Month: November 2025

Survivor Week 2 + In-Flight Report + Back of the Box

Community Previews are ongoing and this is the end of week 2 for the Survivor cards. Now, due to the Americans being out of their offices for turkey-related shenanigans, we are going to have to wait on the final cap-off article on Survivors for another week. But in exchange we got some tidbits from the In-Flight Report at PAX Unplugged last week. Also, since this Spoiler Roundup is already concerning itself with some stuff outside of just the community reveals, i’ll also put the info from the spanish back of the box which we got an early look at in this summary. I’ll go over the cards first in the same format i have been doing for the other Spoiler Roundups. Then talk a bit about other random stuff revealed through the In-Flight Report afterwards. And finally, there’s also some pretty encounter artwork to end the article on.

Next week, once we have Izzie’s full text I’ll do my Early Impression article for Survivor like i did for Seeker before.

Sources

Old Compass and Nameless Lurker were previewed by Drawn to the Flame on their podcast, also they shared the encounter art for Ashen Rebirth on Discord.
On the Brink and Broken Bottle were previewed by Rolling Dice & Taking Names on their Youtube
Scrape By and Fedora were previewed by ¡Tengo un plan! on their Youtube

The In-Flight Report is an official event by Fantasy Flight Games that was broadcast on Youtube

The Spanish back of the box was posted on an Asmodee store site. It has since been removed from there, but here’s a saved image. I usually don’t include leaks like this in these round-ups, but this one has by now been acknowledged by FFG. So i expect this to not overlap with any still upcoming community previews and thus feel like it’s fine to share here.

Daniela Reyes

The spanish leak partially reveals Daniela Reyes, showing her front and her signature. We can pretty safely assume she’ll be the Guardian-Survivor, so that leaves only the weakness unknown.
Pixel hunt and translation weren’t done by me and i don’t speak the language. But here’s what the assumed gametext for Daniela is:

Daniela Reyes – The Mechanic
3 will, 2 int, 5 com, 2 agi
Warden. Entrepreneur.
(Reaction) after an enemy attacks an investigator at your location: Fight that enemy using a basic action or a Fight ability on a card. Limit once per round.
Elder Sign: +1. Deal 1 damage to an enemy at your location.
9 health, 5 sanity

The ability to get extra actions out of enemy attacks opens up the door for otherwise undesirable play patterns. Attacks of opportunity or engaging enemies with your last action are things that players will usually avoid, but Daniela gets enough of a payoff for it that it can actually be worth it for her which allows her to spend her actions more efficiently. That she’s able to use her weapons for her counterattacks makes this especially potent. Notably, her old version excluded attacks of opportunities from being able to trigger her old ability, this does no longer seem to be the case which is a huge gain in how frequently you’ll be able to use it. That she’ll be able to trigger from any investigator at her location being attacked also helps. And then of course, there’s her signature which also helps playing into this:

Daniela’s Wrench – Asset
Cost 2, takes a hand slot
Item. Tool. Weapon. Melee.
Daniela deck only.
(Fast trigger) Exhaust this card. Choose an enemy at your location. That enemy engages and immediately attacks you.
(Action) Fight (using combat). You gain +2 combat for this test. If this enemy attacked you this round this attack deals +1 damage.

It allows engaging enemies without taking an action and is also an easy way to provoke enemies into triggering Daniela’s bonus action, which makes this quite the efficient little enabler. That being said, a handslot is of course a real cost and is going to limit what weapons you can have alongside it unless you have ways to gain extra handslots.

Overall, the new version of Daniela is similar to the old one on the surface: A tanky 5 combat investigator that wants enemies to attack for a payoff. But between the new card pool (Guardian up to level 5 instead of Survivor up to 5 is huge for her!) and how much more permissive the new triggering condition is, this version does take a different enough place on the roster.

Guardian

The other so far unrevealed player card from the leaked back of the box is Endurance, the Guardian entry into the cycle of stat boosting Talents.

Endurance – Asset
Cost 2, no slots
Talent.
(Fast trigger) Spend 1 resource: You gain +1 combat for this skill test, or +2 combat if this test is an attack or evasion attempt.
(Fast trigger) Spend 1 resource: You gain +1 agility for this skill test, or +2 agility if this test is an attack or evasion attempt.

Like the other two we’ve seen, this one starts to look quite solid when used within its primary use case where you get 2 stats per resource. I’d especially be interested in this as an evasion enabler for investigators that are usually unable to do so. While that doesn’t strike me as a thing that Daniela wants to do, Joe very well might be interested in that.

Dexter Drake and Trish Scarborough

The In-Flight report revealed that Dexter and Trish are going to be our Core Set Mystic and Rogue. Nothing else in addition to that, however that reveal all but confirms to me that Daniela is indeed Guardian-Survivor. There was an outside chance before that she’d end up as a Guardian-Rogue with a Mystic-Seeker and a Rogue-Survivor in the box alongside her… but of course that doesn’t line up with Dex and Trish at all.

Trish Scarborough

Well, actually we have been given a bit more about Trish, possibly more than FFG intended. There was a part in the In-Flight Report about FFG’s collab with Gamegenic for new Arkham related stuff – basically a glorified ad break (and imo incredibly awkward…). However, among the images shown for the deck boxes, there was this:

Hey, that’s Trish’s front. With some pixel hunting, one can make out the stat line (2/4/2/4 as old Trish had) and her health/sanity (8/6). Making out the ability text is not that easy, but if you squint real hard and compare word lengths (and whatever else the cryptographists behind this info do), it looks like she gets some sort of bonus action that has terms and conditions attached, possibly just straight up Finn’s ability to gain a bonus evade each round. Or a free move. Or you know, something completely different because we can’t see shit on this image :D For all we know, that’s not even her final card text and just a placeholder so Gamegenic could whip up their promotion images.

Survivor

That… is just very good. It’s like Lucky and Eucatastrophe had a baby. It doesn’t beat the tentacle, but aside from that it can turn any fail into a pass. That’s really good! Also worth mentioning that Reid already confirmed on Discord that Scrape By will get day 1 errata that will simplify the card by making it “automatically” succeed. So you don’t do some weird “succeed by -3” thing here.
Between Scrape By and Timely Intervention, Survivors will be able to walk into a lot of dodgy tests with confidence.

This is a lot better than it looks at first glance. It pretty much does the same job as the old Flashlight did, guaranteeing successes on shroud 2 locations. It does cost 2xp to acquire, but in exchange the tool no longer uses any charges. That seems very worth it, as it makes sure that any Survivor can use Old Compass as a consistent tool to gain extra clues throughout the scenario.
One important bit to point out is that while the Compass does exhaust if you use the retry at -2 difficulty, it doesn’t need to be ready to be used for its regular ability. So you can keep investigating at -1 shroud without any limit.
And that is just using the Compass for its base purpose of having easier investigation tests. Survivor has had various pieces of synergy with effects like this in the past and if we are seeing something like Look What I Found in the new Core, then that will increase the value of the Old Compass even more.
Very good card that does its job remarkably well even in spite of no clue compression.

