Abigail Foreman

At a glance, you'd think Abigail is Daisy Walker's new best friend. Well, you're probably right - she fits in most Daisy decks with little effort, though you may want a Charisma first. However, there should also be some attention on whether or not she can fit into non-Daisy decks, and that's a lot fuzzier.

Abigail has the ability to repeat any Tome for free. This effect will determine whether or not you include Abigail. You can still get an extra hand slot by attaching Tomes without on them, but there's little reason to do so. Ally slots are valuable, and trading an ally slot for a hand slot is likely not worth it. That being said, most characters who aren't Daisy will have a hard time running numerous books and then constantly burning actions to use them. If someone is only running a single book, Research Librarian's consistency and relative cheapness is going to compete for the same slot, and likely be the cheaper and more reliable choice.

One important note is that the Abigail resolves the effect of the , not the full . This means that costs are not part of the effect, so 'free' doesn't only apply to the action, but to any other costs as well. This allows you to squeeze extra uses out of anything that has limited uses. As a result, you will want to keep a careful eye on Tomes with uses, since they become more tempting than before.

For easy reference, as of March 2020, here are the list of Tomes that have corresponding effects:

There are some definite hits in here - an Old Book of Lore drawing two cards every turn or an Encyclopedia giving +4 would be two very common and powerful examples. Scroll of Prophecies can also let you tear through absurd amounts of your deck, and Otherworld Codex can clear an absurd amount of problems or give you two shots at clearing one. If you're using a couple of these effects of these very often, Abigail can give you a lot. However, those are very action and resource intensive combos to pull out for anybody who isn't Daisy.

If you're using at least four copies of Tomes with ... Well, I hope you're playing Daisy. But it's only in those circumstances that I would say the reliability of Abigail is high enough to justify the cost, given many Tomes cost XP to get in the first place. If your build otherwise functions with all of those Tomes, Abigail is worth looking into. Otherwise, it's best not to put too many actions into a combo that might show off a neat trick or two, but won't reliably help you do things that need to be done.

Ruduen · 1025
You mean Otherworld Codex, not Esoteric Atlas, in your last example. — Death by Chocolate · 1491
Whoops - fixed. — Ruduen · 1025
Bounty Contracts

After my first scenario playing as Tony, I've learned something important about this card:

The resources aren't relevant; the actions are.

To put it more plainly, this asset works best if it gives you six (or more) free fight actions over the course of a scenario. In a vacuum we generally equate a resource as being worth an action, which would imply that you want to place as many bounties as possible on one enemy to convert one fight action into several resource actions. However, when an enemy is engaged with you (or even just at your location), a fight action is worth a lot more than a resource action, so the ability to place bounties is more important than placing more than one bounty.

In conclusion, I recommend putting as few bounties on enemies as possible. You're using this for free fight actions, not free resource actions.

SGPrometheus · 855
It’s not an A or B strategy imo. I have several campaigns with Tony under my belt now and I can say that while primarily you want to extend your bounties (by placing 1s often) there is merit to placing 2 or 3 sometimes. Notably your Long Colts get much larger combat boosts with more contracts, and they refund a bounty on kill. The resources early can also be relevant in the first several scenarios of the campaign. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Getting Asset fast improve your Action efficiency too. — AquaDrehz · 205
Three Aces

I use this card in my Mandy deck and it's promising. It's guarantee success once And you can use it only once per deck shuffle. The down-side is you need to collect many card to win big enough.

However, I summary some card which synergy with this card.

Recommend Combo with Double or Nothing

Recommend Combo without Double or Nothing

But keep in mind that this combo is not defensive. It's for winning big and require a lot of cards !

AquaDrehz · 205
Note that Mandy cant play Lucky Cigarete Case or All in. She's limited to Rogue 0-1 XP assets and skill cards. But i agree it's a strong card in her deck and 2 can be searched with "practice makes perfect" and her ability. — Django · 5171
Sorry, i meant she's limited to rogue Events and Skill cards. — Django · 5171
I've try "practice makes perfect" alerady. Doesn't seem great combo because 1 or 2 would be discarded anyway. These 1-2 card would not so effective after that. Django — AquaDrehz · 205
Practice Makes Perfect puts the card in your hand after you succed at the test — PanicMoon · 2
Yes it put a card of "Three Aces" to your hand but 2 other are still discarded . Also the new taboo make it removed so it have less useful — AquaDrehz · 205
Noob question — Victor.b · 8
Sorry, that i was not i wanted to comment — Victor.b · 8
Ancient Stone

With the increasing amount of card draw in , both upgrades to the stone can be used more consistently and both of them have very powerful effects. Some examples:

All this requires a lot of secrets on the stones (yes you could have 2 in play for double the fun). There's also a few cards that add secrets like Astounding Revelation, Truth from Fiction and Enraptured, but i think they are very inefficient. It's much more effective to increase the difficulty as much as possible when identifying the stone and later replaying it, when it's secrets are used up. After all, card draw also has the advantage of going through your deck more than once, if you're not afraid of your weaknesses.

I wonder why no one mentioned this before, but enter Versatile. I think draw and tutoring effects more than make up for the increased deck size. Use 2 of them to add 1x Double or Nothing and 1x Drawing Thin to your deck. If you use both on a shroud 4 location, the difficulty will be 18, resulting in the same amount of secrets:

You might wonder how you could possibly beat that. If you got 1 xp left, take Three Aces or ask your mystic for Seal of the Elder Sign. Otherwise the best strategy I've found, have Mr. "Rook" look for Drawing Thin early and always take 2 ressources when possible, mostly on low shroud locations or encounter cards you're likely to fail anyway (but please don't increase the amount of horror from cards such as Rotting Remains). That should get you enough so you can resolve the stone mid or late game with Hyperawareness or similar cards, also netting you 4 clues. If you draw you won't be able to pull that off during the same scenario again. So asking your mystic to get Time Warp and keeping it for this test would be a good idea.

Alternatively your could pass the stone, maybe Mr. "Rook" and all of the groups ressources to the survivor with 2 Drawing Thin, while the commits his Double or Nothing. The should have Plucky to use the ressources. He could also use Mr. "Rook" to search for missing Drawing Thin or Plucky. So you'd get 22 shroud/ secrets on the stone.

In case your group has no or , use versatile to get missing cards or Teamwork, if there's no .

Django · 5171
Or just do it with Minh and Miss Doyle in play. Discard Augur for an auto succeed. — Sassenach · 188
Actually, ignore that, it wouldn't work. You need to do an investigate action on the Stone itself. Shame... — Sassenach · 188
Getting 22 charges is overkill. The most I ever got was 14 and I still was never able to empty the Stone — Alogon · 1151
you cannot pass the stone around. "you have identified the stone" is valid for "you" = the investigator/player, that passed the test — Adny · 1
@Adny Source? It's written in the campaign log, which there is only one of. — trazoM · 9
It's called "campaign log" not "investigator log" and these cards arent limited to one person. So if you have a group of 4 seekers, only 1 nees to identify the solution, translate the glyphs,... while everybody can use them afterwards. — Django · 5171
Automatic success effects are counter productive with translating because, per the rules “If a skill test automatically succeeds, the total difficulty of that test is considered 0.” and the Stone will get 0 uses. — Death by Chocolate · 1491
Pay to win with Higher Education is probably the best way to nail that 18 and get your money’s worth. — Death by Chocolate · 1491