing the review here. This scenario is difficult though playable, if you do have enough time. 7 doom after [The Spectral Watcher](/card/05086) appears is way to low for smaller groups because of the many static parts of the scenario. So a suggestion, this card should have something like the following text added.

"this card gains an additional doom threshold of 8-2"

So, as solo player you have 13 turns, 2 players have 11 turns and so on. While most scenarios have there inherent difficulty dynamic (like deal damage, get clues etc.) with the number of investigators and a (mostly) static amount of time (i.e. doom), in this scenario the inherent difficulty is (mostly) static (i.e. number of Heretics in play) so the available amount of time should be dynamic (based on )

thakaris · 198

Preston Fairmont

Preston Fairmont

The side-mission called Curse of the Rougarou has a reward card called Monsterous Transformation. I just got this for Preston and and I can't help but feel it's too broken to be allowed. But as far as I can tell it's fine. I'm going to play it through and laugh as everyone dies to the filthy rich wolf.

jmccrary · 16
It IS too broken. That's why opt to not do that mission when Preston (or Calvin) is in the team... — Nenananas · 258
It's probably even better if you manage to get Body of a Yithian in City of Archives (TFA), as well — Zinjanthropus · 229

Summoned Hound

Summoned Hound

Just think of this: Using this from your discard pile, with chance encounter (2xp). Because this is not playing this, so you can have this ally out without its greatest weakness.

As you get a free action every turn, it is basically on par with Leo de Luca (pros: skill boost+cheaper, cons: only fight/investigate, 2 card combo/weakness).

vidinufi · 69
Flare also works. Patrice could take both and find the hound consistently, and unlike most people who can take this card she would actually run the relevant icons to make use of the extra action. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
The free action every round at a boosted level is really strong imo. I think the free investigate action is stronger since there isn't a damage boost but for a combat focused Mystic that needs to deal an odd point of damage then it could save a charge on Shrivelling. I think this card will be great for anyone that puts a few static Int/Com boost into play and that has some capacity to deal with the weakness. — The Lynx · 979
somebody elsewhere pointed out that you could put this into play with Markings of Isis, not that that's an amazing card outside of a few edge cases — Zinjanthropus · 229