Eh, this is one of those Survivor cards that is too clever for its own good.
If i am committing two wild icons alongside even more cards to a test, i don’t expect to fail, making the “on fail” effect of the card at odds with it being a skill with 2 icons. It can be used to protect your important other skills from the autofail, but that is such a niche usecase that it’s rarely going to be worth spending a deckslot on it… nevermind even paying xp for the privilege.
There is some synergy in the wider card pool with skill cards that do something on committing them and those that do something on failing. But if your plan is spending 2xp to get another use out of Take Heart, then at the end of the day you are still committing 2 wilds to a test that you actively want to fail. Doesn’t seem like a great plan to me.
I suppose it’s at least better than the old Unexpected Courage(2) from the Stella deck, for how little that is worth… but to be honest I don’t really see much of a use for this card. While your options for spending xp are still limited, you might just take this upgrade to make your Unexpected Courages a little bit better sometimes or just because running up to four copies of Unexpected Courage is actually pretty decent… but i think this is just going to fall off super hard once Survivors have something a bit more tangible to spend their points on.

~~ ! Speculation Sidebar ! ~~
The above assumes that there is actually an Unexpected Courage in the new Core. For all we know, having two wild icons might in the new environment be considered an effect that’s not available at level 0. Actually, for all we know, broad access to wild icons might now be part of the Survivor class identity! Wouldn’t that be interesting. A fascinating thought and one that would change the value proposition on On the Brink a lot.
Imagine this:
– No Unexpected Courage in the new Core.
– Instead, a skill with 1 wild icon that draws a card, to live alongside Perception and friends
– Two wild icons on one card is now a Survivor coded effect, representing their ingenuity and flexibility.
– Two wild icons is now costed at 1XP baseline.
That’d be pretty sick to be honest. Of course pure speculation. Fun to think about though and illustrates what sort of opportunities a new Core holds and how looking at the new cards through just a Chapter 1 lens doesn’t necessary tell the whole story.

Neutral

We got a new Flashlight with our Seeker previews, now we are getting a new Knife with our Survivor previews. Fair enough! I think this card is for most purposes slightly better than the old Knife, as you will only have to discard Bottle if you indeed hit a target while you could fail the big important test on Knife.
Overall, the minute differences between Knife and Broken Bottle don’t really matter too much for its evaluation, though. It’s marginally playable sometimes, but for the most part it just sets the baseline to compare your in-class cards to. It’s a card that kind of has to exist and especially on a new card pool you will include it every now and then to fill up the numbers… but of course it’s not exciting in any way.

Imagine us getting a headwear slot before we are getting a footwear slot. The audacity. We better get some rogue shoes or something as well to establish that slot as well.
Yeah, so this card is pretty bad, isn’t it. I can’t imagine paying 2 resources just to soak a stray damage or horror (or both, if the stars are right). So all this does in my eyes is two things: Establish the headwear slot. Establish the Apparel trait. Which may or may not be intended to be different from the Clothing trait. As written, i can’t put a Hidden Pocket into it, which is kind of sad. That’d almost be a reason to use it. Jumpsuit and Cloak of Resonance both are Clothing traited, so it looks like the Fedora was specifically singled out to not count as Clothing. How weird.
That being said, I am really happy to see the headwear slot. I have been outspoken against the existing masks and footwear items being mechanically different from assets that take up proper slots in the past over and over. Streamlining this now makes a lot of sense to me.

Basic Weaknesses

Ooooh, i very much approve of the new card frame. Anyone who has ever done custom content for this game knows how absolutely painful the old enemy frame is for fitting artwork in there. It was narrowest right in the middle, leading to either awkwardly setting off images to the side or having huge blank areas on the sides. Probably both. I can only imagine that the official art faced similar problems with the enemy frame, so now they are finally getting rid of it in favor of a simple straight divide between the art and the game text. Very good and will no doubt prove to be a huge upgrade once we have gotten over the unfamiliar look.
As for the weakness enemy itself, the dude here is pretty impactful. He’s an Aloof Acolyte that needs to be defeated before he causes the agenda to advance prematurely. That can take up quite a few actions between having to walk all the way over to where he is, engaging past the Aloof and then finally defeating him. And unlike with regular Acolytes where you can decide to just eat the doom and not bother or sometimes get a lucky break as they show up in the turn where you’d advance anyways, the Lurker will gather new doom after an agenda advances so he will stay relevant and could potentially cause two or more doom to enter play over the course of a scenario if he stays unanswered.
At the end of the day, he’s just a dork with 1 hit point but he will be a huge priority when he shows up and will eat up a turn or two – one way or the other. That puts him on the upper range of what we usually see from weaknesses for sure.
Fun fact: If there are no empty locations, he gets discarded on reveal. Not likely to happen, but it’s a little shred of cope to hang onto…

Other info from the In-Flight Report

Close after release of the new Core, we are also getting a new line of investigator starter decks. We didn’t get any information on how the deckbuilding options of these are going to look like, but i would assume they are going to be single-class investigators, just like the first range of investigator starter decks. It’s just the thing that makes the most sense with these pre-constructed decks, allowing new players to buy cards for specific classes they want to focus on. [EDIT: Actually, i have just been told that Duke already confirmed them being single-class. Good to know!]
These are the product that was mentioned as “another thing releasing in Spring ’26” during the Core announcement stream a few weeks back. I wonder if this means a preview season for the investigator starters right after the preview season for the Core is over… i’ll be writing these roundup posts for a long while, am i not?

Children of Blood is a three-scenario campaign, slated to release in Summer. Looks like Vampires are coming to Arkham? The lack of a full-sized campaign in the 2026 lineup is definitely a sore point, so Children of Blood will have to do some heavy lifting to provide the replayability and depth we usually expect from a proper campaign expansion box. This will be the first three-part campaign that wasn’t released as a tutorial campaign which makes it hard to predict how that might shake out.

Finally, Traces to Nowhere is a scenario pack that we’ll get in Fall. Personally, i have not been terribly interested in standalone scenarios for a long while now, but if it’s something that ties into Children of Blood (the shadow on the Traces to Nowhere artwork is kind of similar to the long-nailed Vampire-thing on Children of Blood…), then maybe it’s something i want to look at? Anyways, not too much info on this so far, plenty of time till Fall ’26.

And here’s the overview of what’s coming up in 2026.

The Core Set + Investigator Starters is a really nice one-two-punch that will do a great job of establishing the starting card pool for the new Current environment, the designer’s new vision and intent for the classes and laying out the base capabilities for the investigators going forward. I’m pretty excited about all of that, what we’ve seen so far of the new Core is very promising.

The campaign content is a bit thin and the lack of a full campaign is definitely a major sticking point with this lineup. With all the restructuring that is happening at FFG across their product lines (beyond Arkham, this affects the other LCGs and board games as well) it’s a safe assumption that a Core AND five Starter decks AND a full campaign was simply not doable with the time, money and printing capabilities available and that something had to give. If the choice was to either do what they did here or present new players with a full campaign but only the Core for player cards, i think they made the right choice. The Core Set doesn’t even provide enough upgraded cards for a full campaign worth of XP, getting those player cards out through the investigator starters makes a lot of sense.
There’s a lot of misgivings in the community right now about the lack of a full campaign, but that is almost exclusively from a veteran players perspective. I think putting the priority on establishing a player card pool makes a lot of sense for new players. And those new players are rightly the focus when trying to re-invigorate the game and put it towards long-term success.
Overall, this is a pretty packed lineup for 2026 and we got more information about it in the In-Flight than we usually get… and for what it’s worth we might still get something in Winter or very early 2027.

