How does "Eat Lead!" affect your chances of success?

Using the standard difficulty Night of the Zealot chaos token pool:

+1, 0, 0, –1, –1, –1, –2, –2, –3, –4, skull, skull, hood, tablet, auto-fail, elder sign; with 1 ghoul at your location and assuming the elder sign gives at least +1

Here are the odds. For each, the numbers give your stat versus difficulty, percent chance of success without "Eat Lead!" --> percent chance with "Eat lead", relative risk reduction (how much it decreases chances of failing), absolute risk reduction (how often it makes a difference):

1. 4+, 93.75% --> 100%, infinite (can't fail), 6.25%
2. 3+, 87.5% --> 99.6%, 30, 12,1%
3. 2+, 81.25% --> 97.5%, 7.5, 16.25%
4. 1+, 62.5% --> 87.5%, 3, 25%
5. 0, 25% --> 45%, 1.36, 20%
6. -1, 12.5% --> 24.2%, 1.15, 11.7%

(Sorry about the error with the first post, my new analysis changes my impression significantly.)

As you can see, "Eat Lead!" decreases your chance of failing considerably, especially when you're already at a disadvantage. This means that if the penalty for failing is really bad, "Eat Lead!" can almost guarantee you don't get burned. However, the effect usually doesn't do anything, since the absolute risk reduction is never more than 25%. So the analysis confirms the intuition that the best use is for really bad penalties.

Is "Eat Lead!" worth using? I think most investigators won't use it, because they don't have extra bullets to spare. Personally, I also think that the chances of failing are part of the fun of the game and I don't like the uber chaos-bag manipulating strategy (e.g. Protective Incantation, Seal of the Seventh Sign. So I think I will only use this in versions of Diana Stanley that have firearms, since she also gets the resource/card/willpower bonus that puts the card over the top.

Must admit I'm struggling to think of many investigators who would want to take this card. It does look very tempting when you think about the potential action compression you can get from grabbing 3 clues for 1 action, but there are some pretty substantial drawbacks too. On the positive side, running three of these nets you 3 clues more than you could get from normal investigating, always assuming that you pass both of the skill tests. It can also be recurred with Resourceful two more times for a potential net gain of another 4 clues. Seven extra clues ? Sign me up. The issue though is that you're spending 7 resources to achieve this, so it's not exactly cheap, and in addition to that you're forced to use up 10% of the average deck solely for these cards, so there's an obvious opportunity cost involved. There are no skill pips on the card either, so the first one that you draw is a dead card in your hand that you need to find a way to discard. Wendy and Pete can both do that with ease, but they have base intellect of 3 and 2 respectively so they're unlikely to want to play this since they most likely need to boost the skill checks with other cards to ensure successfully investigating. Yorick obviously doesn't take it for the same reason, likewise Rita. I guess you could make a case for Calvin since most Calvin builds try to focus on getting horror up to 4 as soon as possible, but I still don't think this is a natural fit for him.

The standout of course is Patrice. She can guarantee seeing all 3 of them, has a ready-made way of getting them into the discard pile and has no issues with committing cards to the skill checks. She also has a larger deck size so the opportunity cost of having 3 of these is minimal. The lack of pips on the card itself is still a bummer for Patrice though, and she also has the problem that she needs to be on a location with multiple clues on the turn that she draws the card in order to get any tangible benefit from it, and if she doesn't have any book pips in her hand at the same time then she probably can't pass the test.

Off-class survivors who can take it include both Minh and Mandy. I suspect this is where it's most likely to find a home. High base intellect and the ability to pick and choose when you play it makes it a potentially powerful option for them, and in Mandy's case it should be pretty simple to find them all. That said though, there are better options available to seekers for getting multiple clues. A single copy of Archaic Glyphs would most likely net you more additional clues than you'll get from having 3 copies of this card in your deck, albeit at an xp cost.

I'm certainly going to try this card out in a few decks and see if I'm completely wrong, but as it stands I suspect it's going to fizzle.

I think that Luke Robinson is an interesting investigator. I'm not sure about his power level, but starting in play with such a powerful asset greatly increases his potential during the game. Gate Box essentially gives him 3 uses of Elusive which is super powerful given that Elusive costs 2 XP with the Taboo List, so he basically gets 3 uses of a 2 XP card for free. To be fair, the effect he gets is a little worse than Elusive, as it actually costs an action to move to another location, while Elusive is actionless, but if he waits until the end of his turn, he automatically moves away for free. But that's already great power level anyway, so the action cost can't even count as a disadvantage. And what's more than that, he can add even more uses to his Gate Box with Enraptured and Recharge making that asset even more powerful!

