Summoned Hound

I've been looking at this card for a while now cause the free action looks strong, but i think FFG overdid it with the costs and risks involved, mainly these:

  1. The main issue being, once you draw Unbound Beast the Summoned Hound will leave for the rest of the game, because the beast sets the hound aside and does not return it in any way. This is a mayor disadvantage because every card you draw could be it's end (like the next one after playing it) and gets worse the more you draw. Can be avoided if you "put it into play", not adding weakness to your deck.

  2. Arcane slot is a big problem for mystics cause most want to have a spell for investigate and combat. Then there's also a lot of support spells like Scrying or Seal of the Seventh Sign. Works better for off class mystics who don't need their arcane slots to win the game.

  3. Ally slot cause there's lots of great allies in the game.

  4. Base value of 5 is enough for shroud 3/ fight 3 on standard difficulty. Mystics tend to have many icons on their cards and stack boosts so it won't help on more difficult tasks and risks retaliate or haunted penalties. Again off class mystics work better when they stack or boosts.

  5. Update: If you reshuffle you deck after killing the Unbound Beast and draw it again, it's revelation will likely set it aside. But that draw is still wasted.

Avoiding the weakness

Django · 5176
Patrice has the icons to use it well and can take A Chance Encounter 2 as a way to put it into play and skip the weakness. — StyxTBeuford · 13072
You can either use cards like A Chance Encounter (2) to put the ally into play and bypass shuffling the weakness into your deck, or you can use cards like Alyssa (and/or Scroll of Secrets, lol...) to try to prevent yourself from ever drawing the weakness. If you're Diana, you can cancel the Unbound Beast with Dark Insight. A free action almost every round is very strong, so this card definitely takes some thought to put in your deck. I agree with you though that I don't know whether the extra work to put this card into your deck is worth the effort, though, but it'd be interesting to try. — iceysnowman · 164
The hound isn’t unique so you can have more in play, even over several players. But Alyssa occupies another ally slot... might be worth it if you build your deck around them. — Django · 5176
My Skull King Jim deck can pull off the Summoned Hound I think. He runs Alyssa Graham which can bury both his weakness and the Unbound Beast on the bottom. And he uses Alyssa, St. Hubert — The Lynx · 1024
Completing my comment - St. Hubert's Key and Hawk Eye Camera for Intellect boosts. The Summoned Hound would almost be one guaranteed clue per round with him. That is crazy. He can also kill the Beast if it does get out. — The Lynx · 1024
If Alyssa spots the beast you could also use eureka or arcane initiate to reshuffle your deck, intead of adding doom to her. — Django · 5176
Actually my favorite part of using Alyssa is to minimize the times that I shuffle my deck after sticking something on the bottom so I don't include cards like Eureka. I want to never see that card again. Of course the encounter deck doesn't always cooperate. — The Lynx · 1024
Call of the Unknown

Just play Ursula and found this Weakness is never discarded. So I need to move and investigate every turn since I draw it around mid-game. Then I found some card to include for mitigate your tempo

  • Place the upgraded Shortcut save you a lot when you running around central location.
  • Also Using it with Pathfinder would make you way around more efficient.
AquaDrehz · 205
Yup, play Ursula the way she asks you to play her and her weakness shouldn’t be too bad. — StyxTBeuford · 13072
the only annoying thing is if you draw it before all of a scenario is explored (in TFA), really slows you down to have to backtrack, at least in solo (in multi-player, you might be jumping back and forth when investigating to get more use out of Fieldwork — Zinjanthropus · 233
Sharp Vision

This card looks like the good ol' Deduction but for survivors. It is a perfect card for Minh Thi Phan as she does normal investigate actions without using assets such as Fingerprint Kit. Her signature ability which gives +1 when commiting cards plus the 3 pips from this card and her basic stats (4 intellect) gives a really good 8. Also, I find this card really great for solo Silas Marsh. It can boost his poor intellect to 5 and depending the outcome of the chaos bag, he can decide if he want to commit or not this card. Also, boost this sweet 5 with a Grisly Totem and Resourceful and you will never need Newspaper again!

Sotosprotos · 86
Excellent analysis! This card makes me hope for a high INT Survivor. — mogwen · 254
I wonder if Minh actually wants to sub out something like Winging It for this. Winging It avoids the King in Yellow debacle, and does not have the succeed by 2 conditionality. Plus this card costs xp, something that might hinder Minh since she has a long list of things she wants upgrade before this. I think I would rather spend the 2 XP on a Cornered for Minh than 2 XP for 2 copies of Sharp Vision. Maybe its just me — chirubime · 28624
I think this is a very good card for Minh and maybe Wendy but for lower Int investigators I don't think it matches up to the essentially testless clue gathering options that they have. They can use Flashlight or Winging It (or Lantern) to reduce shroud and combo it with LWIF or Lucky. Testless clues at 3 or 4 shrouds is really powerful. — The Lynx · 1024
Of course Mihn needs the Cornered as fast as she can get it. But this card is a good boost in the overall great choices she has between Survivor and Seeker. I haven't tried this build yet as I got Dream Eaters after I finished the Campaing I played with Mihn (Path to Carcosa) but for sure, the next time I will return to Arkham with her, I will spend my old exps for those two copies. I will post again my thoughts! Also about the question of TWWaterfalls: You are correct. But the idea to this is that you can recycle this card using resourcefull. You can also use all those cards that you mentioned combined to achieve the best possible result. — Sotosprotos · 86
An important difference between Sharp Vision and Deduction is that the former requires an "basic" investigate action. So you cannot use it together with Lantern, Old Keyring, Flashlight ... — NoobTheReal · 1
Empty Vessel

This one seems to be a very interesting card for Guardians since defeating enemies is basically what they do, but this card has a catch to it. Of current guardians, all but Carolyn Fern are able to take this card. A pity for Carolyn Fern, since it is the bonded card, not this card that heals horror.