Finally, some more encounter art!

See you next week after the FFG article for a more detailed first impressions on the Survivor class in the new Core!

Survivor Week 1

With Seeker fully established, we move into Survivor. It’s a class that has a much less defined traditional core identity than Seeker, so learning about what the class is about in Chapter 2 should be interesting.

Sources

Isabelle Barnes‘ deckbuilding was previewed on the official ArkhamHorror.com site, along with the schedule for the rest of Survivor Weeks.
Shove Off and Slippery were previewed by Restricted Collection on their podcast, along with the artwork for the Wild Compulsion treachery
Jumpsuit and Timely Intervention were previewed by Until the End of Time on their Youtube, along with the artwork for the Dissonance treachery on the MB Discord
Levelheaded and Meat Cleaver (0 and 3) were previewed by PlayingBoardGames on their Youtube

Isabelle Barnes

Izzie is our new Survivor-Mystic, which is a very exciting class combo that still has lots of room left for exploration. The Survivor-Mystic of Chapter 1, Patrice, was fantastic, but also one of the investigators that sometimes felt a bit limited by her specific abilities and statline. In turn, some of her card pool was not really well used by her, so Izzie can hopefully complement her well in that regard.
As with Joe before, we aren’t getting more than the backside of the investigator here, so any more context for how Izzie plays and what she’s about in gameplay terms will have to wait… actually it will probably have to wait all the way until December 4th because the FFG article that caps off Survivor weeks is going to be a week late due to turkey related reasons.
What else is there to say about Isabelle then? Sadly no “Searching for Jenny” weakness, that’d been funny. She does inherit her sisters Twin .45s however. Le’s hope she doesn’t inherit Jenny’s statline alongside it.
From the announcement article we know that Izzie probably can spend sanity in some productive way, but how any of that works and how her ominous title of “The Returned” plays into all of that… well, we need to have some more patience i guess.

Survivor

That’s pretty great. Recursion if you need it, soak otherwise. And can even be both if the stars align. If i’m using this card, i am probably not counting on geting to both soak a damage and returning a card but it’ll be nice when it happens. And just a card that can do either job is very worthwhile.
The recursion is restricted to Tools or Weapons, but notably it’s neither class locked nor limited by level of the returned card. If you are planning on getting a nice highlevel weapon or tool in your deck, Jumpsuit skyrockets in value as it will allow you to get another round of uses out of it for little investment. It can also return signatures, something that has been a sticking point with some recursion in the past. For example, Tommy could not fish his signature rifle out of the discard with Scrounge for Supplies or Resourceful… but he could do that with the Jumpsuit. Izzie has a signature weapon she may want to recur as well.
For the option of using your soak as recursion, you are paying an extra resource over the classic Leather Coat from the old Core, but that seems very worth it too me even in Legacy card pools. Leather Coat was a near staple, i think Jumpsuit might just be even better.

That’s the second of this cycle that has officially been spoiled and like the Seeker one, i like this one quite a bit. If your deck is running a low resource curve or gaining a lot of money, this can be some seriously impactful bit of encounter protection.
The 2 resource cost upfront make sure that this cycle of talents isn’t going to be too omnipresent, as it is a considerable investment only to unlock the ability to spend more money before you start getting something out of it. But if you do see yourself using the skill boost 3 or more times, the rate becomes really good thanks to the +2 skill for 1 resource deal.

Looks like the Meat Cleaver’s back on the menu, boys. A weapon that offers a +2 skill bonus at level 0 is always worth attention, especially in a class that traditionally doesn’t really get exceptional combat values. Meat Cleaver has been a reliable way to fight for investigators with 3 base combat and having that thing back in the Core is neat. The horror cost by itself is significant of course, but in the old card pool the classic combo was with Peter Sylvestre who can negate the horror for you every turn. While we don’t have Peter in Current, we do have Aleksey who has a very similar ability in the new Core, so that combo is basically taken wholesale and offered up as a package here. Izzie Barnes supposedly also interacts with horror and depending on how her ability works exactly, she might have deeper synergy with the Meat Cleaver as well. If nothing else, she can take the new Cloak of Resonance and use that to great effect with the Cleaver. So even with what little we know of the new card pool yet, we can see that the Meat Cleaver integrates quite well into it.
The upgrade asks for 3XP to gain yet another point of skill value, save a resource and gain a stack of commit icons. Not a high priority upgrade, but giving a card that has some serious build-around potential an upgraded version so you can feel better about keeping it in your deck past scenario 4 or 5 is a good idea. It’s not a particularly exciting upgrade, but it does get the job done. A +3 combat bonus on a melee weapon is very good and actually quite rare to find.

The ability to weaponize a high agility to deal damage is a valuable one in some circumstances. It’s been a major theme for Rogue in the last couple expansions (and if the Hammerless pistol is any indication, it continues to be one in Chapter 2) with Survivor also dabbling in the theme from time to time. Most notably, Rita has this as her investigator ability. This event is basically a one-shot use of Rita’s ability… which is fine. Barely.
Shove Off doesn’t look unplayable to me, but it’s definitely on the lower end of the powerscale. A single point of damage is usually not enough to make a difference unless part of a larger package. I see this mostly as a way to get just a little bit of extra damage in on enemies that you want to evade anyways, scary Elites or chunky enemies with Retaliate. As an example, this would be a pretty good card against somehing like Ghoul Priest in the Gathering, disabling its Retaliate and regular attack while also buttering it up just a bit so the fighter of the group can take care of the rest.
I don’t see this stay in the deck for very long unless there really is a major threshold of “evasion to damage” events that can be stacked. I suppose you can use it with Hunter’s Instinct to keep the damage coming although i really would’ve liked this to cost 0 for that purpose.
Overall a bit of a filler card. Not completely awful, but likely not going to have much staying power either.

I like this a lot more. Locking down an enemy for an additional turn can often be very similar to just outright defeating it as even Hunter enemies can be left behind fairly easily afterwards. Unlike Shove Off, this also adds the +1 to the evasion test to make this fire and that makes all the difference in how valuable this is to add to a deck.
Existing sources of this “stun” effect within the legacy card pool usually require 2 resources. And while those do also do other things on top, I like that we now have a skill card that gives just the stun at no resource cost.
Good card, simple, very useful and easy to include. What’s not to like?
Well, the one quibble i have is that they should’ve taken the opportunity to get rid of the clunky “does not ready during next upkeep” wording and keyword it as “stun” or something similar. But that doesn’t impact how solid the card is.

Looks like Lucky! is a skill now. It’s only a +1 when used for intellect or combat, but in exchange it drops the resource cost. That’s pretty nice on a reactive card as it means it will just always be up when you need it. Survivor has had plenty of skill synergies in the past, which could give Timely Intervention some extra oomph, even though it notably doesn’t work with Hunter’s Instinct from the new Core.
There are two ways to look a this card. One is in comparison to Lucky and i think it’s on par there. Worse in some regards, better in others, and overall it evens out to a level where you’ll prefer one or the other depending on the rest of your deck.
The other way is to look at it just in isolation… and then it’s just a plain good card. Great, even. A reactive way to fudge your encounter tests is excellent. You can even use it as just a regular two willpower or agility icons to boost someone else’s test. When used that way, you can’t do it reactively, but that’s still a very valuable option to have that will definitely come up often enough to make a difference. Probably less valuable, but you never know: You can use this skill reactively even if you didn’t fail. This could potentially be relevant if you are doing oversuccess or exact success shenanigans with Rogue or Seeker cards.
In any case, I think this is every bit the staple card that Lucky is.