His deckbuilding options are a bit weird, but interesting. Seeker class for a 3-Intellect investigator isn't great but offers him interesting options. I think he might fall in the same category as Roland Banks when it comes to investigating, arming himself with Flashlights and Working a Hunchs and clearing low-shroud locations with regular investigations and using auto-clues for the harder stuff. He can always use Rite of Seeking and Sixth Sense of course, but if he wants to use more physical means for investigating, I think his options are kind of limited.

His ability is also interesting. I think the engagement part is mostly useful for multiplayer, but he can generally equip himself with the right events to make it count. Banish, Storm of Spirits, Drawn to the Flame and Working a Hunch make some examples of some options he can include to make use of his ability, and I think he should also lean on events heavier in order to make it more worthwhile. What's interesting here is that he can combine his ability with Gate Box. Dream-Gate is connected to every other location in play, so he can use the Gate Box to move to Dream-Gate and deal with some enemies or get some clues from any location he wants and then move to any other location he likes! I think that's super neat!

Luke Robinson's weakness is relatively mild in my opinion. With his 9 sanity, I think that the 2 horror it deals to him is a minor punishment. It can even benefit him in some situations, by letting him move to any other location he wants. I believe the worst part of it is that it can lock you down and detach you from the rest of your team for a turn and that can be very punishing in certain situations. That's, of course, assuming that he can't take a successful 6-difficulty investigate test, which I believe will be the case most of the time, but if he somehow can, he can mitigate this problem. If he runs Mr. "Rook", though, he can use this weakness to his advantage, as Mr. "Rook" will give him more control of when he draws it and possibly turn this downside into a benefit, by letting him draw it at an unimportant time and allow him to move to any other location he wants for free.

As a final note, I think De Vermis Mysteriis becomes a lot better with Luke Robinson. All those mystic spells that fight or evade can now be used against enemies at a connecting location and let you avoid the attack of opportunity that De Vermis Mysteriis would cause. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the cost is paid BEFORE the ability is initiated, which makes De Vermis Mysteriis usuable while you are at a connecting location and when you initiate the ability you can choose to use Luke Robinson's ability and play the event as if you were at a connecting location, therefore making it usuable with events that fight or evade enemies while you are not engaged with anything. And, as a bonus, his combined access to Mystic and Seeker cards gives him good options to fuel the book, making it possibly a viable choice for him.

Just as Monstrous Transformation is the dream rewards of a few investigators (Calvin, Preston, and arguably Diana), this might be a side scenario reward that Tommy, Leo, Zoey, and Mark salivate over.

Mark adds "draw a card" to the activation of this ability, Leo massively reduces the cost of playing them and is likely playing them alongside a whole host of allies who have means of dealing one damage. Zoey can combine this with her cross to just smite enemies where they stand.

Though for Tommy, most allies do not have more damage+horror than they do initial cost. Brother Xavier and similar cards reach +1 on the total, meaning you eventually profit if you max them out perfectly. However, you usually break even. The Burkes break even fairly easily, and have the potential of 2 resources of profit. In my experience you often get to cash out an ally for -1 their max, which means the Burkes are capable of breaking even and loading Becky more often than not.

Just have to deal with Egypt being pretty spicy. At least unlike the other two rewards, it doesn't matter how bad dealing with the cultists goes as long as you managed to wake everyone up. No fighter hates the Khopesh of the Abyss either, so if you think you can take the heat, visit Egypt. If you do well on your first excursion you might be able to score a nice weapon for clearing generic monsters.

If you are short of cash, XP and require significant set up this card can help you to pay for those core assets you desperatly need at a very cheep price (1XP for 3 copies). I have been testing this card in the 19XP enemy management decks (Leo A. and Rita Y.) that I will be taking to Arkham Nights 2019. In the context of stand alone mode where XP is very limited If you don't want more Weaknesses and multiplayer where you tend to have actions to spare (specially as the enemy manager) I would recommend this. On the other hand, If you have acces to Drawing Thin and ignore the updated Taboo List and/or if you alredy have Hot Streak in your deck, then you can definitely skip Easy Mark. Also the reaction effect is very sweet but is very unreliable so I rate this card considering that I will most likely be expending an action to play each copy of Easy Mark.