This card eats for Silas Marsh! I was mostly using it to thin the chaos bag against the worst spooky tokens for my skill test, then after you draw a token, if you are going to pass (without the ? of unrelenting) use his ability to take it back into hand and return the tokens to the bag. Repeatable for most of a scenario. After a bit, I felt like I was cheating.
A little too strong for 0xp in my opinion.
- Cheap, slotless, amazing in multiples
- Enables the Survivor shroud reduction package to access even more locations
- Self-discards for synergy with the Survivor recursion package.
- Lasts for the entire turn, allowing for some crazy clue collection swings (or TSK concealed card cleanup)
- Can be used on other investigators
I love this card. It's a catch-all defensive titan against so many different treacheries, particularly ones that cause you to lose resources or cards. A resource drain turned into a resource gain. It prints so much free economy you think hyper-inflation would kick in. If you're running low on health or sanity, this card suddenly tops you right back up, in better shape than before. Toss it on Dayana Esperence and suddenly you'll never have to worry about the mythos deck taking anything away from you for a while. This card has turned many dire situations into ones that incur one of the best feelings in Arkham LCG. The one where you smile at the Mythos deck and use its dastardly plans to play into your favor. This card is a turnabout machine, and can cost a middling 2 xp to upgrade between Down the Rabbit Hole and Arcane Research. I strongly consider this card in any investigator that has access to it, and it's a personal favorite whenever I get the pleasure of using it.
As a fun thought exercise, I decided to calculate what's the most damage Flurry of Blows could do. Results are below.
ASSUMPTIONS:
- The investigator using Flurry of Blows (hereafter referred to as "The fighter") is paired with an investigator who plays Shrine of the Moirai on their location.
PROCESS:
- The fighter plays Written in the Stars, discarding Vicious Blow (2).
- The fighter plays the second copy of Written in the Stars, discarding a second Vicious Blow (2).
- The fighter triggers Shrine of the Moirai to recur both copies of Written in the Stars.
- The fighter plays both copies of Written in the Stars, discarding two copies of Strong-Armed.
- The fighter plays Flurry of Blows, choosing Butterfly Swords (5) as the Melee asset.
- First activation: +8 to skill value (+2 from asset, +6 from cards committed by Written in the Stars), succeeds by >1, deals 7 damage (1 from the attack, +2 from each Vicious Blow (2), +1 from each Strong-Armed).
- Fighter chooses to fight again, +8 to skill value (+8 from cards committed by Written in the Stars), succeeds by >1, exhausts Butterfly Swords (5) to deal +1 damage, 8 total damage. Cumulative damage: 15.
- Second activation: +8 to skill value, succeeds by >1, deals 7 damage. Cumulative damage: 22.
- Fighter chooses to fight again, +8 to skill value, succeeds by >1, deals 7 damage. Cumulative damage: 29.
- Third activation: +8 to skill value, succeeds by >1, deals 7 damage. Cumulative damage: 36.
- Fighter chooses to fight again, +8 to skill value, succeeds by >1, deals 7 damage. Cumulative damage: 43.
- Fourth activation: +8 to skill value, succeeds by >1, deals 7 damage. Cumulative damage: 50.
- Fighter chooses to fight again, +8 to skill value, succeeds by >1, deals 7 damage. Cumulative damage: 57.
Grand total: 57 damage dealt.
And all it took was 19 XP, 11 resources, 11 cards, 2 decks, and the stars aligning perfectly!
Now in Hemlock Vale survivors got the much better version of this card, Matchbox.
No xp, no slot, lower cost, is an item (can be found with Backpack and can be scavenged). If you combine two of them you can get the same effect as this 4xp card and you can just use one if you need less shroud reduction. Get them into play with Scavenging and you never run out of uses.