Encounter Art

We also got a first look at some of the encounter artwork in the new Core. It’s unknown if these are from the encounter sets that will be used in other campaigns from now on or if they are part of the new introductory mini-campaign. I’ll just share them here without much comment. They are bangers, not much more to say.

Intro

Over the last two weeks we got the full Seeker class revealed, including investigator, level 0 cards and upgrades. Also a few teasers for the other classes. I want to take this opportunity before we head into Survivor previews to share some early impressions on the Seeker portion of the reveals. Note that this will mostly be from a POV of Current, as that is what the Core Set was designed for.

The investigator

It doesn’t get much more Core Set than this, right? He’s very basic, but in the context of the Core Set, that’s not a bad thing. Core investigators need to bring some upfront power to the table that allows them to tackle a new campaign on a fledgling card pool, they need to be simple to understand and be representative of their class. Joe Diamond firmly ticks those three boxes. Did it have to be Joe Diamond or could it have been a new character just to avoid any misgivings based on the comparison of New Joe with Old Joe? I don’t know, to be honest. On the one hand i do miss the “Guardian” part of this design. His ability is firmly putting him on investigation duty, a turn spent fighting will cause him to miss out on a card. Some nod towards his dual nature would have been nice. There’s the 4 combat, i suppose. And that will at least go a long way that he’ll be able to put that Guardian 2 access to much better use than the Guardian 2 investigator of the old Core (Skids). But I’d say that “The PI” is an iconic enough archetype for this setting to belong into a Core and there is no need for two investigators that are “The PI” in the Arkham Files. So i certainly see good reasons for using Joe Diamond here instead of doing yet another “guy in a trench coat” type character.

The allies

At level 0 we have Dorothy and Lab Assistant and both are very good cards that you’ll probably play even after the new card pool fleshes out a bit more with future releases. They don’t compete a whole lot with each other, they both do different things. The old Core always asked Guardians whether they want Beat Cop or Guard Dog, with neither answer being wrong. I think that Dorothy and Lab Ass will have a very similar dynamic going forward where you weigh the importance of +1 to your primary skill against a different payoff.

The Hand Slot

The level 0 deck gets to choose between three different investigation tools, which is quite a lot considering that the class only gets 10 level 0 cards in total. I like the spread between these three a lot: Mag Glass is the one that is cheap, has a consistent effect but is low impact. Fingerprint Kit is expensive, limited by charges, but each use is high impact. And Local Map lies somewhere in the middle. That’s a good selection that offers some choice.
There’s also the Hand-Crank Flashlight in the Neutral cards which could be talked about in this context, but i think i see that more as a tool for off-class investigators that want to get some clue grabbing in on the side. A mainclass Seeker gets better things… and that’s how it should be.
There’s one upgraded card for the Hand Slot, the Mysterious Grimoire. It filters and draws cards, so it’s not an upgrade to one of the level 0 cards, but something to get in addition. That means that there will be some tradeoffs and decisions to make when upgrading your deck: Do you stack two intellect tools on top of each other for your investigations or do you sacrifice one of them for consistency? In the old Core, Old Book of Lore asked a similar question and outside of Daisy was usually denied the hand slot in your deck, but i think that Grimoire is enough better than OBoL that it has a good shot of making decks often enough.

Central Seeker Themes

There are mostly three things that these Seeker cards do: Boost your intellect. Gain extra clues. Draw Cards.
Boosting Intellect: One ally, three(or four) handslot items, a talent, a smattering of intellect icons to commit all over the cards. This is well taken care of. Joe will be able to easily get to 6 intellect and peak higher, to make sure his investigator ability isn’t stopped by a shroud 4 or 5 location.
Extra clues: Working a Hunch and Deduction are “card for a clue”, a well established archetype of card. Fingerprint Kit is a box of Deductions. Again, well taken care of.
Draw Cards: Lab Ass and Gather Intel at level 0 are going to do a boatload of work in Seeker decks going forward, something i am looking forward to. In a wild twist, three of the four upgrade cards are all concerned with drawing cards. Grimoire nets you 4 cards. Unbridled Knowledge nets you three. Both apply a hefty dose of card filtering to make sure they are cards that are useful to you. Finally, Studious draws you an extra card at the start of the game and since it also can go into the mulligan, it kinda does add to the card selection as well. So upgrading your Seeker deck doesn’t really make it stronger, it doesn’t raise the ceiling on your capabilities. A Core Seeker at level 0 that has all their assets played in front of them will be as capable at gathering clues as a Core Seeker with 10XP or 20XP in their deck. But the XP will make the deck more consistent and get your setup to the table faster. This is an interesting dynamic.

The odd one

The one card that doesn’t fit into anything i said so far is Through the Cracks. It’s an evade event that scales with the number of clues you have and uses your agility. It is even the only card in the Core Seeker pool that has both a level 0 card and an upgraded version available, meaning to me that the designers must have felt this card was important enough to get this special highlight. Now, so far i do not see the relevance of this card, especially not in the context of Joe Diamond whose access to Guardian and 4 combat will point him towards other ways of handling enemies. But there will of course be an investigator that as a subclass can take up to level 2 Seeker cards. The assumption now is of course that this is a card that they’ll be interested in. We’ll revisit this once we know more!

No nonsense

Ignoring Through the Cracks for now, this is a very straightforward pool that does very “core” things. And i feel like that is an important part of a set that is meant to lay the baseline for abilities, introduce what each class is about and teach basic deckbuilding. Fourteen card slots is very few to achieve something like that and the new core uses this limitation a lot better than the old one by being very down to basics.
The old core was bogged down by two things. The first one being cards that were specifically put in to support Daisy. Things like Research Librarian or Encyclopedia are somewhat tailored to her and when Rex appeared as the new Seeker he wasn’t super interested in these cards (even though Research Librarian certainly got his time once the card pool fleshed out more and Tomes became more generically powerful). Whoever the Seeker in the next expansion will be, we can however pretty safely assume they’ll be interested in all this card draw and basic investigation boosting.
The other thing that bogged down the old Core was … just plain weird stuff. Not because of powerlevel but just because they are weird and niche. Barricade is the best example of course, but Disc of Itzamna isn’t really a card you had much use for either. And Medical Text was just bad… in addition to niche and a Daisy plant.

Hooks for the Future

While the cards are all pretty down to earth in their basic function, there are some hooks for future expansion here that hint at larger themes. The “succeed by exactly” mechanic on Dorothy. Big Hand on Lab Ass. Parley support on Sharp Rhetoric. “Number of clues matter” on Through the Cracks and Unbridled Knowledge. This gives just a tiny glimpse at what might come in the next expansion or even just five expansions down the line and suddenly give these Core cards a bit more extra synergy.

Overall

Yeah, this looks good. Great, even. Seeker is probably the class i was least concerned about, they are very hard to mess up. So the real quality of the baseline offered by the new Core is still to be determined. I am looking with some anxiety at these Guardian cards in the reveal article, for example. Seeker also didn’t need any redefinition of its role in the game. Seeker has always been about gathering clues and drawing cards, so there’s little surprise here. Mystic and Rogue will be the two classes to look to for that.
But first, Survivor weeks are next up so all these questions that are burning the most for me are going to have to wait until last. Oh well.

