Hot Take Edition
These decks are very new, the review was written before holding the cards in hand. I will eventually go back and revise many of these ratings, once we are all a bit more familiar with the cards and the new baselines set forth by Chapter 2.
Until then, take these comments as what they are, hot takes fueled by first impressions and I’ll give you a headsup on when i update this in like half a year or so.
Intro
This is an overview of the player cards in the Evergreen Investigator Decks. I will be looking at each deck by itself, starting with the investigator, then the rest of the cards. For most cards I will try to keep it short and to the point to not stretch this article more than necessary.
This follows the same structure as the investigator expansions reviews i have been doing, as these five decks together basically make up one of those expansion boxes. I will give my opinion on how well each selection of player cards stands on its own and the Core, as these products together form the chapter 2 evergreen base. I might comment on a chapter 1 application of a card here or there, but i am basing my ranking here on chapter 2.
The ranking I use for cards is Bad < Okay < Good < Excellent with each of those spanning quite a range. I use something like “Okay to Good” or “Good to Okay” when I want to specify whether it’s on the upper or lower range of that rank. Cards that are particularly important because they can slot into many many decks, get the Staple ranking. Being a Staple or not is often not just about individual power, but also about opportunity cost, favoring cards with low XP and resource costs.
Please don’t take these rankings too seriously and more as a guideline, cards need to be evaluated in context and compressing these contexts down into just one word is really unprecise. I still find it useful for this overview as a shortcut to put the cards into relation quickly.
Guardian: Tommy Muldoon
The Tommy Muldoon deck is primarily about two things: Defeating enemies with Firearms. And investigating locations. The combination of the two is what makes this investigator deck stand out to me – while the Core Set presented the Guardian class mostly as pure fighters, the investigator deck paints a much more balanced picture and funnels a lot of investigative power through the Police flavor that comes with “The Officer” Tommy Muldoon. Tommy himself is not particularly powerful, his skill line is flat and his investigator ability isn’t terribly impactful either. As a backdrop for the cards in this deck he works well enough to be a capable all-rounder. However there is a bit of an internal tension between his investigator ability which hands out extra ammo to freshly played guns and the cards which upgrade existing guns and prolong their lifetime, thus leading to you not actually wanting to play many fresh guns. This tension does put a big limiter on how much value he is actually going to get out of his special ability. Getting the extra ammo once or twice is going to feel good, but not be as huge of a deal as what many other investigators get turn after turn.
M1911: (Excellent to Good, Staple. The new gold standard for Firearms.) Core Set reprint.
Police Dog: Okay. The flexibility of supporting either combat or investigation and even on other investigators is nice, but overall not super impactful compared to some other allies.
Rookie Cop: Good. You run her primarily for the soak and then happily take the extra clue on her way out. Perfectly fine.
Service Revolver: Excellent. It works on attacks of opportunity which means you can use it to generate tempo easily. An excellent sidearm to carry alongside your main murder implement or an investigation tool.
Protective Vest: Okay. Three resources is a lot for a bit of soak and a tutor, but finding your first weapon is important and this can get you there.
Make Em Sing: Okay. At its worst when you are facing the type of enemy you really want to evade which limits its power painfully. You can run this just to get a clue and it’s probably pretty great in solo where a single clue is worth a lot more than otherwise, but in anything 2-player and up i don’t think this is all that great.
Bounty: Excellent, Staple. This outperforms Emergency Cache very easily. Resources are immensely important for Guardians, no matter if its for their expensive toys or because they want to play events frequently.
Custom Grip: Okay. If your gun runs out and you need to play a new one, this saves you an action. It also lets you replay your old gun instead if that’s preferable to what you have in hand. That’s fine, but spending a card and a resource for that is dodgy at best.
Iron Sights: Okay to Bad. Unless you are trying to make a shotgun work in Hard, i really don’t see taking extra actions for a skill bonus as an option you want to take often enough that you first spend a card and a resource on opening up that line of play. Just run more skill cards or other cards with good icons.
Physical Fitness: Okay. Nearly an actionless heal which is of course solid, but there are only so many 2 cost events a Guardian can afford to play.
