Month: December 2025

Intro

Everyone’s currently talking about the new player cards in the Chapter 2 Core that will lay the foundation for the game from now on, but what about the other side of the coin? We are also getting new encounter sets, and while those aren’t previewed in any way (i don’t expect they will be) we can at least take one more look at the old encounter sets and talk about hopes and expectations for the new things to come.
So let’s just go over the whole Core one more time and see how these cards held up. Whenever applicable, i also want to state some Hopes and/or Expectations. Hopes are things that i wish they’d do, Expectations are things that i think they will do. Those don’t have to be the same thing, of course!

Agents of Cthulhu/Hastur/Shub/Yog

The Core Set started a bit of a tradition with these Agents of … sets. Usually 4 cards, providing some signature enemies and treacheries meant to be used whenever the relevant Great Old One got involved. Tend to be fairly high impact and most campaign boxes also came with their own Agents of … sets.
Generally speaking, these sets have been pretty great whenever they got used, their impact was noticeable. The one thing i am not really sold on however is that they belong in the Core Set. As i mentioned, many campaigns did their own Agents sets anyways. And since the range of elder deities in the Mythos is pretty vast and FFG is even adding their own entries to it, repeats don’t really happen all that often. There were some crossover uses of these sets, like Agents of Cthulhu in both Drowned City and Innsmouth and the stray use of Agents of Yog-Sothoth in Forgotten Age, but mostly i feel like these belong in their respective campaign boxes, not in the Core. The way these sets were shoehorned into Devourer Below was also super awkward, that doesn’t seem worth repeating.

Expectation: I think we are continuing to get new Agents sets, those have been proven to be pretty neat. But I don’t expect that we’ll get a range of random ones again like we did in the old Core. I predict that we’re getting an Agents of Elekoss and no further Agents sets unless they are actually relevant to the Brethren of Ash campaign.

Ancient Evils

Ah, that old chestnut. Used in 27 scenarios over the course of chapter 1, and for good reason. Doom advancement from the encounter deck is incredibly important for the pacing of the game, if it was missing completely that’d be a huge downgrade. I feel like Ancient Evils is near perfect for its job of making sure the investigators fear the doom clock. There’s been scenarios where Ancient Evils was too oppressive, but i believe those were failures in scenario design and i am confident that the lessons from those mistakes have been learned.
I could see the designers give in to the calls for a softer version. Something like Resurgent Evils could be a solid replacement that is still impactful enough and gives those that think Evils is unfair the illusion of a choice.

Hope: Just keep it unchanged. Ancient Evils is perfect.

Expectation: I don’t think the designers will keep it unchanged though. Too many people are crying about it, so they probably need to at least pay lip service to that. Let’s hope they don’t castrate this card too much.

Chilling Cold

Obscuring Fog is mostly notable for being very hit or miss on how it affects the game when it turns up. Depending on the shroud of the location and if it even still has clues on it, it can be anything from hugely annoying to a free encounter draw. Crypt Chill on the other hand is very notable as one of the few pieces of asset hate in the Core Set and actually the game overall. The classic lesson of not playing your expensive ally turn 1 if its the only asset you end up playing is well worth teaching and i hope it continues to stay relevant in Chapter 2. Actually, i would like to see more cards that attack the player’s assets and cards in hand, there’s not enough disruption happening.
Both of the effects represented here are definitely worth keeping around as a part of the generic encounter arsenal. There’s not really much of a reason to keep them together as one encounter set though, they aren’t linked mechanically in any way. Even the thematic link they have (“It’s cold.”) is paper thin and the mechanics don’t link up with that theme all that much.

Expectation: We are keeping the asset discard and the shroud increase effects around, but they wouldn’t need to be grouped in one set like they are in chapter 1. Just as an idea, they could bundle that shround increase with the other anti-investigation effects from the Midnight Mask Treacheries.

Dark Cult

A super important set, the idea for this one i think is going to stick around for sure. The Acolyte is a near-perfect card and i don’t see a reason to change it in any way. The other two are a bit swingy and i could see tuning down their effects just a bit.
But honestly, i would have no complaints if this set is just 1:1 reprinted as is.

Expectations: I expect we aren’t going to see exact reprints, but spiritual successors to the combination of a cultist, a cult leader and a treachery that serves them up are very likely.

Ghouls

Unlike Cult, Cold and Evils, the Ghouls set has not been used all that much over the course of chapter 1 campaigns. And when it was, it was often just for a single scenario and felt somewhat shoed in. This is no fault of the mechanics of the cards however, the two enemies are perfectly serviceable as baseline filler and Grasping Hands is a very important effect to have around. The flavor tie to Ghouls specifically makes them a hard fit to pack into any campaign though. The Cultist set is generic enough that it makes sense anywhere, no matter if it’s Hastur, Yog or Cthulhu pulling their strings. Same with a set that tells you it’s cold outside. But Ghouls simply don’t make sense in most settings, much to the detriment of Grasping Hands which really deserved to see as much inclusion in encounter decks as Rotting Remains did.
I think both of the Grasping Hands and Rotting Remains are going to make a reappearance in the Chapter 2 Core, either as a straight reprint or as a near-identical version. Their mechanics of scaling their effect by how badly you failed is really underused in general and i’d hope to see more of that.
As for the enemies… i don’t know. You kind of need enemies like this in your toolbox, but this does seem like something where the actual campaigns can fill the spots better. A 2/2/2 and 3/3/3 are already mechanically super generic, let them at least get campaign-specific flavor so that they’ve got something interesting going on.

Expectations: The Ghoul set as a unit is toast, i’d guess. For the Chapter 2 Core, they will probably want to make sure that each set’s flavor is broad enough that it can be used in all sorts of campaigns over the next years.
Grasping Hands will return in some fashion, but likely without the baggage of being tied to any specific flavor.