Week 2 of Seeker Previews

And that’s second week of Seeker Previews down. What’s next? Survivor weeks, apparently. When? No idea. Hopefully soon! Keep an eye on the schedule at the top of the Visual Spoiler, I’ll update it as soon as i have any info to share!

Sources

Laboratory Assistant and Unbridled Knowledge were previewed by Arkham Horror Memes on their Instagram
Through the Cracks was previewed by Mythos Busters on their Twitch
Perception and Hand-Crank Flashlight were previewed by Drawn to the Flame on their podcast
Joe Diamond, Deduction and Working a Hunch were previewed by Fantasy Flight Games on their official AHLCG page

Joe Diamond

And there he is, our first fully revealed investigator for the new Core Set. Joe certainly seems quite strong to me, that extra card represents a lot of just generic power and triggering it every round isn’t really all that difficult and will usually not require him to go out of his way for. He keeps the 2/4/4/2 statline of his previous version, meaning that he’s competent in both of the main jobs that need to be done in the game… but at the cost of being vulnerable to the encounter deck. His balanced health and sanity of both 7 help with buffering the consequences of failing too many encounter tests, however.
His signature also helps, with that little extra bit of healing attached to it. If the small glimpse of Guardian that we’ve gotten so far is any indication, then there’s also a bit of a focus on survivability there. So i suspect that this new incarnation of Joe won’t be nearly as vulnerable to just suddenly keeling over from too much horror as his old one.
Both his signature and weakness push Joe towards card draw. The signature rewards Joe for drawing it during his turn… with even more draw. Meanwhile the weakness is one you also want to draw soon, so it won’t show up in any deck filtering effects you might want to play. And you also don’t want to draw it during your final turns. It will require 5 resources to get rid of it, but you can just keep it in your hand for the rest of the scenario, so that shouldn’t be terribly hard to plan for. Personally, i have a huge distaste for weaknesses that make you earn fewer experience, but your mileage may vary on how annoying you think that is.
Overall a fairly basic, but strong investigator that doesn’t ask any wild things of you in terms of deckbuilding. I’d expect him to be able to use his card pool very well and efficiently.

Seeker

It’s Lab Ass! God, i love this card. For the longest time, this Dunwich era classic was pretty much the best card draw a level 0 deck could run. Seeing it in the new Core makes me feel all fuzzy inside and it means i won’t need to break with old habits. Lab Ass together with Gather Information is going to make for very comfortable level 0 decks, which i am totally here for. There is still the open question of if/how we get additional ally slots in Current of course, but even assuming that there is no Charisma-like (or Charisma itself) around, Lab Ass still has a place next to whatever primary ally (like Dorothy) you take. She lives to draw you two cards, then soak 2 horror for you and be replaced.
Notably, the reprint does come with some functional changes. She’ll only draw the cards if she was played, not when she was put into play through some other effect. I am not a huge fan of this change, to be honest. I much prefer cards to be able to interact with another. I wonder what the motivation behind this change was. There’s also a different skill icon on her. She used to commit for intellect, now she commits for a willpower. Sure, either is fine.
Overall: Excellent card, love playing it, always loved playing it, will keep loving to play it. But i am a bit taken back by the functional change in how she triggers, i don’t see the point. All this does for now is create uncertainty about which cards work with it and which don’t. Like, why can you draw cards when you use this with Calling in Favors, but not when you use it with Chance Encounter. That’s just annoying on a conceptual level, even when it does nothing to impact how much of a 10/10 staple card this is.

Seekers do need ways to be able to function when they draw enemies. That often means stalling the enemy and relying on teammates to deal with the problem. Through the Cracks does offer a way to do this while also getting into safety one location over. At three cost, it’s a tough sell however and when you add the clue requirement then it becomes unreliable enough that you might just find yourself with this in hand unable to use it when you need it. A second agility icon on the level 0 could have gone a long way to make this more attractive, as it is i don’t think i would play this unless i already have good base agility. Which we can assume that the Seeker of the Core, Joe Diamond, won’t have.
The upgrade improves on both of the pain points with the card, making clues more impactful on the test while also bringing down the cost. The effect does stay the exact same. It’s still a card that i am unlikely to want to spend XP on, but at least the upgrade does enable evasion for investigators that are unable to do that normally through a hefty +6 bonus that can even bring Joe’s agility of 2 to an impressive 8. Since the card works on Elites, i could see this be a one-off silver bullet in some campaigns.
In terms of mechanics, I do like that this gives a skill bonus based on clues instead of replacing agility with intellect like other cards like this have done in the past. Rogue and Mystic are both already doing the “replace actual skill with primary skill” thing, giving Seekers a different and more flavorful approach here is appreciated.
Anyways, overall not a particularly impressive card, i expect to not use it all that much. The numbers are just too unattractive, especially on the level 0.

I’ve never been a huge fan of this card, as i find it usually not to be a great deal to pay 2 resouces for a clue. A lot better for solo players, who can use it to solve a location all by itself. But even in two-player i usually think of it as barely being good enough. That being said, it is a solid baseline and it’s certainly not unplayable. The two intellect icons on Working a Hunch are clutch for giving the card more play – in fact, i think of WaH as a skill card that can in rare situations also be useful to force a clue. But usually this ends up being committed for its icons. Which, to be clear, is a perfectly fine place for a card to be. It’s something solid to put into a level 0 deck that can be upgraded out of.

The other classic piece of “card for a clue”. Instead of paying 2 resources, this asks you to pass an intellect test and even gives you a (small) bonus for it. A classic for a reason and for many, this is an untouchable staple that goes into every Seeker deck. Personally, i have more complicated thoughts on the actual value of “a card for a clue” when we talk about the full card pool, but at least in terms of a Core Set i won’t argue that this is one of Seeker’s marquee cards that define the whole class.

An obviously powerful effect for cheap. Digging eight cards deep and getting to keep three of them is going to set you up very well. To spell it out, that’s the best three cards in the top third of your deck… that’s really really good. It’s also nice to get your weakness out of the way for a good while as you get to put it under your deck. This delays your weakness, but also gives you the knowledge of where it is which is valuable in its own right… provided you don’t shuffle your deck at some point.
Also, if you are looking for a specific card like a signature or a big ticket upgraded card, this will likely get you there… and when it doesn’t it will get the next eight cards out of the way, getting you there eight draws faster than before.
That being said… Five XP is a lot to ask for this effect, of course. Often we reserve our experience to buy cards that have big effects on the gamestate instead of “just” drawing more cards. And with Lab Ass and Gather Intel also being in the set, i sort of expect Seeker to already have a pretty good baseline for how they move through their deck that doesn’t make improving on it a huge priority. However, once you have one or two big cards in your deck, then getting Unbridled Knowledge sure starts to look better than getting another copy of those other cards as it will help you find them while additionally giving you lots of options and value. That extra raw value is what puts this a lot higher in my book than a card like the classic No Stone Unturned(5) which generally wasn’t played a lot because at the end of the day, you spent an action and a card to draw a card with your level 5 upgrade. The value on offer is much higher here.
I think the numbers are all the right ones on Unbridled Knowledge, it’s a powerful and generically useful effect that is worth the high price in experience. I do tend to rarely go for this sort of card with my deck upgrades, but i could certainly see this become a great pickup for the last two or three scenarios of a campaign to give a deck that is already doing what it’s supposed to that last bit of consistency. The Insight trait is historically also a relevant one and could end up becoming one again. This is a fantastic card to replay with Agatha, for example.
Final side note, like Lab Ass this card points towards some cleared up wording: You “control” clues now, you don’t just “have” them. This is a good change in wording that puts it in line with the language used in other parts of the game where you control things or don’t.