Restrained: Good to Excellent. Even against non-Humanoids, this is a testless evade that doesn’t cost an action. Humanoids it will disable completely for very little cost. Fantastic little event that can disarm a lot of tight situations or make it so you simply don’t have to waste time on one of the many Humanoid weakness enemies.
Stakeout: Okay. Mostly notable for committing for +2 to an investigation test without paying anything for it. The 2 resource cost is merely an option if you really absolutely positively need to heal 1 horror.
Adapt and Overcome: Okay. It’s two icons and sometimes that’s going to be enough to make the level 0 deck if you anticipate using both the combat and the evasion option. The bonus rider against the enemy keywords is very minor to the point where it barely matters though.
Armed to the Teeth: Good. Three icons on a level 0 skill is a lot more than two, ironically this is probably going to be a better card against Retaliate enemies than Adapt and Overcome is.
Vicious Blow: (Excellent, Staple. One of the key cards that makes Guardian good at their job. The capability to spike up your damage output from the usual 2 damage to 3 damage solves all sorts of problems, saves actions, makes them competent at their thing. You rarely leave the house without these.) Core Set Reprint.
Police Dog(1): Good. Increasing the bonus from +1 to +2 brings the Police Dog to a point where he not only offers flexibility, but also a sizeable bonus each turn. Having a +2 skill bonus on tap that is not locked in to a specific skill or role is definitely valuable.
M1911(2): Good to Excellent. The upgrade is not quite as revolutionary as the level 0 is, but it still sets the new standard and will be the gun that others have to measure up to.
Extended Barrel(1): Excellent. If you are playing Firearms in a way that doesn’t just empty the clip and plays a new one, then this is a very easy upgrade to slap on there and gain +1 to your attacks. Cheap and reliable.
On The Beat(1): Good to Excellent. It doesn’t require much setup for this card to just let you pick up three clues instead of twiddling your thumbs in a round that is light on combat. Even if it just gains you two clues, that still puts it on a level with many comparable cards from both Guardian and Seeker.
Physical Fitness(2): Good. Dropping the resource cost is very impactful here, healing 3 points for just one resource and a card is a very good deal.
Stock Ammo Reload(2): Excellent, Staple. This is a lot of ammo for cheap, most likely it’s both more ammo and cheaper at the same time than playing a new gun would be. The ability to spread the ammo between multiple Firearms is likely not super relevant, but there are some cases where it can come up, like when you are holding an M1911 with a Service Revolver. This is a workhorse cards that makes Firearms a viable combat strategy in the first place.
Vicious Blow(2): Excellent, Staple. More damage, more skill bonus. Vicious Blow(0) is one of the most important cards in the Guardian card pool and while its upgrade isn’t quite as high on the ladder, it’s still an absolute beast of a card that lets you spike the damage you are doing in a test to wipe something from the board. Can be a bit of a luxury upgrade sometimes, but you are never wrong to get this one.
Detective Sherman(3): Good to Excellent. Pretty powerful, combining the combat bonus with some clue capabilities. Just an all around efficient package, rounded out even with a team soak ability that helps him trigger his clue gain. If you have ways to heal an ally, he’s a great target for that.
Endurance(3): Okay. I am not convinced that the talent cycle is a good fit for the Starting keyword. Starting does have potential, making sure that a certain card is always in your opening hand is indeed powerful. But Endurance is the kind of card i usually only want later on when i am already set up and only need an outlet for excess resources. So i am perfectly fine just randomly drawing it on turn 5, 8 or 10. This could end up coming through as an enabler for a Guardian with low combat that still wants to fight, but i find that unlikely.
Stakeout(3): Good. If you are using all parts of this card, you are getting a good deal here. Two clues in one action with a generous skill bonus is great, but doesn’t quite justify paying 3xp when you could pay 1xp and get On the Beat instead… however once you factor in the horror heal as well you get there.
Indomitable(3): Okay. It gives you a truckload of icons and that can’t be bad. But the 3xp cost is just a bit too rough, considering the icons also come with terms and conditions attached.
