I tried this card on a Jenny Barnes deck in SOLO Play on STANDARD difficulty. My idea was to stack his boosts with St. Huberts Key to get +2 willpower and intellect. Playing him though almost got me killed on the first scenarios of the Carcosa campaign. At first sight he may look playable, fun or even good, but believe me, he is BAD (considering the current card pool). Let me explain:

-He costs too much resources to play, wich makes it even more difficult to gather the 10 resources you need for his static boosts. This also means he is to expensive to effectively serve as a meat shield.

-He is waaaay to slow, specially on the early scenarios. Remember that you don't have Hot Streak from the start, so collecting the 14 resources you need to play him and get the boost will take forever, even if you are playing Jenny Barnes with Lone Wolf. Consider that you normally also have to expend resources playing other assets or boosting your skills with Hard Knocks or other talents.

-His trigger ability "Gain two resources" is not that bad on multi player, but in Solo play it's not very useful. Consider that on average you will be loosing one action per turn fighting enemies or resolving treacheries. If you then constantly use 1 action to gather 2 resources from Dario you will only have 1 action left to advance the game, meaning you will loose to the Agenda.

-There are too many better allies than him (Leo de Luca, Lola Santiago, Dr. Milan, Beat Cop, etc.) and there are many other easier ways to boost your intellect and willpower. The willpower stat is by the way not very important for rougues anyways (except for Sefina maybe) and you are better of boosting it with Talents like High Roller or Moxie.

-Even when I managed to stack this guy with St. Huberts Key, what he provides wasn't worth the enormous effort. By the time you have it all set up you would already have drawn Leo de Luca anyways, wich is a thousand times better. If you are going Jenny Barnes clue gatherer play Dr. Milan instead.

-With his wicked smile he tempts you not to use the 10 resources you have put on him for the static boosts. Soon enough you will find yourself not playing important cards or not overcommitting to important skill tests, just to keep him happy (charged with 10 resources). I warn you, the over commitment to this guy could mean your demise.

In conclusion/Summery: His smile fair as spring, as to put him in your deck he draws you. His tongue sharp and silvery, as to invest 14 resources on him he implores you. Your stats he boosts, as he swears to adore you. Though dues need be repaid, and the overcommitment will ruin you. His slow set up will snare you in bonds, as the Agenda advances glowing’, a fire. To gore and torment you, till the stars expire. XD

I think this card is a bomb. I think this immediately becomes one of the highest-priority Seeker XP cards. You'll still want to pick up Higher Education first, of course (which will conveniently help with identifying the Ancient Stone.) But I wouldn't wait too much longer to get this going. This card is going to make you win much more reliably.

Test-free damage is golden in this game. There's a reason why Agnes Baker is almost always ranked as a high-tier investigator, why Zoey's Cross is one of the best special investigator cards, and why Beat Cop II is one of the best uses of 2 XP. The primary source of challenge in this game comes from enemies, and being able to kill them or finish them off without any skill tests makes the game way, way easier.

So I expect this card to be superb. In addition to being test-free, the damage is quite efficient! Depending on circumstances, you may not have to spend an action at all. If you do have to spend an action to get a needed point of damage, you get a draw out of it.

Obviously, you can combine this with Cryptic Research, Search for the Truth, Analytical Mind, and the like, all of which are just absurdly powerful plays. But don't forget the simpler skill cards like Perception, Overpower, Eureka!, etc.

The synergy for Daisy with Old Book of Lore is going to be incredible, too, although the hand slot consideration makes this tricky for her. Still, that's going to be extremely powerful when it works.

I think the number of secrets you need to make this a good card is actually quite low. Even at four secrets, I think this card would absolutely be worth it. You should be able to get a lot more than that--I see no reason why you shouldn't get seven secrets on this thing--which makes this just amazing, in my opinion.

Finally, remember that reaction triggers are optional. So if you find yourself in a situation where you're drawing a card but the point of damage won't make a difference, you don't have to waste a secret.

Who Wants This?

First, this must be compared to Higher Education, as that gives you better pump rates for , Seeker's primary strength, and is a Permanent. If you take this, it's for the boosts.