Neutral

Hey, new Flashlight… kind of. Unlike the old basic Flashlight this one doesn’t really enable your intellect 2 investigators to investigate low shroud locations that much better, but in turn it doesn’t run out of charges. So you can just keep using it. It reads a bit like Knife that way, but of course a basic Investigate is a much better action to take than a basic Fight, so this is a good deal better than Knife.
The bonus for discarding this card is a bit niche – just for yourself you probably won’t use it because unless you are at a shroud 1 location, giving up the +1 intellect for a -1 shroud isn’t going to do much for you. But if this can help the whole team for a concerted effort to get the last clues off the final location, this does have some uses. You are running this card primarily for the consistent +1 intellect bonus, though.
Seekers can combine it with a Magnifying Glass to forever do Investigations at +2, but they do actually get a solid number of investigation assets in the Core, so i expect this to be more of a thing for non-Seekers who want to be able to use their 3 or 4 intellect in a productive way without investing much into it. This makes it distinct from old Flashlight which i mostly saw as a way for investigators with 1 or 2 intellect to pick up the odd clue.
It’s easy to draw too many parallels to Knife because it’s templated so very similarly and in turn look down on this card, but i think this is actually a very solid card overall that’ll see a good amount of play in Current. And since its usecase doesn’t overlap with old Flashlight all that much, i wouldn’t be surprised to see this in decks that draw from the full card pool either.

Right, we don’t call these the “Core Skills” for nothing. I am very happy to see them (i am just going to assume that the full set is in the Core…) back, they are an integral part of deckbuilding and among the cards that have the most staying power out of the Core Set cards. You can have literally everything for this game and Perception will still be all over your decks. Learning about how powerful they are is an integral part of learning the game and how to build decks and 100% belongs into the Core Set.
Of note, there is a slight mechanical change to them, as they now draw a card for the performing investigator instead of always the one who committed it. Sure, makes sense to me. In addition to being more intuitive in how they work now, the ability to support other investigators with your card draw (or chosing yourself) is also a decision point that adds a bit more gameplay to these cards.

Week 1 of Seeker Previews

First preview week down, who knows how many more to come! (Nine? One more Seeker week, then two each for the other classes? We’ll see.)
As usual, if you want just the cards, head over to the Visual Spoiler.
If you are interested in a closer look, join me as i sift through the spoils.

Sources

Joe Diamond‘s backside was previewed on the official ArkhamHorror.com site.
Dorothy Simmons and Gather Intel were previewed right here on Ancient Evils.
Fingerprint Kit and The Gold Bug were previewed by arkham.build on their site.
Mysterious Grimoire and Studious were previewed by Quick Learner on their Youtube

Joe Diamond

In previous spoiler seasons, FFG did preview their investigators with front, signatures and weaknesses – omitting the back, much to our displeasure! Not one to ignore our outcries, we are getting the back now immediately… but nothing else. Big sigh. I assume we are getting the rest next week, otherwise it’s time for torches and pitchforks.
My pointless moanings and ramblings aside, the reveal that Joe stays with his traditional deckbuilding rules of Seeker 5 + Guardian 2 is actually good info. The expectation now is of course that the other investigators in the box will also follow the 5/2 deckbuilding… possibly leading into a new cycle of 20 to be released over the next years. If so, that’d be pretty cool. Of note, i have an ongoing custom card series on my site where i design a new suite of 5/2 investigators to jump in where the old cycle wasn’t able to use their card pool like we’d wish to. Getting a new cycle for this deckbuilding might just plainly eliminate the need for a custom project there which is nice.
A private investigator is a great archetype character to have for the Core Set and Seeker/Guardian is exactly where that fits in. Seems like a good start. Now, let’s see his front side, okay? Truth be told, i expect new Joe to be less interesting than the old one. I rated him S in my “by enjoyment” rankings this year and consider that Hunch deck of his as one of the most fun investigator abilities in the game. Impossible to follow up on, but that doesn’t mean that Nu-Joe can’t be cool in his own right!

More Seeker cards

I talked about her in detail in the reveal article, so I’ll keep it short here. I think she hits the sweet spot of being a very viable card that you’ll want to include in your deck, while still leaving room for upgrades or alternatives. I am very happy with her, both in terms of powerlevel and with the fact that she uses the “succeed by exactly” mechanic which i think is a great archetype for Seekers that makes them distinct from others while also discouraging the bog-standard way of just boosting your stat to the moon.

This is a card that makes a lot of sense for a Core Set, as it’s a fairly basic effect. We now have Mag Glass as something cheap with low but constant impact, Fingerprint Kit on the other spectrum as something expensive with big impact a few times and the Local Map as something inbetween for our handslot options. Seems like a solid range of options to pick from. A one-off Fingerprint Kit is a nice thing to whip out on the tail end of a scenario to turn your excess resources into game progress.
Fingerprint Kit is a card that previously just on pure value alone usually didn’t make the cut in most decks, as the four resources are quite the investment. In the Legacy cardpool i have played it (and its level 4 upgrade) a solid amount however thanks to the interactions with cards that can add more supplies or just recur the Item itself to keep the boosted investigations flowing.
So how good this ends up being in Current is going to depend on a bit of context. How easy or difficult are resources to come by? And can we get more than just three uses out of the investment? If so, FPK’s stock goes up pretty fast. It’s also notably the only one of the three investigation assets we’ve seen so far that gives extra clues. For all we know so far, that effect might be considered more rare and valuable in Current. A Box of Deductions becomes a lot more attractive when Deduction itself isn’t around…

The other of my reveals, i will again point you to my article for more detailed thoughts. The summary here is that i think this is an excellent card, not just for Current, but also for Legacy. Card draw at level 0 is not as plentiful as one would think, not even in Seeker. And definitely not without having to spend an action on it. This is excellent glue for your deck and that condition is incredibly easy to fulfill. I could see this become a 5/5 staple, to the point where i think it even competes with Deep Knowledge in full cardpools.

I assume this is our replacement for Old Book of Lore in the new Core. And i think i like it. It’s restricted to 4 uses instead of able to exhaust every turn, but no longer costing an action to do so enables it as an attractive option for more people than just Daisy, similar to how Scroll of Secrets can fit into many decks just for some extra draw. Grimoire is both draw and selection, netting you up to 4 cards while also digging a bit, which seems like a good effect to pay 2XP for. Actually, it can even draw more than 4 cards, as the clause to draw any weaknesses is actually a boon as well – unless you have weaknesses that shuffle back, this will just get the weakness out of the way and make it so you don’t have to draw it later. With some weaknesses, you may even run this card because you specifically want to get your weakness out of the way as early as possible.
The option to dig deeper at the cost of charges might come in here and there when you are desperately searching for a specific card or need your handslot back, but mostly i expect that i am going to play this card for value and will want my four cards out of it.