Locked Doors

I like these a lot. They are mechanically super weird but i quite like what they do to the game. A location that is locked down by one of these can often be a real problem for the clue focused investigator, the classic of course being Daisy staring down one of these and not quite sure what she’s supposed to do with it. But then there’s a couple different ways to actually deal with it after all, with two different skills being printed on the card and also the venue of gathering the clues without investigating which to this day still makes me feels super clever whenever i pull it off.
Do we need Locked Door itself in Chapter 2? Probably not. But some sort of treachery with a similar effect that stops a location from being investigated would be real nice to keep around for the toolbox. I think this card slot can team up with the one replacing Obscuring Fog to open up a new anti-investigation encounter set. Maybe even fuse that with the Midnight Masks treacheries and open up a full 7+ card set to bully Seekers.

Expectation: We do not know yet if there are any encounter reprints in the new Core. If there are, i could see this one making a return as is. They got plenty of use over the course of Chapter 1, they are in fact one of the three that are in every single campaign (the other two are Cold and Fear) so far.

Midnight Masks Treacheries

These aren’t even a proper Core Encounter Set, these are part of the Midnight Masks scenario. And yet, they get pulled out of the Core box for almost all other Chapter 1 campaigns because they do such a good job of impeding investigations. And that’s a job that just always needs to be done.

Expectation: Well first off, i bet the designers regretted not making these two their own encounter set for easier reference. So hopefully we don’t need to do the whole “gather all cards from that one set, but only keep these specific ones” dance again in Chapter 2, no matter the set.
As for the actual cards… I am not a huge fan of False Lead, i feel like it can be too much of a slap in the face sometimes. But Hunting Shadow is another one of those near-perfect cards that just works exactly like it should.

Hope: I already alluded to this twice now, but if i had to redo the anti-investigation set for the new Core, it’d be Hunting Shadow, Obscuring Fog and Locked Door bundled together. Or cards that do the same job that those three did in the old Core. One card to stop investigations from happening where the Seeker needs to be bailed out. One card that makes investigations harder that the Seeker has to overcome themselves. And one card to come after the clues they already collected.

Nightgaunts

A bit of a similar case to the Ghoul set, where the set is tied to a specific Mythos creature. This is also further mechanically tied to the presence of “Central” locations. What this means in practice is that you almost can’t have a scenario in Arkham without the Nightgaunts inexplicably showing up. All just because they were in Midnight Masks. I think that’s just weird.
I like these enemies a lot from a mechanical side, they are tough and have some novel things going on. The treachery is also deceptively punishing. Are they Core Set material though? Is that whole “Central” location thing something that needs to be anchored here? Nah.

Expectation: I suppose we can’t completely avoid putting any specific Mythos creatures into the Core Set, can we? So to some degree that issue with a set or two being hard to use in future campaigns because of what they represent in the lore will probably stay around. But i feel like the Nightgaunts can get a rest for Chapter 2 until our inevitable next brush with the Dream-Lands in a future campaign.

Rats

This set does some very important work as filler/reprieve in encounter decks. I also very much like that this isn’t something from the Mythos or even particularly scary. It’s just some rats. Having a bit of ebb and flow to the dangers from the encounter deck is a good thing and for that, i appreciate the presence of the Rats as they give the counterbalance to other turns where some Deep One Bull (or Agent of the King or whatever else the campaign’s troublesome signature enemy is) shows up to spike the drama.
One thing i would change about the rats however: I would swap their combat and evasion values. Make the non-fighters evade it instead of giving them the option to punch their way out. This would also make the Hunter matter.

Expectation: I’d think that we’ll get a set with mundane filler enemies again. Rats are sort of perfect for the job and hard to replace – anything else i could think of (Bats maybe?) would again be a bit more limited in where they show up. Rats are believable pretty much everywhere.

Striking Fear

Willpower matters and no other set is better at reminding us of that fact than Striking Fear. As mentioned, the designers packed this set into every campaign thus far, so clearly they must think that they did something right here. And i mostly agree.
Rotting Remains is great of course. The scaling effect is excellent and one of the few cards where it’s worth to throw a couple willpower icons into a test even when you don’t expect to actually pass. The game could use some more of that.
Dissonant Voices can be hit or miss in how it affects whoever drew it… but when it hits, it really does. I think this could use a test, the finality of shutting down certain investigators can be a bit much and i am not sure if the designers anticipated during the creation of the core set just how much future investigators like Nathaniel or Agatha could get hosed by it.
Frozen in Fear is what i would call the scariest encounter card in the Core and possibly in the game overall. A low willpower investigator can get stranded with this for several turns and just find themselves unable to do much. I think it’s too much, that particular bit of timing that only allows one try at getting rid of it and also doesn’t allow other investigators to help you out of your peril is over the line for me.

Hopes: I never want to see Frozen in Fear again.

Expectations: The specific timing on the discard ability of Frozen in Fear does appear a couple of times on other treacheries in the game, including Drowned City… so apparently the designers have less issues with how non-interactive that little bit is than i do. So i suppose i could see any of those three make a comeback, but only Rotting Remains is a near-certainty.

Overall

While i certainly have my points of critique here and there, I can’t say enough good things about the array of the Chapter 1 encounter cards overall. They’ve been used for close to 10 years now across as many campaigns and held up remarkably well. Back then, a lot depended on the designers getting these things right or it would have echoed across the following years.
This pressure is on for Chapter 2 now, of course. The safe way of going about it would be to stay close to the original formula and make the new sets basically remixed versions of the old ones. It’ll be interesting to see how daring Duke and Nick were with their approach for the new Core, how much they explored away from that beaten old path.