So who wants this? Let's glance at the list:

• Daisy Walker - No
• Rex Murphy - Nah
• Minh Thi Phan - Baseball Bat build?
• Ursula Downs - lolz nope
• Norman Withers - no sir

But what about...Roland Banks! Sure...if he had any money. Maybe if you went with a clue-intensive Roland build with Dr. Milan and Scientific Theory. I think his Replacement cards from The Dirge of Reason would fit nicely into this deck. But Roland also gets by in low player counts by just picking up clues through his ability + cheats like Art Student and Working a Hunch.

The last thing I can think of is to use this in scenarios that want you to make checks for things other than clues - Where Doom Awaits and The Last King come to mind.

Overall, this card's time has not yet come. I expect we'll get a gator that has some fighting chops, and this will be a great include in that gator's deck.

Olive Mcbride is a half-decent asset. Her shtick has been mathed into oblivion by better smart guys then I so I wanna add my practical 2-cents to the mix.

A note on the math: Numerical statistics aside, Olive guarantees that you cannot draw a particular token when you don't want to. This means that She's actually great when you're beating the test by +5 or +6 anyway to account for every token in the bag. Think of it this way: The worst token in the bag is , if you're putting lots of power into a test to get to +5/+6 then you can use her to ensure that the doesn't ruin your big swing, you'dd need truly awful luck to pull something like a -4, -5 and an in a single Olly trigger, heck you can even spend extra to account for this particular situation. In short, Olive McBride is good when you do really big skill checks.

Olly is however obviously bad outside her buddy-buddy investigators, namely Jimmy and Mateo. Generally though she isn't all that good for them, Jim's ability does good work even when she's not around and no campaign has enough skulls in the bag to warrant madly pulling tokens out for the fun of it. I'm a bigger fan of her for Father Mateo since she greatly increases the rate at which the shows up and that is good for us, in a pinch you can dig for the too for his 1/scenario ability. For Mateo especially she's good since you can trigger her on the occasional , or treachery that you don't think you're likely to succeed on, either you fail the test anyway or draw an for great profit.

My biggest negative realization about Olive McBride, and the reason I wanted to try her in the first place, is that I figured that she'dd increase my success chance at +-0 with Jim or Mateo, the fact is that she does'nt, all too often i'dd try at +-0 and the first token I drew was just plain 0, only to be followed by some minuses, failing the test. Also, attempting tests with Olly as Mateo at -1 or less, hoping to beat the test with an , is a waste of time, this very much broke the card for me so I've stopped playing it for now.

Second note on the math: Olive McBride has a funny success curve, don't trigger her when you're +1 or +2 over the skill check. Personally I quit using her at +3 (too many 2x(-2)'s!). If you're Jim then +3 or higher is the ideal spot to trigger her to net increased success rate, Mateo should go for +4 before triggering her.

Final note. As a practical note. Olive does interact nicely with Counterspell, Defiance, Hypnotic Gaze, and other stuff that manipulates or interacts with the token bag, but the very very best card in this interaction is Recall the Future. Normally you use Recall the Future to name a token that you can then use Recall the Future to cover, say trying a test at +2 and naming the -3. With Olive McBride you can name the most common token in the bag and draw a bunch of tokens, your chances are now multiplied to find the +2 bonus and game the test ("Oh, I drew a 0, -3 and -4, but I named the 0 with both copies of Recall the Future so I beat the test!"). This tactic is then a good complement to Father Mateos ability and his ability to start with 2 copies of Recall the Future in his deck.

This card is very powerful, when added to the combo of Will to Survive, True Survivor and 2x Resourceful.

What the combo does: Play Will to Survive and commit 2x Resourceful on any test to recover True Survivor and Will to Survive. Next turn play True Survivor to recover 2x Resourceful and any other skill.

You can repeat this as often as you want until you run out of ressources, which happens pretty fast at a total cost of 7 (4 + 3). Enter On Your Own: It reduces the total cost to 3!

I've only seen one deck (my own) that could pull of the old combo, but with reduced costs nearly every survivor should be able to pull it off. Maybe not Wendy because her Abandoned and Alone weakness destroys many survivor discard pile recurring.

You can use any version of Emergency Cache and Take Heart to gain more ressources. I think testless actions are very strong as you potentially avoid many bad icons that might hurt you or add doom, so even taking the "gain 1 ressource" action can be a good idea to keep the combo going.