I like Studious a lot. If you desire a specific card in your starting hand, then Studious is a great way to get you there as it not only just gives you that one raw card, but also allows you to mulligan it. I always enjoy playing with Studious, but in the larger card pool i often found i difficult to budget for 3 (or even 6) XP to get it when so many other options exist. That does make it a great candidate for a Core Set however, setting a baseline here on how Seekers can get a headstart on their card selection and giving them a Permanent upgrade that is always going to be useful. And then, when the card pool for Current gets built, Studious can make way for more specialized cards over time and just make the occasional appearance here and there. Like just recently, i ran double Studious in Agatha to make sure she gets the right combination of specific cards her investigator ability requires. Studious was very clutch in making that deck work. This is another neat reprint that fits into a Core very well.
Of course i now wonder if other classes get similar “headstart” Permanents. Another Day, Another Dollar for rogue would be pretty sweet as well and for very similar reasons.

Weakness

Hey, that’s not a Seeker card!
The Gold Bug is a very scary weakness. It invites comparison to the cycle of random basic weaknesses from Hemlock Vale, like Silver Moth and Maimed Hand. The first thing that jumps out at me from that comparison is that The Gold Bug does not have the option on it to take some immediate damage or horror to shuffle the card back. This weakness *is* going to enter play and it *is* going to knock your accessory asset into your discard pile. That’s a big deal, especially for the Accessory slot where you don’t usually play a lot of replacement assets. Often i do play just the one copy, even. Getting it knocked out of the slot by Gold Bug means i might as well not play that one copy in the first place. On the other side of the spectrum, if you run multiple accessory assets to have replacements, then Gold Bug will be able to remove them several times per game, as it shuffles back into your deck instead of discarding, causing you constant grief. Due to the reshuffle, it doesn’t make sense to hold your accessory in hand early on to wait for the weakness to go past, either.
That is an incredibly nasty combination of effects with very little angles of interaction for the player. If there are ways to get additional Accessory slots (like Relic Hunter), then those can be used to soften the blow from this weakness considerably, but it is of course still limiting your options then. And the -1 health and sanity is not nothing, either. And we don’t even know if Relic Hunter (or something similar) is in the new Core in the first place. You might just get this weakness and have it read “you don’t play accessories this campaign”.
This is a very very rough weakness to just randomly draw after building your deck. To be fair, some of the weaknesses in the old core weren’t exactly friendly either, but if this is how the weaknesses generally are going to look then they’ll definitely be a bigger part of the game than before. It still remains to be seen if The Gold Bug is just an outlier and the rest of the weaknesses are less brutal. Honestly, i am not sure which one i hope for. I like weaknesses to be impactful, but this is maybe a bit less interactive than i would hope for?Except for “Buy Relic Hunter if available” there’s not a whole lot you can actively do to play or build around it. I suppose it could work out okay-ish alongside accessory items that you don’t need to stick around forever. Something like Disk of Itzamna. Or something limited by charges, like Eon Chart. Oof.

Intro

As was announced last Friday, we got a new Core Set on the way. Chapter 2 of the Arkham LCG is incoming and with it, the designers are setting the groundwork for the future of the game. Exciting stuff. And already we are finding us right at the start of a new preview season. Specifically, with two weeks dedicated to the Seeker class. Yesterday, the official ArkhamHorror.com site started us off, teasing us with Joe’s backside. And today it’s my turn!

I have two level zero cards for you today and I’ll talk about both of them from a point of view of both Current and Legacy formats.

I’ll also mention that while previews are going on, I will once again maintain a Visual Spoiler that gives you all the revealed cards at a glance. You can find this together with any currently ongoing schedule here: Core 2026 Preview Schedule and Visual Spoiler.

Dorothy Simmons

With a new Core Set comes the opportunity to straighten out some “sins” of the past. So let’s talk about one of the biggest of those outliers. The esteemed Dr. Milan Christopher has kept his thumb on the seeker ally slot since the inception of the game, so wisely the new Current environment will start off with a new card to take over his duties as an intellect boosting ally that can be taken right at the initial deck creation. One that doesn’t immediately invalidate most anything else that gets printed for that slot.
While weaker than the best level zero ally in the history of the game, Dorothy Simmons is of course not in any way lackluster. She gives you that all-important Intellect boost and has the capability of giving you more resources down the road. Since her ability is conditional, she won’t fix your resources all by herself… unless you consistently investigate twice or more each turn, at which point your chances to get a resource per turn are becoming pretty decent.
As a three cost ally with a statboost, she lines up nicely with similar allies we’ve seen lately, such as Lawrence Carlisle, Alton O’Connell or even Walter Fitzpatrick. Costing one less may not seem like much, but if the play experience with Carlisle is any indication then costing 3 instead of 4 is actually a rather big deal in practice even when it comes at the cost of being able to soak a stray horror or damage. Traditionally, these Core Set stat boost allies have been costed at 4 (Milan, Beat Cop, Cat Burglar) so this makes early setup a bit smoother in comparison. Since there’s been so many 3 costed stat boost allies in recent sets, i wonder if that’s an indication that this is a new normal and that we are going to see similar things in the other classes when their turn in the previews comes around!
Dorothy hits a good powerlevel for a card that costs no experience. She’s very worthy of inclusion in the initial decks because she performs an important job. At the same time, she does leave room for specialized upgrades once a few XP are earned, like for example Gabriel Carillo or whatever else we have coming up in the future. We might even get an upgraded Dorothy Simmons, something that was just unthinkable for Milan. Good stuff, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
The final thing of note here is that Dorothy’s ability means that the just recently introduced archetype of “Exact Science” (where you get benefits for succeeding by exactly a certain amount) gets enshrined as a Core Seeker mechanic here. That’s neat and probably means we are going to see more of that in both the Core itself and future sets.

Gather Intel

From a card that is best discussed from a point of view of the Current format to one that is going to make an impact in any sort of Legacy or custom format you have going on!
This is the type of workhorse card that is surely going to see tons of play in all sorts of decks and in turn often ends up being more impactful than any flashy new shotgun or weird spell book. The option to draw more cards on demand is always good and getting to do it without having to spend an action is just the smoothest thing you can get to make your deck overall feel more satisfying and consistent.
While Seeker has a reputation for being the class that is best at drawing cards, this actually doesn’t check out as much as one would think when looking at previous Core Sets. Old Book of Lore and Cryptic Research were the options – and while i won’t deny that those are excellent, they are either unwieldy or late game buys that many non-Daisy decks didn’t even run. For much of the game’s time the Seeker card draw at level zero was basically Dunwich’s Lab Assistant, arguably all the way through until Innsmouth Conspiracy gave us Deep Knowledge.
The new Core remedies this, offering a potent little draw event that can go into pretty much any Seeker deck. This is obviously great for Current, but the event is good enough that even players with full collections should be highly interested in Gather Intel. The closest “tried and true” comparison is Glory from Nathaniel’s starter deck, a card that is among the most played Guardian cards in my collection since its release. As one would expect, the Seeker draw event is even better than the Guardian one, requiring the enemy only to come near you, not to be defeated by you. You don’t even need to draw it yourself or engage it, making this a very soft condition to fulfill that’ll just happen naturally without having to do anything.
Overall i think it’s an easy include in many, many decks that can run it. It’s not always going to stay in the deck until scenario 8 – but that’s perfectly fine, of course. A great baseline to establish Seeker as the class that does card draw just a bit better than anyone else.