Protective Vest(4): Good to Excellent. Quite the glowup from its level 0 version, you are getting a whole lot of stuff bundled up here. This is a hugely impactful card that plays defense, offense and setup at the same time. Getting to throw this amount of value at the game for a single action and a card is very good. The extra handslot is hugely enabling for many lines of play. If we get additional handslots from another source eventually, then Protective Vest will go down a bit in stock, but until then this is just a great way to set up while also increasing your late game ceiling.
Thompson Submachine Gun(4): Good to Excellent. I rank this above the Winchester shotgun from the Core Set for most purposes, due to its ability to also just be a solid gun that can dispatch six normal enemies without necessarily having to do the Spray and Pray ability. However, if you need it to, this can suddenly put out a lot of damage in a short time if you need it and play the role of the Elite-killing shotgun as well. I find this particularly useful on two-handed weapons where you don’t necessarily have a sidearm like a Service Revolver or Machete alongside it.
Most useful: Bounty, Stock Ammo Reload, On The Beat
Least useful: Adapt and Overcome, Iron Sights, Physical Fitness(0)
Verdict: Could be better, but could also be a lot worse? There’s a range of cards here where i thought they’d only fall into an “Okay” range, cards that do their job but aren’t really something you are particularly happy to play. That being said, there is also nothing here that is really super awful – the worst card in this set is maybe Iron Sights and even that might still be fine in some contexts. More importantly however, the deck as a whole is looking not bad at all and i do believe it fulfills the “playable out of the box” prompt well enough. There’s certainly things that can easily be improved on with cards from the Core (kick out most of the allies, add more skills, run another weapon or two), but this is workable. Tommy doesn’t really excel at anything, but he do several things well enough to matter.
The thing i like most about Tommy’s deck is the strong focus on enabling investigation. I was complaining during my review of the Core Set about how the Guardian class was presented as little more than the brutes of the team, doing two things: Dealing damage and taking damage. With the cards from this deck in the picture, this image softens a lot and enables Guardians to be very solid flexes that pack some firepower, but also can clean up clues on their own as well. The lack of this was a major critique that was held against the Nathaniel Cho deck, so it’s great that it got addressed here.
Overall impression is positive. I am not super interested in Tommy himself, but the initial Guardian card pool built from Core and Tommy’s deck is looking very healthy. It’s decently spread out in its options and it doesn’t have any huge power outliers. So there’s room for future expansions to flesh out what was started here, just as it should be for the evergreen base pool.
Seeker: Carolyn Fern
Carolyn is surprisingly specialized on a specific thing, considering her being one of the evergreen investigators whose deck is supposed to lay the foundation for the non-rotating card pool in chapter 2. A large part of her card pool is thus dedicated to supporting her playstyle of negating horror on players and allies. During chapter 1, healing was usually considered to be an inefficient use of your limited actions, costing too much of your tempo. The Carolyn deck addresses this in two ways: By giving Caro herself an ability that lets her reclaim this tempo loss through a free clue. And by seeding a theme in Seeker where they can access more powerful effects through spending their sanity. That second bit is what also aims at making these horror heals relevant outside of this one specific investigator.
Carolyn is clearly a competent investigator, with a base Intellect of 5 and the potent Seeker card pool behind her that was never in question. There also seems to be enough hooks for her healing shtick to pay off in the card pool, so she is well supported from the start here and should be able to build some great decks right away.
Dreamer’s Chronicle: Good. A twist on the Fingerprint Kit from the Core, roughly on the same power level. It has an additional charge, but asks for horror payments to access the bonus clue and for a card commit to access the skill bonus. This is probably not worth it on its own, making the FPK the superior card by itself, but either horror synergies or Tome synergies, both of which are present in this deck, can push it ahead.
Occult Records: Excellent to Good. This is a lot of horror healing in just one card and the fact that it can be used without an action is huge. Obviously a Carolyn Staple, but actually just a good card for anyone as long as they have the hand slot for it.
Private Practice: Okay. An incentive for other investigators to dip deeper into the archetype, but i don’t think it’s quite good enough for that. This is a fine one-off in those decks just in case you draw it early, but nothing that i’d really call a compelling reason by itself to move into such a deck.
