Artistic Inspiration

Artistic Inspiration

This is part of the 'exact success' suite like Antikythera or Chemistry Set, but has a lot of utility in any deck that has enough card draw to sustain it.

Anything that can boost a test result after revealing tokens is extremely useful. Discarding cards for only a +1 isn't a great rate of return, but neither is committing a card to every test just in case you get unlucky. You can shoot for pretty good odds on a test and fix it after the fact if you're unlucky, rather than overspending to make it a sure thing every time.

An easy to miss little addition is that the bonus is skill agnostic. Need a boost to willpower but only have agility in your hand? This will convert that agility to a wild bonus, at the cost of only getting a +1 out of it.

The one caveat to remember is that you don't have a player window to trigger the fast effect after chaos tokens are revealed, meaning you have to discard to refill it before initiating the test. You can't wait to see if you'll need it before you spend the card.

As for synergies, it's especially good for George who wants to pitch cards from his hand, and goes wonderfully with survivor cards like Improvised Shield or Moonstone that have no symbols but need to hit your discard somehow. However, it's uniquely bad for seeker-survivor Minh, who gets way less mileage out of it than any skill card she would otherwise commit. The Dream Diaries give you a free card every round, and while you're probably going to want to spend your Essence elsewhere, it's a painless way to keep it topped up for emergencies.

CombStranger · 281
Crystal Pendulum gives GREAT synergy, esp in 2p. — MrGoldbee · 1480

Eldritch Brand

Eldritch Brand

Regarding the line "Your deck cannot include more than 1 copy of your branded spell." I have two questions.

A.) Does this mean that when I buy this if I brand Sixth Sense (4) I have to also pay to replace any other copies of Sixth Sense as well. Or do we get to replace that card with a level 0 card of choice?

B.) Does the Eldrotch Brand stop same card by title. If I branded Shrivelling (3) for instance could I also have Shrivelling (5) in my deck?

Someguy842 · 2
The spell name is just the title of the card, not the level. Like you can not have two copies of Shrivelling (3) and two copies of Shrivelling (5) in your deck, only two copies accross all levels. (Unless wonky parallel deckbuilding rules allows you otherwise, but that was so far only for events.) If you upgraded two "Sixth Sense" first to level 4 (why? just don't), you will loose one of them. If you had one level 4 and one level 0, or two level 0 before, you can replace the level 0 with any other level 0 card for free, like in any other case, when you are forced to alter yor deck based on new deckbuilding rules. — Susumu · 374
Thanks for the reply. Your argument aligns with how I thought it would work but wanted to verify. I think this is a very solid card with a huge opportunity cost as you have to bank that 10xp will have to see if it makes it to the table outside TFA. — Someguy842 · 2

The Necronomicon

The Necronomicon

In addition to being a theming failure (@fistofyogsothoth covered this nicely already), this card was already too strong when abused alongside recursion effects like Scavenging or Library Docent, or with any of the other obnoxious combos people have already reviewed nicely.

With the Drowned City gator cards being released, the possible combos for this card have gotten even more disgusting: enter Library Pass. Combo this with Scroll of Secrets and now you can, with ZERO REQUIRED, do the following:

  • Put Necronomicon on Library Pass
  • Use all 6 charges (often just grabbing 2 clues for free, or doing 3 free damage and drawing 2 cards)
  • Don't pay the 1 resource and let the book go to the bottom of your deck
  • Use Scroll of Secrets(3) during any window between now and the start of your next turn to put Necronomicon back in your hand (and maybe throw away a weakness while you're at it)

3 rotations of Necronomicon not enough to break the scenario? No problem, recur your Scroll with Library Docent, or put more secrets on it with Eldritch Sophist (or any other secret-adding card), or use Ariadne's Twine.

This card needs to be taboo'd differently; until then I will not be playing it unless I'm in the mood for a free campaign win.

There are a few interesting ways this could be balanced. Perhaps something like

Cost: 10r This card costs 1 less resource for each horror on your investigator FORCED - When you play this card, take 2 horror

I'm also partial to the suggestion that you add a Madness to your deck when playing this. Dark secrets have dark prices!!

