Hot Streak

The obvious comparison is between this card and Emergency Cache, but the more pressing one is between Hot Streak and Another Day, Another Dollar. I think that Hot Streak has a place in a few decks, but you generally need to satisfy one or more of these conditions:

  • Your deck will still have Emergency Cache. Emergency Cache is a good card, and 2 more copies of Emergency Cache + can be good for some decks (Leo)
  • You're Sefina. Enough said, the card is absolutely insane with her.
  • You're running 2 ADAD already and still need resources most games. I'm not sure what deck would do this, but it seems fun. Hot streak it up.

Otherwise, I'd strongly recommend just grabbing ADAD instead. The benefit of Hot Streak over an Emergency Cache is +2 resources; for just one more xp, you can get that benefit at the start of every single game (and not have to worry about hot streak's high initial cost).

Hot Streak (4) is more of the same, except even more variance-heavy. Unless you have ADADx2 or some insane draw power, grab ADAD first.

dichromate · 11
Snakescourge

As Luke Robinson you are not worried about any enemies around you. As soon as they form a threat you just hop into your Gate Box and zip out of arms way. That is untill you meet this card. "Hello snakes!"

nungunungu · 4
You open the gate box and a snake pops out! — SGPrometheus · 849
what snake pops out? — Alogon · 1145
@alogon I don't know; I was trying to figure out the lore reason why this card made your items blank, and I decided they were covered in snakes. — SGPrometheus · 849
Delilah O'Rourke

Crazy good.

This card is a Sneak Attack on tap, it gets expensive to run but sure enough but with a relatively basic resource generation engine you can trigger her most rounds. Typically evade values are a bit lower than fight values and the vast majority of threats have an evade value of 2 or 3. A card like Lone Wolf will make you just enough resources to be triggering Delilah O'Rourke repeatedly.

To get the most from Delilah O'Rourke you need to be evading, not a problem for high characters like Finn, "Skids" O'Toole or Winifred Habbamock. Finn Edwards in particular with his free roundly evade can kill a minor enemy before he even spends an action! Even if you dont evade though, nailing something with an automatic 1 damage can be so very very helpful, say for example to put a point of damage on an odd-health opponent, also dont forget that there are several 1-health enemies that an angry Delilah O'Rourke will make short work of!

Oh, right, did you notice that she also buffs two stats and has some tank? What IS this crazy value?! Fighting with tends to be expensive, so there's a little anti synergy with her ability, a cheap combat method like Switchblade or Sleight of Hand + Lupara or other inexpensive weapons is recomended (like .18 Derringer for Finn, Enchanted Blade for "Skids").

Between Lola Santiago and Delilah O'Rourke characters sure are spoilt for choice.

Tsuruki23 · 2584
Delilah works very nicely with Hatchet Man by the way. You could make Delilah your main means of damage in a deck if you really want to. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
You don't need to be evading to deal 2 damages with her though: trigger her during the upkeep player window for example, where the enemies will be exhausted from their attacks. — jd9000 · 77
@jd9000 Wow, that's a good point. Nice call. — SGPrometheus · 849
You could do that, but having to wait for an enemy to attack you first is not ideal without cancels like Dodge. Still might come in clutch every now and then, but I wouldnt rely on that. I definitely still think it’s worth evading. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
I'd go evade. You can make it very profitable with 1 or 2 copies of Pickpocketing (2) and Lucky Cigarette Case. This is especially good with Winifred. With her innate card draw, 5 agility, and great rogue ? skills, she can pretty reliably get 4 cards and 2 resources every time. After milking an enemy for a few turns while investigating with Lockpicks, she can kill them off with Delilah and move on to the next thing. — Zinjanthropus · 231
Burglary

Still not very good.

Typically characters need combos and techniques to deliver successful investigate actions, a card that depends on these actions to do anything at all is never goign to be a good for a who'se is less than 4 (on that note, try the 0xp variant in a Rex Murphy deck, all of a suddent you trigger Burglary on every test where you're going after 1 clue anyway and the card becomes a powerhouse.

If Burglary is to be changed to be useful at all, it needs to deliver clues alongside the money, or something other then just money. Perhaps a 1-round shroud reduction?

Whatever it is missing, Burglary just isnt delivering, not because it doesnt deliver enough resources, but because resources alone will never be useful enough to jump through the huge number of hoops that you must to make the card work.

Tsuruki23 · 2584
Still not loving this card but I am seeing some potential for a high economy deck for Finn. He runs Lola with Well Connected and/or High Roller as assets. He is at a static 5 or 6 plus 2 or 3 with WC/HR. Profit 2-5R (usually at the high end) on 2-3 shrouds. Combo that with LCC for card draw. What will Finn use all of those resources for? Run Delilah and Lola together. Not sure if I really love it but I see some potential. — The Lynx · 999
Waterfall, that's a lot of work for just simply winning an investigation to get a clue. But it does give a lot of flexibility that maybe shouldn't be overlooked. — jdk5143 · 98
It would be a good support card for decks that use ressources for everything (like money talks or well connected), but most who can use it have really low INT and hardly access to permanent INT boosts. — Django · 5164
I did say that I didn't really love it but it starts getting feasible with Finn specifically since he starts at a 4 INT and adding Lola synergizes with needing a high resource engine. Add in Delilah for a very useful way to spend those resources and it doesn't look too bad. — The Lynx · 999
On Wings of Darkness

There's a tradition in the Lovecraft Mythos that nightgaunts, frightening monsters that they are, are at times helpful and benevolent. Keeping with that tradition, under the right circumstances, this encounter is a godsend. How's that? At a modest fare of 1 damage and 1 horror, the "Nightgaunt Express" (as my group has come to call it) offers two very valuable services:

1) Saving you actions if you need to move across town. I don't know about you, but out of every action you can take on your turn, Move is my least favorite. It's slow, it does nothing on its own, and depending on the board state, moving toward a location often means moving away from a location you'll need to go to later, costing you even more actions. There's a reason cards like Shortcut, Elusive, and (sometimes) Astral Travel are so highly valued. Actions are precious--far more precious than the health and sanity you lose from failing the test for this encounter. Actions you don't need to spend moving can be spent gathering clues, doing damage to enemies, playing cards, and completing Act objectives. Why walk when you can fly?

2) Rescuing you from danger. This is a fantastic encounter to draw for investigators who are waylaid by (non-Nightgaunt) enemies and are either ill-prepared to fight/evade or whose actions are better spent on other things--seekers mainly, but anyone who just doesn't have the right cards in hand or in play can appreciate a helping claw from our favorite blank-faced tickle monsters.

About the third or fourth time my group drew this during our first playthrough of the Midnight Masks, we learned to love it. It allowed us to budget our actions to do just enough damage to take down a very tough enemy at a crucial moment. It reminded us of the many, many times--playing the 2nd edition of the board game--nightgaunts helped our investigators get across town and past tough monsters on their way to explore a gate. All aboard the Nightgaunt Express!

My group has a word for Nightgaunts that we’ve been using for almost a decade now - “Taxi!” — Death by Chocolate · 1484