Here’s actually our first look at what a new encounter card might look like! It’s from one of the images on the Asmodee Store Page. Now, we don’t know if this is actually from one of the global encounter sets, it could be a scenario specific enemy. But it does at least have a different expansion icon than the act card that is also in that picture.
My best guess: This is part of an Agents of Elekoss set and thus will likely not be terribly relevant outside of the Brethren of Ash campaign. But who knows what plans they have for their newly minted homegrown Ancient One.
Hellhound is a reasonably scary enemy that usually won’t go down in one swing and also can’t be evaded easily. I particularly like that Forced effect, which does what i asked for earlier on this page: Attack the player’s assets. Good start!

Intro

We’ve done Seeker, we’ve done Survivor, so you know the drill by now. Time to move on from looking at the cards by themselves and check out Guardian as a class. Where does it stand, how have the lines been redrawn?

The Investigator

Daniela Reyes serves a specific fantasy within the Guardian class, the protective “Tank”. She taunts enemies into attacking her, she takes hits to divert attention away from her teammates. And she then smacks the everliving crap out of whatever dared having a go at her. That’s definitely a strong fantasy behind how she works and the mechanical backbone that is propping this fantasy up is solid as well.
Where Joe is about as generically Seeker as an investigator can be (“You draw cards!”) and where Isabelle is quite specialized towards a certain gimmick (“Have skill cards and you can triple-dip on them by getting them back from your discard!”), Daniela is positioned somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. As a Guardian investigator with 5 combat she will always be able to beat down enemies even without having to jump through any hoops. But if she does engage with her special abilities, she gets some additional efficiency on top.
Her tilt towards being able to take a couple hits (and even be rewarded for it) does inform a solid amount of the card pool as well, with nods towards this strategy in both Guardian and Survivor.
There’s also clearly been a conscious effort to make her at least reasonably capable on her own, with event based clue support that enable her to find a surprising amount of clues in spite of her 2 intellect.
She seems like a well-rounded investigator with some depth to her, I’m pretty happy with Dani being in the Core.
Looking beyond the Core, her place next to her old version in the Legacy lineup seems pretty solid, too. The switch-up in card pool alone is enough to make her notably different, but the abilities on her are tweaked in enough ways to change the way she plays too. Her old version did only a single point of damage on triggering – while this was guaranteed, she usually isn’t hurting for combat value and now being able to smack back with a weapon (or fight event!) gives triggering attacks of opportunity a whole new value. Speaking of AoOs, her old version was also explicitly not triggering on those. Or on team attacks. Either of which are working for her now. I think this new Daniela is a lot more capable of turning her ability into something impactful, even though she did lose the ability to evade a massive elite to stop it from hurting everyone else.

Core Guardian Themes

I have a bone to pick with the representation of the Guardian class in this Core Set. But before we get to that, let’s check out what is there:
Combat: Guardians are the designated fighters. They take a weapon and use it to defeat whatever needs to be taken care of, in a straightforward way. This is clearly represented with both Firearms and Melee weapons, in level 0 and upgraded forms. Vicious Blow and Counterattack both add more to the damage potential of a Guardian investigator, allowing them to put out more damage efficiently than other classes. Well, at least in a reliable way.
Soak: Even more than Survivor, Guardian is able to take a hit. Armor, allies and just natural hardiness are all things we expect from a guardian investigator and their decks. FFG even chose to make the first two cards we got to see of the Guardian class to be representative of this aspect.
And … well, that’s kinda it. Which leads me to the beef i have with this representation: Is that really it? Isn’t Guardian supposed to be more than just murder hobos? Where’s the First Aid? Stand Together? Bestow Resolve? Leadership? Self-Sacrifice? Like, i don’t mean necessarily those exact cards, but things with that vibe and theme. Isn’t Guardian also supposed to be about teamwork, helping out and healing? There is a nod towards this with cards that let Daniela soak for other players, with things like her own investigator ability or Bodyguard. But it’s so minor and so narrowly focused on the soaking part that it doesn’t really cover what i would have liked to see. I miss the Team Spirit part of the class big time here. Obviously i understand that card budget is limited and that redrawing the lines for melee vs firearm had to take a solid bite out of it. But i am disappointed by how one-dimensional this class is looking right now and i feel like they managed to avoid that in the Seeker and Survivor class much better. Fingers crossed for the Tommy deck, i suppose. I kinda need Guardians to be more than shotgun monkeys to be interested in them.

Firearms versus Melee

So, this isn’t purely a Guardian topic of course, but since we got a good helping of weapons here, this is as good a place to talk about it as any. In Chapter 1, a very common critique was that melee weapons were disproportionally powerful when compared to firearms (and other methods of fighting with uses). There has to be a relevant upside to using guns that are limited by ammo when compared to just picking a blade that doesn’t run out. In chapter 1, this wasn’t really the case and the issue ran back all the way to the first core where the Machete outclassed the .45 Auto in pretty much every way. Subsequent sets would then base their new cards on these and in turn Guardian Firearms never really became something that could compete. At least not the one-handed ones. There are definitely some solid two-handed guns in the old card pool, but those got kind of outclassed by a few high-powered two-handed melee weapons as well.
Hopefully not repeating these mistakes, the baseline power for melee vs firearm gets redrawn in the new Core, with the M1911 just straight up lowering the resource cost for the basic “4 shots, +1 combat, +1 damage” weapon. At the same time, melee weapons got powered down, with Machete being in the set as a modified reprint that now sports an exhaust clause for its damage. This does extend beyond Guardian of course, with Meat Cleaver also asking a lot from whoever wants to wield it in return for not using ammo.
This seems well done overall and does bode well for any future Firearms that see print, as they will be based on a much more desirable baseline than they used to. It’ll always be an uphill battle for cards with limited uses to compete with those that can be used forever (and highly dependent on player count too!), but at least the gap is hopefully closer now. Ideally, we even get more of a reason to run both melee weapons and firearms in our decks at the same time, to have them cover for each others weaknesses. With a Machete in one hand, the ammo on the M1911 in the other hand is going to last a lot longer … meanwhile that pistol is going to be able to finish off any enemies that your blade left standing.