For Leo, Mark and Roland this card has to compete with the always powerful Police Badge and the potential Police Badge/Well Prepared combo with one additional icon compared to this card. It also has to compete with the strong Hallowed Mirror. While also healing, the Hallowed Mirror does not cancel an icon from the chaos bag but does not need charges and does not cost any xp, so I think I would prefer the Hallowed Mirror over this card because of this. With Zoey Samaras, this card competes with one of the strongest investigator-specific cards in the game which is of course Zoey's Cross with an obvious outcome.

Of non guardian investigators Ursula is able to take this card currently (Father Mateo can take blessed only up to level 3), but she is very bad at defeating enemies with her 1 so she is not the obvious investigator to charge this card.

There is just one investigator I think of, when looking at this card, and this is (it might be a big suprise so tension is rising): Akachi Onyele - she can take "uses: charges" cards up to level 4. She does not really require the Holy Rosary because of her powerful stat and she definitly is able to kill monsters and she really like cancellation of special symbols for her spells and she starts this card with 1 charge and also can charge it with tokens. Akachi Onyele is a very potent monster slayer for a non Guardian so it might be worth a shot.

As a conclusion the most obvious investigator for this lv. 4 guardian card might be: A Mystic.

thakaris · 199
Guardians have some of the least useful elder signs and also have access to trusted, pushing this card into major feasibility territory. The only issue is the effective additional 3xp cost for Charisma — Difrakt · 1336
Aaaaand whoops wrong card review — Difrakt · 1336
It might be great for Akachi, but I don't think we can overestimate the value of a guaranteed attack (or three) against bosses for Roland, Mark, Leo, and Tommy. Healing 3 horror in a round (while dealing damage) is also probably enough to let you soak another attack from the boss, which might be worth 3 actions over the badge's two. All that said, it does feel like a very late upgrade card, after you've gotten your weapons up to god-killing mode. — SGPrometheus · 857
Also I just realized the fast action isn't forced; if you know a boss is coming later in a scenario, you can wait to swap this out until after the boss pops up. Also, i thought wish-eater canceled the auto-fail, which it doesn't, but I still think this is better than the badge because of the auto-heal. — SGPrometheus · 857
Just played a TCU campaign as Akachi, and after i got this every scenario basically turned around once it flipped. One health/sanity left with shriveling (5) out? Let's just cancel those pesky tokens that would kill us. Using rite of seeking? Continue taking actions despite bad draws. Additionally, if bad tokens account for most of the -3 or less modifiers in the bag, you increase your odds of success significantly with this out. The hardest part was taking enough damage before flipping it to really feel like i was wringing maximum value out of it. Can't wait to try with an actual guardian. — SGPrometheus · 857
Quick comment about this review. Current rules ruling on March 17th means Carolyn CAN take this card since the bonded cards do heal. Just in case someone reads this review and @ thakaris hasn't updated the review to reflect that. — techoatmeal · 15
@techoatmeal: as per current ruling (August 2023), Caroline can't take it neither can Vincent (see FAQ above) — thakaris · 199
Zoey can take it now, and she's a good killer so it works well for her soul farming the charges and then flipping it on hard checks — Gapaot · 1
Delilah O'Rourke

One of the two incredibly strong Rogue cards added by Where the Gods Dwell. Strong soak paired with 2 attributes and a damage ability - this is so strong, that you have to really argue why you might not include this card. Rogue allies always have been pretty good so far, with arguably Lola Santiago being one of the strongest with the powerful resource generating abilities of a Rogue. Delilah O'Rourke is basically the final brick to seal Leo De Luca's fate in Rogue decks, since with Dario El-Amin, Lola Santiago and now Delilah O'Rourke to compete for the ally slot I don't see Leo De Luca in my decks. Anyway, especially with Finn Edwards free evade this is so incredibly strong especially when considering the evade value of the most enemies in the game. I did not count the absolute values here but my gut feeling is that most hunting enemies with high health and fight have low evade values.

thakaris · 199
I just finished The Boundary Beyond in TFA with Finn and Delilah and she is as awesome as you can imagine. Lone Wolf almost sustained her Assassin costs each turn. I disagree a little that Leo is out of Rogue decks at any point in a campaign. Delilah is another great option but Leo is still the best combo with Charisma out of most options. It would be interesting to see what kind of combo you could pull off with Lola and Delilah. Somebody would have to have a ridiculous economy although that is possible if you can't Paint Hot Streak with Sefina a couple of times or Lone Wolf Jenny with a pair of Hot Streaks. Dario is a poor pairing with either imo since you will spending resources like crazy. The Cat Burgler will likely be totally forgotten due to yet another fantastic Rogue ally. And the Cat Burgler is really strong himself. — The Lynx · 1024