Surge.

Preview season has barely even started, there’s a schedule up to Nov 13th right now – and presumably four more classes to go after that! Lots of fun stuff to gawk at for a while! I’ll be following all of that closely of course. If you want everything in one place, check in on the Visual Spoiler and the regular roundup posts on here.

That being said, if you *do* want to follow along, then check in tomorrow with arkham.build!

Intro

With a new spoiler season now at our hands, i will once more be doing regular spoiler roundups and give my takes on everything. Since the announcement stream and article already have a big chunk of cards, i want to do a first roundup right away before we even dive into the community creator previews that are starting next week.
As usual, all the card images can also be found on the Visual Spoiler. On that page, you can also find the dates for the upcoming previews and where those previews will be held.

A note before I start

When looking at the new cards, we can’t really put it yet in context with the rest of the set… or, in this special case in the context of the Current environment they are meant to headline. So anything is to be taken with a pile of salt, we simply don’t know fully yet what the designer’s plans are for how the classes are going to shake out in their abilities.

Sources

“Week of Arkham Horror” Livestream by FFG on Youtube
“The Next Chapter” Article by FFG on ffg.com

Guardian

We are starting on the card that is probably the least exciting one of the bunch. The Bodyguard can tank a bit for the team, but not actually all that much. Defeated after soaking either a damage and a horror or two damage, the price tag of 3 resources seems quite high. He deals a damage on his way out, but that’s going to be hard to time to matter.
So just taken by himself, he seems a bit borderline. A Guard Dog this is not.

This is a lot better. You get your three soaked points of damage/horror for your three resources here and the 2/2 distribution makes it a lot more flexible. Something Worth Fighting For and True Grit are the legacy cards this is closest to, both cards i have picked on a few occasions due to them not taking up a slot. I think the added flexibility gives Resilience a bunch more playability than those old cards. Not a card i am hugely excited for, but one that i can definitely see putting in my decks reasonably often.

Seeker

Magnifying Glass stays in the Core. Obviously a very strong card so this is a significant revelation. I’ve actually not been playing it a whole lot in the last years because other more punchy cards like Grim Memoir have been encroaching on its space. But yeah, as a baseline asset that makes sure that Seekers always have something to use for their primary function this is fantastic. Genuinely surprised to see it back, to be honest. But in a positive way.

Oh, this is really good. There’s two things to take away here. The first is the card taken for itself. Getting +2 to investigations and parleys for a resource is a crazy good rate. And it doesn’t take a slot, so it stacks with whatever else you have going on effortlessly. The other takeaway here is that it’s very likely that this is a full cycle? The original level 0 Talent cycle (Hyperawareness, Physical Training, etc) is very marginal, so if this is a replacement for them that gives them more spice… yes please!

And here’s one of those cards that Mag Glass will compete with. The Map is limited to four uses and can only be used on connecting locations, but in exchange you get free movements out of it. The movement is even optional, so if you don’t want to move because the location has an enemy, you can still use this to investigate clues from under that enemy’s nose. This seems like a very solid card to me. Not as good as the very universal Mag Glass overall, but with a use case that is common enough to matter that Local Map can easily see play alongside it.

Rogue

The whole “evade, then shoot” dance requires some dedication by the investigator and their deck but has been excellent in the past. As long as that aligns with your plans, there’s a lot to like here. Replacing your combat stat with agility is worthwhile, 4 ammo for 3 resources is nice too. Clean and simple card, has a job, does the job very well. Also slots in neatly with the legacy cardpool alongside Dirty Fighting and the rest of the whole archetype around weaponizing your agility.

This guy is insane, as anyone who played Drowned City on the Eastern route before can immediately recognize. The previous Core sets always had a very good Rogue ally in Leo De Luca, so there were some shoes to fill. And Olivier here manages it very well. A free move every turn while also being the level zero +1 agility Ally that Rogue somehow never got till now is a fantastic package.
I am excited to see movement be firmly in the Rogue class now instead of being gobbled up by Seeker as it was in the past.
There is straight up nothing bad to say about this card. 10/10. Almost makes me worried about getting a “Milan situation” in the Rogue ally slot now, with the level 0 being so good that it muscles out most anything else … but Rogue infamously also has very very good leveled up Allies like Delilah or Chuck so we’ll see.

Mystic

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to reprint straight up. The ability to say No to the encounter deck is a very core effect for Mystics and Ward of Protection is just a super clean and iconic design. Great name, too. Slam Dunk.

Agnes Baker might not be in the Core this time around (unless she is! who knows!), but through the Cloak your Mystic can still pretend to be somewhat like her. And with 3 soak for 3 resources and a damage on each trigger, the rate is quite good. Seems like a very neat card to me. Mystics usually have a lot of sanity by themselves, so it’ll need to be seen how interested they are in gaining even more. But the numbers are all the right ones on here (*scrolls up to Bodyguard again, then sighs*) so i am sure this will find a niche.

And here’s the first look at new spell assets, which are often a key part of the Mystic card pool. There’s a lot to like here. You only pay your charge on success, and even then it’s only optional. So not only will misses not cost you anything, but you can even use it to just attack for 1 damage using your willpower without having to waste a charge on something like a rat. It has a drawback on it, but it’s not one that hurts you, it will only lead to depleting your charges quicker (well… as long as you still have charges). Overall that sounds like enough upsides over previous iterations of the combat spell asset that even on a full card pool you’ll want to at least consider it over your usual Shrivels and Azure Flames.

Survivor

Unlimited soak for health and sanity? Sign me up. While Aleksey doesn’t also increase your stats the way that the legacy inspirations for this card had, the flexibility to buffer both your health and sanity from stray points is a huge deal. This allows taking the sting out of a lot of treacheries and occasional attacks. Add anything that allows you to deliberately take damage or horror for profit and you are cooking.
Giving up your ally slot for this effect is a real cost, but the effect is strong enough that Aleksey will find a home.

A single card that recurs three cards is fantastic baseline value, so this would be worth paying attention to even if it was overly convoluted or expensive. Luckily it is neither. At two resources we pay less than the charges we get. And there are no extra actions required either, only that we engage an enemy… which is usually going to happen eventually anyways. So throwing one or two into your deck just for value already sounds great. If you fight with events, the outlook becomes even better.
The recursion is restricted to events which is definitely a good deal more healthy for the balance than recurring assets. It can’t recur itself, but that’s just common sense.
I like Hunter’s Instinct, for a level 0 card this seems really pushed. Even if you just get back ECaches, that’s a sick resource engine already!

Neutral

Ha. Sure, no need to mess with perfection.

Well, Reward cards then. I think it is entirely reasonable to just ignore the Reward part of the whole thing if you want to. That being said, most players aim to play and win every campaign they own anyways, so it’s probably not making too much of a difference anyways.
Basically, i feel like I can treat these Reward cards just like a normal Neutral card.
As a longtime Versatile apologist who thinks that the impact of the “+5 deck size” rider is generally overvalued and really not that impactful if you built a good deck, this is attractive to me. Anything that gives additional options during deck creation is a very nice thing to have in your card pool. The actual value for Current will of course need to be determined, we don’t know what sort of Relics or Charms we get to work with.