Card Quality and Usability

Not going to lie to you, i was looking at the Guardian reveals with some anxiety. It’s the class that has been getting the short end of the balance stick for a good while, so the recentering of the balance with the new Core had to do some work if the goal was to make it look as appealing as the Seeker and Survivor class do. The two cards that were previewed early didn’t really inspire much confidence at all… looking at the full spoiler now, Resilience and Bodyguard(0) were pretty much the worst cards they could have picked for their announcement article. I have no idea who made those choices and what they were thinking, but hot damn… that was a miss. Like, i don’t expect FFG to lead with both Logan and the M1911 straight away, leaving something for the reveals makes sense. But starting with a near unplayable card that only reinforces every existing “Guardian Tax” stereotype and one okay card that has no gameplay text on it is certainly a choice that’s completely incomprehensible to me.
But thankfully that’s in the past and with the whole Guardian class now revealed, we can put some of that anxiety to rest because overall this looks pretty good.

Bodyguard stayed the only card on the Guardian card list that i don’t really see being up to the task, actually i think it’s the worst card on the spoiler overall right now (yes, i believe it’s worse than Fedora). The rest of the cards is all at least playable and for the most part a lot better than that. That was actually true of the Guardian cards in the Revised Core as well, which had First Aid as a misfire and the rest all being quite good. That works for me.

Like Survivor, the Guardian pool is heavily influenced by the investigator that is headlining it. Arguably even more so, as soak and counterattack payoffs seem to be everywhere. That does help make it feel cohesive and makes it work together, but as i noted earlier i think it tips over a line where it stops representing the class as a whole and is too focused on the investigator. Most of it is pretty good though and i don’t doubt that i’ll find plenty of use for cards like Counterattack or even Resilience without explicitly being on the Daniela gameplay loop. Counterattack in particular is a card i foresee playing a lot as it presents a very efficient package for just 1xp and is one of the standouts on the Guardian spoiler for me alongside the firearms (both the pistol and the shotgun).

I do appreciate the effort that was spent on making the Guardian able to flex with in-class clue events. Having two of them right in the core is pretty nice and gets even more relevant once you factor in that Daniela has the deckbuilding access to lets those events meet Survivor recursion.

Overall

I think it’s fair to say that this was a relief? This certainly looks like we’ll be able to build capable monster hunters from our blue cards and Daniela is offering a very focused and efficient way to fill the fighter role in a way that Roland was not always up to. Truth be told, my personal interest here is less in the cards here as Guardian cards, but more in what the melee vs firearm rebalancing is achieving for the game as a whole. And that part is definitely looking very promising right now. I wish i had more to talk about here than weapons, damage and health but maybe a more focused lens does make sense for the Core after all. It certainly won’t matter for new players picking up the box who can instead just look forward to Daniela retaliate blasting enemies with a shotgun!

One other thing i am relieved about, by the way: Seeker had six reprints in its fourteen cards, which was scratching at what i found acceptable. Survivor and Guardian both had three, so thankfully this was not a trend that held up.

Next up, some time in the new year after we recovered from the holidays, is Rogue weeks. Which i am excited for! My favorite class, and also the one that has been mistreated the most by the early card pool of chapter 1. Sorry Skids, i love you, but it literally took you 9 years to become good. Much of the early Rogue card pool never even got to that point. So i am looking forward to the new and improved vision of what’s the Rogue class is all about, spearheaded by the evasion-focused Trish Scarborough.

Guardian Week 2

And that’s the rest of the Guardian previews, we have all the blue cards on the Visual Spoiler now. Let’s go over the new cards, then meet back tomorrow for the Early Impressions.
Oh right, also the Asmodee Store has been updated with a listing of the new Core Set. Which includes info on Trish and Dexter that is worth mentioning, so we will check that out too!

Sources

Right Tool for the Job and Vicious Blow were previewed by Watch It Played on their YouTube.
Unexpected Courage and Logan Hastings were previewed by Quick Learner on their YouTube.
Daniela Reyes‘ kit, Machete and Lesson Learned were previewed on FFG.com in the capstone article to Guardian previews. Also, Bodyguard(2) was given to us by the community manager.

Trish and Dexter are partially shown on the Asmodee Store Page.

Daniela Reyes

Here’s Daniela with her full kit revealed. I’ll save the more detailed look for the Guardian Impressions article, but the tl;dr on her from my side is that i think she looks quite good. She’s powerful and for the most part an enhanced version of her chapter 1 incarnation. While there are many things that are similar or even identical, i do believe that there is easily enough new stuff here to make her play different enough from the old version. I especially appreciate her now triggering on attacks against other investigators and i believe that her now being able to use a weapon for her bonus attacks instead of just dealing a flat point of damage is pretty huge. As is the whole “Guardian 0-5” thing, of course!
Bottomline, Daniela is strong and seems like a good inclusion for the Core.