Psychology Student: Excellent to Good. Undoing two points of horror, then soaking for another one or two points of horror/damage is a great deal for just 2 resources. This beats most event based horror heals, as long as you have an ally slot to spare for a turn or three.
University Archivist: Good. She requires some commitment to the Tome bit for her ability to reliably pay off. I think if you run her, you do plan to keep her around for the hand slot as well, as a whiff on her search ability is something you probably need to be okay with.
Caustic Reaction: Okay. This does the job. Poorly, but sometimes you will be forced to run this for a scenario or two before you can put xp towards the cards that are actually reliable.
Unflappable: Bad. Outperformed by any card with two agility icons. You never want to pay an action and two resources for a single point of horror heal, not even as Carolyn. This needed two agility icons itself, which would have put it into the same spot as Guardian’s Stakeout.
Preposterous Sketches: Okay to Good. It’s a way to burn through your deck faster, drawing three cards at level 0 is quite rare. That being said, two resources are a lot and other options (Gather Intel, Lab Ass) at level 0 may only draw two instead of three, but have other benefits that make them more desirable than this.
Psychoanalysis: Good to Okay. Versatility is the name of the game here and while you overpay for either the Eureka effect or the horror heal, the fact that you get to choose between them (with info of what’s on top of the deck and whether a shuffle is beneficial) makes it worth it. The icons give the card yet another mode, even including a wild icon.
De-Escalate: Okay. This is fine if you just want an event that heals horror. It’s cheap and comes with good icons which is more than you can say off many other cards.
Insidious Truths: Okay. Notably uses the combat value, which isn’t great for Caro specifically. Definitely a useful card for other investigators, but if you don’t have at least 3 base combat you probably need to have some icons to throw into the test as well which then compounds with the cards you already have to throw into the card for damage.
Deduction: (Excellent, Staple. The archetypical “card for a clue”, this doesn’t cost anything. Actually, it even helps you with your initial test, although you probably only want to use this when you are sure to pass already. In any case, a signature seeker card.) Core Set Reprint.
Establish Motive: Excellent to Good. As long as you are running enough events, you probably want this. Tipping a test in your favor with the wild icons while also getting to replace itself is just a very desirable effect that is hard to pass on.
Literary Analysis: Excellent, Staple. Do you run multiple Tomes? Then you probably want this. Getting a secret replenished is generally worth more than a card, putting this on a level with Perception or, in the right deck, even slightly above.
Scroll of the Pharaohs(0, 4): Good to Excellent. The scroll and its upgrades sit at the intersection of a lot of things the Caro deck cares about. Tome? Check. Horror? Check. Secrets? Check. And the upgraded versions are diverse enough that there’s something in there for anyone. No matter if you go for the weapon, the investigation tool or the encounter manipulation, these all seem powerful enough to matter while not overpowering in a way that many previous Researched card have been, Translating the original level 0 card asks a bunch of actions and horror from you that you have to pay over the course of multiple rounds. Definitely a task, but one that anyone can do as it doesn’t involve any special tests. I like it, this is worth messing around with and has broad appeal to all sorts of decks and investigators. Usually these Researched cards annoy me a bit with how much of the card stock they take up (these 8 cards could have been 4 other distinct cards instead), especially since often one of the options tends to be miles better than the others. But these three options all seem very valid, so i am fine with this.
Magnifying Glass(1): Good. A very cheap upgrade. The cost is reduced by 1, all the way down to zero. Can’t really beat that cost. The ability to return the Mag Glass to your hand allows for freeing up a handslot when you draw something better, but is not terribly impactful. This is not an important upgrade by any means, but at 1XP this is just good convenience.
Unflappable(1): Okay. Unlike the unplayable level 0 version, this is at least worth the card slot thanks to a more sizeable bonus to the test, a more relevant heal and the option to just commit the card for solid icons. Still not great, but does a job that may need to be done.
Typewriter(2): Good to Excellent. Obviously dependent on the Tomes you play it with, but there is a lot of value in this one for little cost. Becomes really XP efficient if you use it to double up on upgraded Tomes (like the Scroll of Pharaohs) but even when looking at level 0 tomes, a secret is usually higher value than a card.
