At the time of writing — Empower Self is fresh off the press — these cards are generating much discussion, here and elsewhere, positive and negative. Rightly so, they are interesting cards.

Two points to get everyone on the same page: (1) The Myriad keyword means that we may purchase all three for two experience points, but we don't have to: we can choose the one or the two we want the most. (2) The ability (+2 to a skill) is separate from the constant ability (ignore a substitution), can be used independently of it, and much of these cards' value comes from that option.

Cost

Let's be precise about the cost of getting all three into play: three cards, three actions, nine resources, and an arcane slot. To merely call that costly is to gloss over just how expensive the triple is — we need to ask ourselves: what else could we accomplish with three other cards, three actions, nine resources, and our arcane slot? Needing to search for these cards (with Lucid Dreaming for instance) adds to their effective cost. Uncage the Soul helps, but it doesn't make the issue go away: Uncage is one of several economy cards we can choose to include at the expense of other useful cards, and Mystics often already use Uncage with no shortage of targets.

Obviously, if we only plan on getting two copies or one copy into play, the cost is more manageable.

Other Skill Boosters

Empower Self, as a level two, once-per-turn skill booster, is worth comparing to the Carcosa cycle of talents: Well Prepared, Quick Study, Cornered, High Roller, and most significantly, Recall the Future.

Let's compare one copy of Empower Self to one Recall the future. Empower provides a bigger effective skill boost (that is, has a larger effect on our odds of success) to one test a round than Recall, but Recall is a resource cheaper and is slotless. Recall can also be used for any skill and often doesn't exhaust — we can pose the question: "Throughout an entire round, which asset is more likely to turn a failure into a success?" and Empower's only advantage seems to vanish.

Let's now compare two or three copies of Empower Self to two copies of Recall the Future. Triggering both Recalls provides an effective skill boost that is close to, and in some cases identical to, a true +2. Recall is still more flexible and Empower can never be used for .

While two copies of Recall costs four experience to Empower's two, I think the difference is stark enough make the comparison worthwhile: for the sake of skill boosting, I would rather have two Recalls in play than all three Empowers. This is without even considering that the former only costs us two actions, two cards, four resources.

Empower Self is only worth taking if we can also get value out of its other ability.

Ignoring Willpower Substitutions

There are three issues to overcome to make this effect useful:

(1) Much of the value of spells is in their substitution to begin with — Rite of Seeking compares very unfavorably to Fingerprint Kit as does Shrivelling to the .32 Colt. Sixth Sense, substitution aside, provides a marginal benefit which would be hard to justify. This issue is worse with higher level spells as the + they grant is worthless if we aren't using .

(2) Using for investigation spells or for combat spells is a build-around type of effect, but we are only allowed one copy of the relevant Empower Self. If we, for example, build a deck that focuses on boosting at the expense of but include Rite and Sixth Sense, then those cards are not useful until we find our single copy of Empower Self: Acuity — and if we have a deck that boosts both skills then we don't need Acuity at all.

One perk of the effect is that it allows us to use cards like Deduction or Vicious Blow with spells, but similarly, those skills need to be useful without Empower Self to be worth including in the deck.

(3) Empower wants to be used with spells, but competes with spells for arcane slots. Being able to use for Rite and for Shrivelling isn't much help if we can only have one of those spells out. Sign Magick addresses this issue but has its own cost.

The strongest spell events that use don't substitute it, they add it: Read the Signs, Spectral Razor, and Ethereal Form; though Storm of Spirits and Blinding Light do have their uses.

Who might want it?

Marie Lambeau comes to mind because she has a compelling reason to use spells besides — her additional action. A thrifty Marie might take Magnifying Glasses for her hands and take Sixth Sense to capitalize on her ability. Sixth Sense is then useful without Acuity but gets better with it. And while Marie is spending two experience on Acuity, she can pick up Alacrity for free as a kind of mostly-superior Trench Coat.

Diana Stanley is another interesting case — she likes using because she can get it up to 5 or 6, but she can't necessarily depend on it so Empower Self could be helpful. Synergy with Well Prepared bares mentioning because each Empower has double icons of its corresponding skill. Diana has the option of using her ability on Empower if she's done with one of them — but only after it actually ignores a substitution.

There are a few good synergies here to bring up. First, Minh and any version of Grisly Totem.

With Minh, each one of these can be +2 Wild, therefore making it roughly equivalent to 3 Unexpected Courages, which you can pull back from discard at will. That's honestly pretty great, and at its best, is pretty close to a never ending stream of Unexpected Courage.

With Grisly Totem, you'll get the exact same effect. If you have the Seeker Grisly Totem, you could even be drawing a card each time as well.

With Minh AND Grisly Totem, you can stack those effects. That means you'll be able to get +3 Wild icons, 3 times, on a card you can pull back to your hand from discard for 1r.

Of course, to maximize these interactions, you want to commit one and only Glimmer per round, as these abilities have per round limits.

Keep in mind that pulling back 3 Glimmers at once is a burst of 3 cards in your hand. This can empower other effects which note how many cards are in your hand, such as Curiosity, Higher Education, and so on.

Outside of Minh and Grisly Totem, the other great use of Glimmer is as discard fodder for something like Wendy, Pete, or Cornered. You can happily chuck these cards into your discard pile whenever and draw them all back when you need to. Of course, other cards are discard fodder (Winging It, et al.), however those cards can't bounce back into your hand nor do they have icons in case you need commitments. Due to its easy recursion and flexibility of use, Glimmer is the most reliable discard fodder currently in the game.

Quick question on this. It's apparently been confirmed by Matt that there's a limit of one Essence of the Dream in your bonded cards. There doesn't seem to be a limit on the number of Dream Diaries you can have in play though. Does this mean that you can theoretically hold two of them at the same time and double trigger the boost ? I'd assume that you can't have two versions of this one in play and commit for an effective +6 every time you're at a 4 shroud location, but you could for example have the Explorer and the Child version in play simultaneously and then contrive to be at a high shroud location while you have 8 cards in hand to achieve the same effect ? I don't see any obvious reason why not. It's probably not worthwhile, but with the right build this could theoretically turn into a test-passing monster. Minh could theoretically commit a +7 boost to any test anywhere on the map every turn.

I doubt one thing... Can you investigate un your location and get a clue from a conected but non-discovered location? I mean, from a location that you never get in before.

I don't fully understand how It works. Thank you for the answers...

These cards are absolutely 100% crazy nutso bonkers good. I thought they would be ‘ok’ after all they’re quite expensive and limited to a once-per-turn boon but I was deeply wrong in that analysis. Play Sefina and investigate once per turn as if you were a 4 intellect Seeker. Punch an enemy or a locked door at 4 despite being a weak butt. Evade that 20 health monstrosity despite being some slow loser like Jim.

They’re slow and expensive, an issue which is only slightly salved by Uncage the Soul and finding the ones you want can be difficult unless you invest in Lucid Dreaming so I could see this being an issue on ‘sprint’ scenarios like Essex but they’re still far too good to pass up. In my opinion they slot best into Sefina right now as they complement her dawdling, defensive stat line nicely, she can make better use of the Alacrity boon than most, and she can more readily pay for them.