Guardian

Stellar card. Guardian notably had two very relevant allies in the old Core Set, Beat Cop and Guard Dog. Now, while the new Guard Dog replacement is quite lackluster, the new +1 combat ally makes up for it. Logan is a lot better than Beat Cop, i think. For Guardian it is very nice to have your expensive ally pay for themselves as it will enable them to keep playing other assets. Combine that with the fact that the new basic pistol also got cheaper and your setup looks already a lot smoother than it did before.
Now, Logan will of course not trigger every round as there will be plenty turns where no enemy can be defeated. So don’t expect him to fix your economy singlehandedly like chapter 1’s Milan Christopher did for Seekers. But just as an asset that refunds itself, he’s very good. A card that is sure to stay relevant all through chapter 2 and that i am happy to put into my decks. I’ll also be on the lookout for the inevitable upgraded Logan in a future set.

A card for a clue. Eh, kind of unexciting, but does its job, i suppose. It’s more or less on par with Evidence from the old Core. Evidence is a more desirable card overall i think, but with Daniela in the set, Lesson Learned does make sense of course.
I am torn on this one. On the one hand, i don’t feel like i usually want to put this into my deck, but on the other hand i do also believe that Evidence has been kind of underrated all this time so maybe i am just walking into that same trap again here. I will say though that i like Scene of the Crime better, it’s just more impactful. So Lesson Learned would probably only see play for me if i want to lean even further into incidental clue collection with my fighter. Sure, why not, i could see that happen. At the very least, the Daniela who uses Scene of the Crime, Lesson Learned, Look What I Found and Hunter’s Instinct to recur those events sounds like something worth exploring.

Oh, i was hoping for a Machete-style one-hand melee weapon in the new Core, but i didn’t expect it to literally *be* Machete. The change to exhaust for the extra damage does give it the necessary restriction from completely taking over the firearm’s job which is a good little bit of distinction. This is definitely still very playable and i foresee a lot of Daniela decks with a Machete in one hand and an M1911 in the other. Joe can get in on that double action as well, but will probably want an investigation tool in at least one of his hands. I could see arguments for either of the options, which is exactly where you want to be with the balance of these cards.
I gotta say though… this is still not a Tool? Come on.

Not bad at all. I like this as an addition to the Core Set, because it’s at its best in a fledgling card pool where it provides much needed redundancy. It falls off in a large card pool because at some point it’s just going to be better to just run another weapon instead. Before we have that sort of redundancy, this is good though. And it’s going to take quite a few expansions before we get to that point. Even then, additional value is gained from being able to find a specific weapon you invested XP into, allowing you to upgrade your deck more efficiently. Or from being able to pick up a Tool instead. Or find your signature weapon, like … say … Daniela’s Wrench or Tommy’s Becky.
A simple and solid card that will make plenty of decks. Unless you are really focusing on a specific weapon or tool as a build around you probably don’t plan on keeping this in your deck forever, but for the first couple scenarios a tutor like this does excellent work of both keeping your deck together and making your first XP investments pop.

A signature staple of the Guardian class, if this was missing from the Core, there would be riots in the streets. An incredibly important card for letting Guardian investigators be good at their jobs that will usually convert straight into a bonus action right when it’s needed the most. Guardian decks without Vicious Blow do exist, but even at a full collection level they are rare. It’s just that good of a card.

I meaaaan… it’s better than the level 0 at least. Actually, the level 2 version is perfectly fine, i could see myself putting that into a deck. Getting to tank 3 damage for the team and also dealing an action’s worth of damage on the way out is a solid way of spending 3 resources. Considering that the level 0 Bodyguard is almost unplayable, i worry however that the ally slot will be claimed by the time i decide on whether to spend 2xp on this tanky boi when i could just keep Logan there and upgrade something else instead. I could see it happen for Daniela specifically, with her natural high combat value she doesn’t need Logan desperately and the 3 soak and bonus damage she can get here do play into her thing very well. I am not sure i see much of a desire for Bodyguard(2) for any future investigators though. Am i going to play him in Joe? I find that unlikely, i probably want to get either his intellect or combat to 5 with the ally slot, right?
Yeah, overall i don’t know. He’s not outright bad like his level 0 version, but i’m not really convinced yet that he’s got a good role to fill in the long term.

Neutral

An important card to have available, especially on a small card pool. Two wild icons is something that is just never going to be a dead card, it’s always useful and will more likely than not make a crucial difference somewhere. Once the card pool in chapter 1 got larger, i stopped playing Courage outside of specific decks (like Wini or Wilson) in favor of more specialized cards and i expect Courage to follow a similar trajectory in chapter 2. But it took quite a lot of time to get to that point.
In any case, i don’t think anyone is going to argue against this being a very sensible inclusion in the Core Set.

Trish and Dexter

The store page shows off a couple of things, including a small peak at some locations and the (suitably nasty) Hellhound enemy card… but i’ll table the encounter talk until we have more to go on. It also gives us end of April as the current release date for the set, which is later than i expected. I kind of thought that we’d finish up spoiler season over January and basically be able to buy the thing right afterwards. Meh.
But what i actually want to focus on now is the display of the investigators which gives us Trish’s ability and Dexter’s statline:

Dexter: Compared to his chapter 1 incarnation, his statline shifts from 5/2/3/2 to 5/2/2/3, which taken for itself is likely a more useful one. It’s not like he was really able to use his 3 combat outside of the gimmickiest of gimmick decks. Now, i certainly would have preferred if they went the other way and gave him 4 fight, but that number on a Mystic seems to be illegal by Minnesota law, so what can we do. He does retain that all powerful 5 willpower. His ability still deals with assets, giving him some sort of ability on playing them. Oh, and he’s a Performer now and left his Veteran past behind. No more Tankgewehr for him!

