just a heads up to players looking for advantages in Path to Carcosa. You spend a lot of scenarios with just the and a single other type of special negative token in the chaos back.
In other words, defiance has just two targets, the three and the two extra token, all of a sudden this card is turning three draws into 0's or 2 draws into 0's and ignoring whatever else they may do to you. Combo with Jim Culver and now you have just one target and your deck now has a total of 5 additional 0's, unparalleled reliability and it benefits every type of test.

This is good for Jim Culver decks because it re-enforces his archetypical ability, reliability.

This is good for other decks because it, at worst, gives them Jims's ability.

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The average Carcosa bag contains 17, 18 or 19 tokens. (Easy+Standard, then Hard or Expert respectively). Now you just need to do some math to understand the value of this card. If we assume that the skull is a -2, ignoring the penalty means that there's now 6x 0's, If you break even on the skill check then you've got a 39% chance to succeed, a jump up from 22%, if you have +1 then it jumps to 50%.

If you continue the math you'll spot an issue however, using this card to turn a -2 beats the purpose when you sport a +2 modifier anyway! In other words, learn your chaos bag and do the math. The most efficient use in my opinion is to play this card to get a +3 modifier and to negate a -4+ token type, for example in Curtain Call when you've got 4+ horror on you. In that exact circumstance a +3 on hard has a 50% chance to succeed, playing Defiance to net that +3 and negating the Skull would get you a 72% success chance.

Now if you do a little more math, you'll discover a flaw, Unexpected Courage does pretty much everything I just mentioned, and is a little more flexible since the extra icon helps succeed whether you draw special tokens or just a really large negative number. This means that defiance isnt strictly better than courage, it does a different thing, it negates all the extra bad effects of the negated token, thus there's no risk of horror or enemy spawns or other negative effects that might be the result of bad token draws.

TL:Dr. Defiance is bad in a vacuum, good when used correctly, sets itself apart from Unexpected Courage by having a somewhat similar base-job but actually has a very different job that swings in usefulness between scenarios. If you would put Unexpected Courage in a deck then give this a consideration, when used well it should give you the same net benefit as Unexpected Courage and then some extra.

Tried it and I found myself in a very simple, predictable even situation.

The situation where I wished I'dd just slotted Unexpected Courage rather then this far more limited wannabe that outright fails to be useful for pretty much every test where flexible icons are useful.

The only time this card proved itself better then Unexpected Courage was during a Cheap Shot action where we realized that we double tapped the icons, and we're not even sure that was a legal move and even then, much too specific to be routinely useful.

EDIT:

My opinion about this card hasn't changed, but I've started to find a use for it: When you want a deck with a lot of skills to use with True Survivor, this isn't a bad option to slot and recurse, even if it's just to throw the card away on a Wendy Adams re-roll. Also it's relatively useful in Agnes Baker decks as a tertiary source of boosts or to punch a Swarm of Rats in the first few scenarios.

EDIT: EDIT:

Lots of cards out since this released, it's binder fodder, never taking it again, not even for the folks who LOVE skill cards. Somebody is going to have to have "Not without a fight!" printed in their deckbuilding rules for it to show up in a deck of mine.

Just a reminder: On the Hunt and "Let me handle this!" exist and are good cards (especially together as a powerful "enemy funnel" build). The fact that these cards exist means that you can ensure that enemies get delivered to your doorstep to trigger this trap. On the Hunt especially is a powerful card for this purpose since it overrides normal spawn rules to put the victim not on its normal spot but right on top of you and also shortens the time you need to wait and stick around for a foe to appear.

Ideally you'll wait for both cards (Ambush and On the Hunt) to make it to your hand, then you play them in a combo.

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Spoiler alert for some relatively common (first scenario per story) enemy cards

2 hp foes like Ghoul Minion and Fanatic just blow up.

3 hp foes like Ravenous Ghoul are now firmly in boxing reach (With or without Mano a Mano.

Most importantly, 4hp foes like Yithian Observer, Agent of the King and Icy Ghoul are now one-shottable with a gun and firmly within striking distance.

Big hitter card. An autofail token can ruin the most assured of hits and this is that tech card you include so that your once-in-a-scenario Double Vicious Blow + Lightning Gun combo assuredly hits.

More realistically though its gonna be a single Vicious Blow with a .45 Automatic to deal that imperative 3 damage hit to a Ravenous Ghoul or a Vicious Blow + .45 Automatic to kill one of oh-so many 4hp foes that terrorize our mythos decks.

This latter scenario is probably the most common and useful use of "Eat lead!" in this game, to ensure that those moderately tough "minibosses" die in as few actions and as little risk as possible.

Howdy Roland Banks, just a quick question. Wouldya rather draw Rotting Remains or Swarm of Rats?

Superb card for the dedicated fighter. It ensures that you trigger the benefits that dedicated fighters generally hope to gain, such as William Yorick or Roland Banks gaining items and clues.

It also doubles as protection, many fighters have the ability to kill off basic foes in just an action or two, but those same fighters might fear and passionately hate drawing mythos cards that force sanity damage or some penalty. Case in point: The first line of this review.

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-The gathering Spoiler below-

Final note: Also useful to ensure that you've got something to do. For a fighter type character those "dead" rounds with no enemies are bad, they leave you with nothing to do and may cause enemy spawns to be more condensed later, which makes it harder for you to respond to them all. This card lets you guarantee that you've got something to nibble on while your friends do the heavy lifting, a good example for the usefulness of this effect is the very first Arkham LCG scenario The Gathering. Once you're out of the study you can head for the basement or attic and dig out the appropriate ghoul to quickly dispatch for XP.