Dev response to my rules question about Ursula's interaction with Searching for Izzie:

"Yes, you can use Ursula’s ability to trigger the ability on Searching for Izzie. If you do, you must still spend an additional action, since Searching for Izzie costs two actions, and Ursula’s ability only allows you to take an investigate action (as in, one action)."

I think it is extremely specialized, because rarely would you want this instead of guts. Because you can't rely on drawing a willpower treachery, you need to find ways to make tests more frequently. Obviously, you then look to mystics for that.

Checking some deck building restrictions leads us eventually to Zoey and Rite of Seeking or Mists of R'lyeh. That definitely seems like a functional idea to me, depending on campaign and party make up. I particularly like Forgotten Age Zoey using mists (with Intrepid) to escape a vengeance enemy, moving to a new location, popping a Police Badge and then having 4 actions to use these increased stats (the badge gives you a +1 for mists as well, and if you had Xavier in play as well? Mmm-mmm!)

That's probably best case scenario, so depending on how hard it is to pull off that kind of combo probably determines if this card is playable at all. Would really like the power level of skill cards to be pushed in general.

This and Keen Eye lead me to believe that there could be a "power-turn guardian" deck that sets up to do massively effectual turns. Cards like Police Badge, Leo De Luca, and Double or Nothing all seem to fit that mold, so obviously someone like Zoey or Leo Anderson could pull this off. Intrepid becomes the least dependable part of that combo, however, because it has to lead off with a Willpower test, and on-demand willpower tests are hard to come by in-faction.

I've never liked the 0-lvl Barricade, neither have I seen any necessity to add it in any investigator's deck. But this updated version seems to have some potential. Let's try to find out: does it? For a price of a one card draw and an action you:

• avoid dealing with monsters drawn from encounter deck and enemy weaknesses right now. They still can cause you a lot of troubles should they be hunters;
• help other investigators from the adjacent locations to run away from the monster they can't deal with right now (for a price of one attack of opportunity);
• avoid non-Elite hunters lurking outside. The problem is that this effect is temporal since you usually need to move, and once someone leaves the location, the card effect is gone. And you have to cope with all the hunters at once (on practice, it's rarely a real pile of monsters, but nonetheless). You, however, still can try and manage to spread non-hunters so, that they don't prevent your further advance. The card can be useful for solo seeker who tries to avoid fight as much as it is possible, as well as for a group of 4, since it is a good chance someone of them will draw an enemy during a mythos phase, and with this card attached to the location it means that that investigator will have 3 free actions next turn without a need to deal with the enemy. And the more investigators are in the location, the better chance of that to happen, unless I'm really bad in math and odds. All above said seems pretty decent on paper, but there are many other issues with it:
• there are plenty of other cool cards to buy in seeker's card set and 3 exp is not that cheap;
• universal card >>> specific card. This card is almost of no use if you don't have a scenario location where you are expected to spend several turns. And it happens not that often;
• you're still playing with odds: you don't know whether you will draw some monsters or not. It's not a guaranteed escape from them (well, partially it is, when you play it so, that another investigator from the adjacent location can leap to you). So the card is not good from the perspective of 'action economy' either. At the same time, I would probably add it to my deck closer to the scenario end, since it seems pretty fun to play when you can benefit from it. And it still has 3 different icons so you can improve someone's odds slightly (or significantly if you are Mihn).

If there are unengaged Criminal enemies in play and they do move to the location of the player who drew the card, do all criminal enemies engage the player who drew the card or can you distribute the enemies between players if there are more of them at the location of the player who drew the card (if the enemies do not have the Prey keyword)?

This is kind of a thought-provoking card.

Normally you don't want to fail tests, because failing tests means you lose anything you contributed to the test (skills, resources, items, actions, etc.) in addition to suffering the consequences for failure. Does Take Heart make it worth failing a test?

I think failing a test is normally bad enough that it's not worth deliberately failing in order to get cards and resources. So, I don't think this card will see a lot of play on its own merit. However, I think it has good interactions with the following cards:

• Calvin Wright
• Silas Marsh
• Live and Learn

Calvin Wright is a natural fit for this card - his low stats guarantee that he is going to fail tests, and so using this card in the beginning will help him get his early-game engine going. Silas Marsh also may want this card because he can contribute it to a test and then pull it back to his hand using his ability if the test succeeds unintentionally. Lastly, Live and Learn can let you fail a skill test, collect the benefit of Take Heart, and then let you take the test again with more cards, resources, and a +2 bonus. That's really good.

I don't know if it's worth a card slot on its own - conventional wisdom is that playing cards to avoid failing tests altogether are normally better than cards that let you salvage something out of the failure - but there are some interesting interactions that I think make this card effective if it's used thoughtfully.