Trish: I mean… i guess this is fine. On an objective level, the ability on a core rogue makes a lot of sense and is definitely something we can build good decks based on. It’s a strong ability and (likely) a strong card pool too. On a subjective level, i kind of own this investigator already… this post-transition Finn doesn’t really bring anything new to the table for me. A bit of a pity, but with the whole chapter reset thing it’s unavoidable to get some retreads here and there, i suppose. It’s not like i really get anything out of additional copies of Unexpected Courage or Vicious Blow either and i am perfectly happy to see those in the new Core. It only matters for the deeply entrenched players, for new players getting this Trish here is pretty great. What matters in the end is that the Core provides a jumping off point for new players to enjoy the classes and i feel like Trish is going to do a good job of representing my favorite class and introducing them to the “evadey seeker” playstyle which is a major component of Rogue.
Trish keeps her legacy statline, which makes sense. In terms of traits, she is no longer a Detective, but a Criminal now. Sure, that’s definitely something that feels more Rogue than before.

Guardian Week 1

Two classes down, three to go. Guardian is up next.

Sources

Daniela Reyes‘ deckbuilding was previewed on the official ArkhamHorror.com site, along with the schedule for the rest of Guardian Weeks.
Winchester Model 12 and Wounded were previewed by The Whisperer in Darkness on their YouTube.
Endurance and Sledgehammer were previewed by The Barnaby Files on their blog.
Counterattack and Scene of the Crime were previewed by Amber Autumn Faebrook on her YouTube.
M1911 and Guts were previewed by Los Archivos de Arkham on their Youtube, alongside a look at the Hellhound and Blasphemous Invocation artwork

Daniela Reyes

I mean… not much of a revelation here. The “Daniela is a rogue actually” conspiracy never had much to stand on, so the Survivor 0-2 reveal shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone. With the front and signature already somewhat known (check last week’s Spoiler Roundup for the scoop on that) there’s not much to speculate either, so i think we can table the Daniela talk to next week when those cards are getting officially revealed alongside the weakness.

Guardian

We’ve gotten a glimpse at this last week as well, but it’s good to have it confirmed with its proper english name and card text. Like the other cards in its cycle, this is a solid proposition if you foresee that you’ll end up using it for its primary purpose a couple of times. Unlike Survivor’s card which is mostly treachery protection, this is a very proactive card that will funnel your spare resources into enemy handling. If you are using the Winchester Model 12, you even funnel it almost directly into straight damage which is where this becomes very attractive.
It does require you to have two resources upfront and then more to spare to keep feeding into it which does add an opportunity cost that makes sure it’s not as easy to include in everyone as Chapter 1’s Wolf Mask is, but that is probably a good thing. As a potent combat and evasion booster that doesn’t take up an equipment slot, this does a good job anyways.

Yeah, good riddance to the .45 Auto. Power creep done right, this works towards bringing Firearms up in playability when compared to melee weapons. Reducing the cost on the card while keeping the functionality of the basic firearm the same goes a good way to making Guardian’s first setup turns less painful without actually raising the ceiling on the power level. Finally, a Firearm i am happy to include in all my level 0 decks. It only took us nine and a half years but we got there.
Now we only need to see the melee weapon that Guardian can start with (we are getting one, right?) for the full picture.
I am very much in favor of this card seeing print, both as a new baseline for the Core… and as a gun that i can give Roland and Joe in the full cardpool instead of that awfully flavor-inappropriate Enchanted Blade.

A tried and true classic that has done great work over the last years. I frequently put this into decks with all sorts of Guardian investigators to get some extra clue flexing in on the side, even when i don’t have any specific tech to pull enemies from the encounter deck available.
Daniela comes in with only 2 intellect, but between Scene of the Crime, Lesson Learned and Look What I Found she has access to enough clue tech to paste over that weakness fairly easily.
Makes a lot of sense as a Core Set reprint to me, i see no reason why this wouldn’t just be able to continue doing a good job. Good card, thumbs up.

It’s a card for a damage which is a very favorable trade by itself. Add on the ability to also prevent some damage and/or horror dealt to you or someone else at your location and you got yourself a potent little package. This card is quite flexible, helping with enemies both small and big. Sometimes you might use this just to save an action on killing a rat or a cultist because you can just investigate or move into an attack of opportunity which you cancel and swat the small enemy. Or finishing off a three health enemy that you already dealt two damage to, kind of using this like a Vicious Blow that you don’t have to commit in advance. Other times you’ll use this to make a big Elite that you can’ kill in one turn skip their attack for a round while getting a lick for a damage in.
Previous cards in this general space often only did one of these jobs (Counterpunch, Dodge) leading to awkwardly holding the card when you didn’t find yourself in the specific situation for those cards to be useful. Counterattack should be much easier to get good value out of, which makes it a very nice pickup for any spare XP you have lying around.
I think this is one of those cards that looks somewhat unspectacular on paper, but actually plays really well. Looking forward to giving this a try.
My only nitpick here is that i am not sure that Daniela is really the investigator that wants it. If her investigator ability looks the way we think, then she already has the “finish an enemy without using an action” part of the card covered. And since Counterattack cancels the enemy attack (meaning her investigator ability won’t trigger either) they don’t stack. So i don’t think i will play this in Dani? Joe definitely is a contender though, being able to just keep investigating while using this to swat away a small enemy sounds really nice.

We get both a highlevel firearm and a highlevel melee weapon this week, making for an interesting comparison. As a Guardian, this gives you the choice to either invest into a weapon that doesn’t run out and give you an endless stream of +1 damage… but you’ll have to source the combat bonus somewhere else (Endurance?) unless you are able to spend an additional action on smashing something that you need smashed now. Or you go for the big gun which is limited by ammo, but comes with both damage and combat bonus right out of the gate.
This seems like a solid way to set up distinction between Melee and Firearm to me, with one being unlimited but hampered by some condition while the other has strong actions but limited uses.
Compared to Chapter 1 melee weapons this weapon is a bit dodgy, but if we accept Chapter 2 as the new start that it is then it’s a fine enough baseline. At least it is for Daniela, i’d probably be more critical of this card if we didn’t get a 5 combat investigator alongside it.

