I like most of the new tarot cards (Ace of Rods being the only exception). Advantages:

• Provides +1 , which protects against encounter cards and many mystic spells replace other tests with it
• Free to play if in opening hand (mulligan increases your chance of drawing it)
• Does not conflict with existing assets with the new tarot slot
• Is not an item, so it's immune to many treacheries that target these

Disadvantages

• Second copy is a dead card, as players have only one tarot slot and it has no icons to commit
• Conflicts with other tarot cards, if the investigator has access to more than one faction at level 1+
• Ability to play this for free may motivate a player to mulligan important cards, like weapon assets
• Mystic assets are quite expensive, so 3 ressources can be too much
• Without appropriate assets, a bonus to doesn't do anything, so it can be a dead card (beside mythos protection)

I think this is the worst of all the tarot cards because health and sanity are not relevant if you survive and the survivor class arleady has lots of cheap soaks, like Leather Coat, Cherished Keepsake, Madame Labranche and Peter Sylvestre. At least FFG remains consitent in releasing the weakest cards for the survivor faction, most of the time (and the fact that there's no 4 or 5 XP cards for them).

However for Calvin Wright this card is pretty good, as it increases his max health and sanity. So it's like +1 to all his stats.

Together with Able Bodied, this is one of the better Circle Undone skills. All current investigators will get the full bonus early in the game, which helps enable successful skill tests before the investigator’s major assets are in play. A combination of this and Take the Initiative would be solid protection against enemies and treachery cards.

This card is an interesting one because how good it is depends heavily on so many factors it can be hard to evaluate. That said, I ran some initial statistics based on cards such as Olive McBride and Dark Prophecy.

I think aramhorror gave a solid analysis of the capabilities of Song of the Dead if you're not able to get those . It's not worth it. However, the is a part of the card and the ability to control the chaos bag has evolved. I wanted to flesh out the analysis of the probability of getting that in different scenarios.

Each campaign has slight variations in how many skulls are included, and these have a great effect on the default chance you'll draw a without any chaos manipulation. You'll usually find ~18% chance. If you're Jim Culver, you're looking at an extra 6% chance. Basically, 1 out of 5 times, you'll just do 1 damage.

But you are no bystander! You are a mystic will the power and skills to change probability to suit your whims!

The greatest ally to this card is obviously Olive McBride. She modifies your chances of a skull from ~20% to ~50%. This means, on average, you're dealing an extra 1 damage when you attack. This puts it on par with Shrivelling.

But that's not all. For those moments where you absolutely HAVE to get that token, you can use Dark Prophecy in conjunction with Olive McBride. You end up drawing 7 tokens and you have anywhere between 64%-85% chance of getting a skull result. By sealing some non-skull results, you can boost your probability for success slightly higher.

Then there's sealing with cards like The Chthonian Stone, Protective Incantation, and Seal of the Seventh Sign. Sealing provides a slight boost to success rates depending on what tokens are in your bag. By and large, sealing any non-skull token gets you about 1% improvement to base probability, but it compounds up to about a 5% improvement with both token drawing options active. Note that the The Chthonian Stone will have no effect for the first couple scenarios of Carcosa.

You can further affect the chaos bag by purchasing a Grotesque Statue which can further improve your odds.

The very best chances you'll ever get is up to a ~95% success rate with Jim Culver if you seal 3 non-skull tokens and the .

But at the end of the day, we have to look at the cost. Each of these cards costs resources, card space, and actions to play. To full support this card, it'd take 14 resources, 6 cards, and 6 actions to play those cards. That doesn't include the cost of Song of the Dead or the upkeep for Protective Incantation.

Ultimately, your greatest gains are going to be from cards that let you draw more than one token. Sealing tokens helps, but it's often too costly to be worth it in the long run.

The point is, this card isn't bad, but it's not exceptional either. With Olive McBride, it's on par with Shrivelling. It averages to the same damage with slightly less but no downside for drawing a bad token. With Dark Prophecy, it surpasses Shrivelling, but only for the two tests you use with it.

TLDR: In a deck that's built for it, this is slightly better than Shrivelling. Otherwise, go for Shrivelling and it's successors because they upgrade into each other and are more reliable.

I asked about handcuffs and other effects. The reply:

Rules Question: I am a bit confused as to how "Handcuffs" interact with some encounter cards. The Truth is Hidden says "flip" clues to doom, not "place" doom. Would it still flip the doom on Seekers of Carcosa? Mysterious Chanting and Dance of the Yellow King look for a cultist in play. If a cultist or lunatic is handcuffed they cannot ready, but they might be the only cultist or lunatic in play. Are those cards effectively negated?

Greetings,

1) Flipping clues to their doom side is not the same as placing them. In this instance, the token has already been placed on the card, so Handcuffs will not prevent the tokens from then being flipped over to their doom side. Note that the agendas in Echoes of the Past each read “After 1 or more clues are placed on an enemy in play: Flip those clues to their doom side,” meaning the flipping occurs after the tokens are already placed. 2) As for Mysterious Chanting and Dance of the Yellow King, the answer is… sort of. Mysterious Chanting simply adds doom to the nearest Cultist, so if the nearest Cultist is handcuffed, then yes, it will do nothing. Dance of the Yellow King is trickier. It reads: “… If you fail, the nearest Lunatic enemy readies, moves (one location at a time) until it reaches your location, engages you, and makes an immediately attack.” Technically, the movement, engagement and attack aspects of this effect are not dependent on the enemy readying. While typically only ready enemies can move, engage, or attack, there is no rule stopping them from doing so while exhausted if an effect explicitly instructs them to. So strange as it may seem, if the nearest Lunatic enemy is handcuffed, it won’t ready, but it will still move to you, engage you, and attack. (Note that this would be different if the effect used the word “then” somewhere in it, for example “readies, then moves…”)

I understand that both of these answers are tricky distinctions, so I apologize for any confusion.

Cheers, ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Matthew Newman Senior Card Game Developer Fantasy Flight Games