A terrible card that is actually somewhat useful in Hemlock Vale.

Enemies in HV have Elusive, meaning they disengage and move away after getting smacked once. Some of them have 5hp. Grievous Wound solves that problem.

As another review said, perfect for alternate Pete because it can be recurred every round, and also situationally nice for alternate Zoey, if you can stick it on a beefy enemy and let it bleed blesses into the bag for several rounds.

Unbelievably bad for anyone but maybe, maybe patrice. How did this even get printed?

If I'm going to spend 3 resource and devote a slot to a pure soak asset I expect it to come with 3+ total durability. To make this better than that you'd have to throw away a ruinous number of cards.

The only advantage this has over conventional soak assets is that it takes up only one deck slot and can stick around absborbing potentially unlimited amounts of damage over a long scenario if you have enough draw to feed it. But because it's capped at 3 and can only trigger once per round, it's not even great potection from big burst damage.

Why you'd ever look twice at this if you could Perseverance or Talisman of Protection or Cherished Keepsake is beyond me.

Zamacona is another enemy weakness, and like most, he is a much bigger problem in solo than multiplayer. There's a lot of supercheap technology that deals with him: handcuffs and spectral razor come to mind. Or stir the pot targeting another enemy. With mind wipe, a friendly mystic can make him extremely vulnerable to the countess’s trickery.

Elusive and "Spawn - Nearest empty location" can be a great aid (in case you want him to fall off a train) but if you’re only dealing one damage per attack, he’s going to stick around forever. The pitchfork, a beat cop(2), or drain essence (from someone else in the party) can deal with the Z-lister without having to chase him down even more.

The effect, making an enemy aloof for a round is quite nice -- it is frequently better than conventional evasion. A frequent awkward experience when investigators split up is that a seeker will spawn a hunter enemy while they're separated from the guardian. If the seeker evades, clears the location, and moves out, then there's no inherent reason for anyone to go back in. But if the enemy is left alone they will hunt and attack someone the following turn.

If you make a hunter enemy aloof you can move away and let it move onto and engage your guardian without getting to attack him.

Sadly, I don't see many characters with rogue access wanting to play a 2-cost asset that allows them to spend actions to make will tests vs only non-elite enemies against sometimes quite high skill requirements. So this seems pretty bad. But it probably will show up here and there as scenario tech because you can tuck it into underworld market, boost and discount it with Sleuth, and so on.

Kate has two great signature events; generally this is the one you’ll want more. At bare minimum, it resets your clues, giving you between a few and half a dozen +2s in your future. If it only did that and it was a general evade with books, it would be OK. But no… This is noping an enemy. In solo, you might not see it again; In multiplayer, there’s a chance it’ll get dealt to the fighter. In very rare circumstances, like the encounter deck being empty, the enemy goes to the discard pile, because you can’t shuffle something into an empty deck. This is tremendously useful against enemies that explode when they die, certain enemies in The Forgotten Age, or beefy foes with tons of hit points. This was extremely useful in dealing with Horror in High Gear and The Deep One Bull in Innsmouth.