The top end Guardian gun is once again going to be a shotgun. Borrowing much of its mechanics from the one in the OG Core, this new model is however improved in many ways. It’s one cheaper and comes with an extra ammo on it, both huge factors in making the traditionally strapped for resources Guardian economy work better. As a result of an updated wording to its ability, its damage is also improved. While it has the same ceiling as before at 5 damage, this is now easier to reach than before: Where for example an oversuccess by 3 did a total of 3 damage on the original shotty, the Winchester Model 12 does 4 damage in that situation.
Lower cost, more ammo, easier to achieve damage… that’s all very significant and well worth costing an extra XP. After all, i’d definitely rather pay 5xp for a good gun than 4xp for a mediocre one.
Where the original shotgun quickly fell off in playability after the release of some alternative weapons, i predict that the Model 12 is going to hold up a lot better. Especially the ammo situation makes this weapon a lot more generically useful, as the help from enabling cards like Extra Ammunition is no longer as essential (but would still be welcome, of course!). The OG Shotgun even began to see a bit of a renaissance in the late Chapter 1 thanks to cards like One in the Chamber or Cleaning Kit being particularly good for it. I could see this new and significantly improved version stay relevant without ever falling off completely the way the OG Shotgun did and still pick up in a similar way as soon as we get additional sources of ammo from anywhere.
Overall i think this is a good addition to the Chapter 2 Core. Gives a top end gun that works as a boss killer and is worth the price of admission. It leaves room for synergy with other cards for further investment into the playstyle, too.

Neutral

I mean, what do you want me to say.
It’s Guts. We like Guts. Everyone likes Guts.
One of the few cards of which there could be eight copies in the set and we wouldn’t even feel like it’s too many. Yay, Guts.

Weakness

This man however is having a bit of a bad time with his Guts.
Wounded seems very in line with what we are used from random basic weaknesses in Chapter 1. Unlike the other two new ones we’ve seen before (Gold Bug and Nameless Lurker) which look somewhat harsher, Wounded is mostly going to be something that’s relatively easy to deal with. After all, Internal Injury has never made anyone too concerned and that one is both direct damage and doesn’t give the option of staying in place to avoid the damage for a round.
That being said, you will need to eventually take care of Wounded, unless you are in the last couple turns of the scenario or have a way to negate a point of damage every round (like Aleksey) you probably don’t want to ride this one out. The “2 action to discard” cost for weaknesses is pretty much the established baseline for random basic weaknesses, so nothing earth shattering here. Just a regular normie basic weakness, likely one of the more benign ones you could draw.

Encounter Art

Look at what they can do now that they have a properly framed window for artwork on the enemy cards.

Intro

Now that we have the full Survivor card pool of the Core in front of us, let’s check out how it looks for our scrappy underdogs in the new environment. But first, a quick mini-roundup of the info from yesterday’s article on FFG.com.

Spoiler Roundup #5.5

Source for all of these is the capstone article to the Survivor Weeks on FFG.com.

Isabelle Barnes in all her glory. She is extremely vulnerable to damage while also playing around with her sanity. In exchange she has one hell of a versatile and powerful ability. And a very good signature weapon. I’ll talk about Izzie in detail in a bit, so i will just move on for now.

The other two cards that were still missing from the Survivor lineup were also revealed in the article. They are both reprints, but they are excellent ones. Look What I Found is a card that has seen consistent and frequent play all the way from the first release of the original Core to today and it’s apparently not going to stop now. Actually, with the Old Compass synergizing well with it, we can only expect to see it even more regularly now, at least until the card pool fills out a bit more.
Bandages is very potent healing and notably directly counters Isabelle’s weakness. That means that both of the Survivor investigators in the box, Izzie and Daniela, are very interested in this card. But even beyond their specific needs for healing, Bandages is just in general a very good card that is going to be stay relevant even with a deeper card pool.

Alright, that’s it for the round-up. Now that we are all caught up with the full Survivor card pool (check out the Visual Spoiler for the full list, if you want), let’s dive into the class as a whole and how Survivor is set up to play.

The Investigator

The seeker investigator, Joe Diamond is very generic to fit into the very clearly defined Seeker themes of card draw and investigation. For Survivor, things aren’t quite as clear cut as they are for Seekers (and likely Guardians) and accordingly, Isabelle Barnes has quite a lot more going on in terms of her investigator ability.
She leans into the recursion side of Survivor, able to get extra uses out of skill cards. Thanks to the neutral skills in the Core, this directly translates into card draw at the very least. More skills will just up how much this ability can really do. Seeing what Mystic has to offer is going to be interesting for this, even something like Fearless can do a lot of work with Isabelle.
Her statline is relatively flat, something that Survivor is much better equipped to deal with than other classes. A 3 in both combat and agility would be fairly bad on a Rogue or Guardian, but a Survivor can capitalize on them a lot more. Especially so if it’s a Survivor that specializes in getting additional uses of skill cards! Her Mystic side shines through in the stats as well, with 4 willpower. How relevant that is going to be remains to be seen, but surely there will be something she can leverage it for. If she can pair an investigation spell with her access to Old Compass and Look What I Found, she’ll be really great at clues while also able to fight and evade. A true flex, the way i’d expect a Core Set Survivor to work out.
I like this investigator a lot, both taken for herself and as a Core Set inclusion. Powerful, flexible and interesting. At the same time, she does have a glaring achilles heel in her personal weakness that you need to care about, in a similar way how for example you previously had to care about Lucius’ weakness to horror.