DanielD · 3
I like the idea of adding a weakness to your deck! — Valentin1331 · 76635
The issue is that the game designers cannot possibly make it Forbidden, because no one would then want to buy a pack of cards if the big shiny one in the box is forbidden... So they are a bit stuck with this atrocity. — Valentin1331 · 76635
Fair point re: not making the spiciest card in a box Forbidden... and honestly it doesn't really matter much imho, if a card is obviously too strong, it's easy to choose not to play it -- even if they hadn't made Double Double forbidden I suspect a lot of expert players would probably leave it in the binder after trivializing a few scenarios. — DanielD · 3
I think they forbidden double double just because they got tired of answering rules questions about it — OrionAnderson · 111
Double Double isn’t forbidden. — Eudaimonea · 5
They likely mean Double or Nothing (which doubles rewards on succeeding a skill test). Double or Nothing + Quick Thinking was the centerpiece of a LOT of infinite combos before FFG just straight up banned it. — Telosa · 67

Confiscation

Confiscation

Yikes. Shuffles back in if it doesn't hit. Can set you back a billion actions. Can make your dedicated killer helpless in the most critical of times. This card totally screws Mikey's engine of many guns out, pew pewing with each one of them. A weakness that can hit 3+ cards, totally 10+ resources, 3 play actions, 3 card draws worth for a total of 16ish "points" is beyond bad (granted some of those may be partially used up).

Even defending this weakness by calling it a free reload is not compelling. You are always drawing to find new guns. This just increases the chances to find those guns again in your undrawn cards. You're better off arguing that it proc's ETB (and LTB) effects.

AussieKSU · 1112
Seems weird to bring up the shuffle effect when the chance that hits is damn near zero. Not hitting a single gun in your deck before your weakness is barely ever going to happen. I agree it otherwise can be a nasty weakness that hits a bunch of cards, but its not exactly hard to play around "just dont put too many full guns down until you see your weakness" — Spamamdorf · 5
Yeah, this doesn't do as much as you're saying. You usually shouldn't have more than one loaded gun in play anyway, so it just comes down to random timing whether you lose one gun, half a gun, or none (in which case this weakness *is* all upside). If this ever hits more than one loaded gun, you screwed up. — Thatwasademo · 58
And if you use one handed weapons and have Robert out, playing them again brings you an advantage. Also consider fence to bring back your guns fast. All in all it quite easy to work around this weakness. — Tharzax · 1
What's more, the ways to "play around" this weakness are good plays in a Michael deck anyway - e.g. playing several guns quickly is something you want to do in the first place, not a burdensome counter-play that clogs your deck. — AlderSign · 373
@thatwasademo You do probably want more than one gun down, since Michael's refund ability is only once per turn per gun, so if you spend two bullets from the same gun in one turn you're losing value. However, it's not difficult to simply wait until a gun is getting low before committing to playing more of them to mitigate the chance of this weakness hitting 4 fully loaded guns. — Spamamdorf · 5
It's unthematic, but you can run a melee weapon like knuckledusters or switchblade on Michael and use the guns as luxury. — OrionAnderson · 111
@OrionAnderson: That's actually true. The "only" bonus his guns really give him are resources and resources alone don't win you the game. — AlderSign · 373

Blood of Thoth

Blood of Thoth

This card is atrocious. Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder Placeholder

Lucaxiom · 4485
So is this "review". — Susumu · 374
Joins Ethereal Weaving and Henry Wan as one of the most unusable cards in the game. — Prototivity · 1
Oh I gotten Henry Wan to the point of being useful. Stuff the chaos bag with bless and curse tokens and you can reliably draw 3 cards for an action with him. And Ethereal Weaving is nearly unworkable right now, but it would only take one or two more non-fast, non-zero cost spell events with tests on it from future expansion to bring it up to usable. — Lucaxiom · 4485
But Blood of Thoth? It takes FOUR ROUNDS of placing doom on a card your control to get your play action refunded, then FOUR MORE to get an action return, which means after eight rounds of risking early advancement (and losing at minimum 3 per intestigator actions), you get the value equivalent of 2 resources for an action. Swift Reflexes achieves the same deal with no risk. And your not getting a third action; scenarios take a median of 14-16 rounds; to get three procs off BoT is to play it in round 1 or 2, then place 9 doom on only cards you control. It's not worth it. And you can't cheese the card like you can cheese Henry. You can't place offerings on BoT through other means. You can't ready it with mystic cards. You can't cheat the additional action in any way. — Lucaxiom · 4485