Alice Luxley is one of those wonderfully thematic cards that exists in the wrong class of investigators for playability. Guardians as a whole want to kill the enemy standing in front of them instead of investigating to get a clue first. In addition to that there aren't many eligible investigators that even care about the +1.

The ideal investigator for Alice would be a strong evader and cluegetter. This combo doesn't exist within the Guardian class and most of the secondary Guardian classes. There are some combos that can trigger Alice's damage without evasion but they are usually not easy to set up or easy to repeat several times in a scenario.

Mark Harrigan - Zoey Samaras - William Yorick - these Guardians don't care about the boost and aren't active cluegetters typically

Tommy Muldoon and Leo Anderson would be boosted to a 4 which is nice but there are better allies for each of them to choose and gathering clues isn't what they are known for.

Carolyn Fern seems like an obvious choice for Alice Luxley and since Alice Luxley is one of the my favorite cards I played this combo in Carcosa with Akachi. The shortcoming of the combo is that it is hard for Carolyn to trigger Alice's damage since that usually requires taking an Attack of Opportunity. Combo'ing Alice Luxley with Guard Dog and/or Brother Xavier works pretty well though. Carolyn Fern can also play Scene of the Crime or Working a Hunch to trigger it. Overall my thoughts on Alice with Carolyn were decent. There were times that I took an AOO just to trigger Alice's damage because I didn't have any other damage options and I was split up from Akachi.

Joe Diamond is another Guardian (essentially a Guardian) that can definitely benefit from Alice Luxley. I paired Joe up with Rita Young in the hopes of her leaving evaded enemies all over the place but this never really materialized. Rita just killed them with the Ornate Bow or Joe finished them off with his weapons. I ended up triggering Alice's ability <5 times in the entire campaign even though she was frequently in play.

Roland Banks is a better combo than Joe for reasons mentioned in another review but the situations where you have multiple enemies at one location and clues remaining are not that common. Possibly in 3-4p but even then you are talking about situational occurences rather than easy to setup ones.

Diana Stanley - I haven't played her yet or even looked at deckbuilding options. She has a 3 and 3 so it might be possible but I think there are likely better allies and themes for the deck.

Rex Murphy - I guess this a possibilty for Rex since he can't even kill rats but taking attacks of opportunity are an inefficient way to kill things. Don't expect me to play this combo just to see if it is worth it.

The two ideal investigators for Alice Luxley are a pair of Rogues that can easily evade enemies and work best with weaponless decks. Jenny Barnes and "Skids" O'Toole

I played Alice Luxley with Jenny and Alice dominated the final two scenarios after dissappointedly only getting played in one other scenario. Bad luck on the card draw but Jenny/Alice was awesome. Jenny could evade easily with Suggestion(1) and easily pick up clues with Lola Santiago, Lockpicks or Intel Report. Alice did around 5 damage in each scenario and the highlights included singlehandedly taking out the Sacrificial Beast in one scenario and getting in 3 damage on the final monster in Carcosa.

Alice Luxley is a tough card to really make work but she remains one of my favorites and I would definitely play her in a Jenny or Skids deck. Possibly in Carolyn. Most Guardians would just as soon kill an enemy outright rather than try to setup a situation where they can do a point of damage.

Given the age of the last review, I thought I'd update the list of Relics and Spells available to damage this. In broad categories and not counting upgrades, they would be:

0 XP, Damage on Any Success:

• Enchanted Blade
• Shrivelling
• Spectral Razor
• Storm of Spirits
• Wither
• Blinding Light

1+ XP, Damage on Any Success:

• Spirit Athame
• Ornate Bow
• The Hungering Blade
• Timeworn Brand
• Blood Eclipse
• Shards of the Void
• Song of the Dead

1+ XP, Damage on Other Effect:

• Ancient Stone - Requires a previous purchase/identification

1+ XP, Special:

• Mind Wipe

To summarize, Mystics have plenty of options to deal with this, and Guardians aren't completely dead in the water at the start, thanks to Enchanted Blade. You may still want Fine Clothes if you can't reliably fetch your blade, potentially replacing it as you go. Later on, it's more up in the air, but Guardians may want to veer towards Timeworn Brand. While The Hungering Blade will also do the trick, its reliability means it's not for everybody.

Other classes didn't have the same damaging options available, so they'll want to focus more on tools to boost their . Evasion is still an option if you're able to avoid running back into it after you're done, and Waylay could help you bypass the fight altogether.

This cycle has been really good for success rogue so far, but I don't see this performing particularly well.

If you have streetwise, and would succeed at the skill test without any investment, then you could spend 2 resources to gain 5, which is 1 action for a net gain of 3 resources.

That's assuming you don't need to pump up your intellect to pass the skill test reliably in the first place. And 1 action for 3 resources isn't THAT great in the class that gets lone wolf and hot streak.

If this upgrade reduced the shroud value instead of giving you (Potentially!) more resources, I'd call it a huge win. As is... kinda bad.

When I first saw this card, I probably had the same thought as you.

"Oh, that's cute, I guess."

This card is actually an incredible payoff for success rogue for two reasons.

1. Reducing difficulty is incredibly useful. Do a big skill test, this reduces the difficulty of the next one by 3, that's pretty much a guaranteed evasion or investigate on most scenarios. It means you can carry over the benefits of a big combo skill test to another one, which is real helpful if there's multiple things you need to accomplish.

2. Double or nothing. You use flashlight/stealth to get a free skill test, commit momentum and overachieve, then if you punch something with double and switchblade, you're attacking for 4 damage against a max difficulty of 4. (Originally 4 combat, -3 from momentum, x2 for double gets you to a difficulty of 2, overachieving requires getting at least 4) which is pretty incredibly reasonable, especially if you've drawn other stuff.

The card could be used as though it read "if you succeed by 3, your next skill test is automatically successful unless you reveal an auto fail" or "if you succeed by 3, your next skill test overachieves," so it's great as a flexible tool for setup AND payoff, which is the kind of thing rogue needed.

So, this card has an error on it. As written, the fight action does not cost ammo. However, Matt has already confirmed in the Mythos Busters discord server that this ability should function like every other firearm, so , spend 1 ammo: Fight.