Core Survivor Themes

The main themes of the Core Survivor pool are reactive cards and recursion. Also, possibly evasion and/or soak.
Reactive cards: Survivors get to cheat at taking tests with cards that can be played after the chaos token gets revealed, possibly changing the result of the test. This allows them to walk into tests with bad odds and experiencing successes where others would probably prefer not to take the odds or commit extra cards in advance. Timely Intervention and Scrape By are both excellent cards that are going to stay relevant for a long time… probably until we get Chapter 3 in another five to ten years.
Recursion: Often cited as one of the more broken things that survivors can do in the full card pool. In that light, it’s surprising to me how much recursion there is available right in the Core, cementing it straight away as one of the pillars of the Survivor class identity. Hunter’s Instinct brings back events. Jumpsuit digs up assets. Isabelle brings back skills. And if you squint, then On the Brink also is skill recursion. None of these initially strike me as potentially being as much of a problem as Scavenging and Resourceful were in Chapter 1, but they do lay a good foundation indeed and lay a very strong mechanical foundation for the class that is generically useful. It’s basically Survivor’s equivalent to Seeker’s card draw.
Evasion: With Slippery and Shove Off, Survivor gets two evasion effects that arguably could have been Rogue cards in previous sets. While Survivor always had a bit of evasion support available, this could signal Survivor getting a bigger piece of Rogue’s pie from now on (presumably with Rogue then leaning heavier into Firearms and/or movement). We’ll have to table this discussion until the end of Rogue preview weeks!
Soak: There’s a chunk of cards here that deals in making the Survivor more… survivable. Healing, soaking or preventing damage are all things that we’ve seen in this class before, but would traditionally see more as a primarily Guardian thing. I suspect that the presence of Daniela blurs the lines here more than they’d be otherwise.

Hand slots

Survivors are flexible and not tied to one role as closely as Seekers or Guardians are. This is reflected in their assets. Meat Cleaver allows them to fight, the Old Compass allows them to seek. Since both are one-handed, you can do both at the same time. Both of those cards are solid at their job, but not outstanding. Basically what you’d expect – if your class can do both fighting and seeking, you don’t expect them to be as good at it as the more specialized classes. With Hand-Crank Flashlight standing in at level 0, Survivors get a one-handed weapon and investigation tool right from level 0 and have an upgrade available for both of them. There’s not a whole lot of choice here (like there is between the various Seeker investigation tools) but it does cover the basics that can then be supported with skills and events.

Card Quality and Usability

Anyone who was concerned that the new Core was just about powering everything down and printing cards that are just weaker versions of existing ones can rest easy, as the Survivor previews show that this clearly is not the case. Many of these cards are on par or even exceed Chapter 1 cards that did similar things. The impactful recursion and the highpowered Lucky-like cards are definitely pushed in terms of what would be appropriate for setting a baseline. For the most part, these cards would have little problem finding a home in a full card pool.

As with the Seeker cards, these are notably all cards that i can see myself putting into decks. While the old Survivor didn’t have any Barricade-sized clunkers, it did have some narrow cards like Will to Survive or unexplicably weak stuff like Aquinnah that spent most of their life in the binder unplayed. The closest the new Survivor comes to that is On the Brink which for the most part is an Unexpected Courage that draws a card on fail unless you do some wombo-combo stuff that in my opinion isn’t really something i would think about when putting together a Core Set.
In terms of power, Shove Off is likely going to fall off hard once some extra cards from expansions are in the mix. But aside from that one i could imagine using any of these cards in a full card pool, too. Crucially, i think that Isabelle herself is also a very interesting and powerful investigator that stands out even in the full lineup the game had over its lifespan. As the Current card pool develops, i expect her to regularly get new key pieces to use in cool ways.

For the Seeker first impressions, i noted that the Seeker card pool is able to provide very broadly useful and generic cards because it doesn’t need to consider any specific synergy with Joe Diamond. This is different here, the revealed card pool for the set has several nods towards Isabelle and her specific mechanics and not just in Survivor. At the same time, Daniela clearly influenced some of the Survivor choices as well. That’s not always detrimental of course – a card like Aleksey can find a home in many different decks, the ability to soak forever is universally useful. The card i do want to single out here however is Meat Cleaver. It’s a solid weapon that has seen plenty of use in the past, but it’s not really what i’d call a standard weapon that can be broadly used by anyone. It works out well for the Core itself of course, there’s some interesting interplay between Meat Cleaver and Izzie while Daniela doesn’t mind it either. But i would very much hope that the De La Cruz Investigator Deck will provide something a bit more down to earth, something simple in the style of the .18 Derringer or even a Baseball Bat. Isabelle brings her own gun, but i’d want any further fighty Survivor investigators to have access to something similarly solid.

Overall

Again, i am quite happy with this list of cards. Actually, i like this even more than the Seeker offerings. It’s all reasonably powerful, it works together in a coherent way and it shows off what Survivor is about. All of that wasn’t necessarily true with the old Core. Many people were confused about what Wendy was actually able to achieve in the game back then, something that i don’t foresee happening with Izzie. I am surprised to see a heavy focus on a potentially problematic mechanic such as recursion, but at least for now it seems reined in enough that it’s able to provide a strong class identity without being immediately overpowering. We’ll have to see how that develops over time, of course… but for now i am perfectly willing to give the design team the benefit of the doubt. So yeah, good stuff. Looks like our Core Survivor is going to be a capable investigator that can add to the team in a lot of ways at the same time. I love a good flex.
Next up on the schedule are Guardians. I expect the Guardian previews to start right away next week, but i don’t have full confirmation on that yet. Keep an eye on the schedule on the top of the Visual Spoiler page for updates on that.