Caustic Reaction(2): Good to Excellent. A functional attack even if you don’t meet the clue threshold that scales up to being equal to options available to Guardians and Mystics when you do.
Hypnotize(2): Excellent to Good. Gets rid of a lot of problematic enemies with very little fuss, i can easily see this get rid of 5+ health worth of trouble in one go. With Sharp Rhetoric, the sky is the limit.
Deduction(2): Excellent, Staple. Improves Seeker’s best skill in the two ways that matter most.
Autopsy Report(3): Good to Excellent. The intellect test is going to be trivial for most Seekers in most cases, making this a fairly straightforward way to pick up an extra clue a decent amount of times. Depend on player count, this could reliably trigger once per round for the rest of the game, putting it on par with what we usually only see as investigator abilities or on high-cost allies.
Sharp Rhetoric(3): Good to Excellent. Much better at being a build-around card that you want to see early than Endurance is and is actually not that far behind the (in)famously overpowered High Education(3) from chapter 1. The playstyle it facilitates is about the most boring one you could imagine, but it’s not a bad one.
Psychoanalysis(3): Good to Excellent, with heavy player scaling. A very different card than the level 0. Instead of being mostly useful for versatility, but with little impact, this now does everything. And for everyone. Psychoanalysis(3) gains huge value in terms of card draw and healing and is useful at every stage of the game. The player scaling makes it only really shine in 3p and 4p games.
Commune with the Cosmos(5): Good. Gaining 5 clues in one go is incredible and the way this advances the game is definitely worth the heavy xp cost. There is a bit of a risk to failing the test and you probably want to play this only with the test at “everything but the autofail” which the +2 to the test might not be enough by itself for. So keep a Perception ready for this if you want to give Commune a go.
Most useful: Deduction(2), Hypnotize, Literary Analysis
Least useful: Unflappable(both), Private Practice, Insidious Truths
Verdict: There are two things these reviews want to figure out for the investigator decks. The first is whether the investigator that is headlining the deck is well supported in here; if the deck is playable out of the box. That definitely seems to be the case, Carolyn is a strong investigator and both her job as a Seeker and her individual shtick have enough behind it to let her contribute in a big way.
The other part then is how useful this set of cards is as a foundation for Seeker going forward, beyond Carolyn and her specific needs. And i am not sure yet how i am landing on this, actually. Putting this theme down in the evergreen card pool seems to signal that this cycle of paying horror for effects and healing it back is something that Seekers are supposed to care about in general. I suppose it remains to be seen to what extent that holds up. I do appreciate the nods towards a couple more familiar Seeker themes however, including Tomes, Secrets, Insights and expendable Miskatonic allies.
Seeker also gets a couple ways to fight here, but not on the same level as Guardian got clue support. I don’t think the level 0 combat options are particularly great, so you do need to buy into the level 2 events rather sooner than later if you expect your Seeker to handle themselves. But maybe that’s fine – at least for now two of the three investigators that play Seeker cards do have enemy handling beyond the Seeker card pool.
This Seeker pool has little in terms of what i’d call a staple card. This is partly because some of the cards (like the level 0 fight events or Unflappable) are just a bit too lackluster to fill an essential role, but also because i am not yet sure if most Seekers will end up wanting horror heal in the end. Psychology Student and Occult Records in particular are both great cards that have what it takes to become staples for sure, so i guess we’ll have to revisit this in the future.
Rogue: André Patel
Representing Rogue in the evergreen card pool is André Patel, whose ability directly references two things that the class is known for: Caring about succeeding tests by more than is necessary. And gaining extra actions. His statline comes with a 5 in agility, further solidifying André as a very archetypical member of the class. This is of course suitable for an evergreen deck. He’s decently powerful, a fourth action really goes a long way.
To do well, he will need to find ways to either weaponize his high agility into ways to fight and clue or ways to turn his lower combat and intellect into something he can use to advance the game. The card pool does indeed allow him to do these things.
One notable thing that is easily underestimated is his very high sanity. Rogue investigators often suffer from being somewhat vulnerable to willpower treacheries and sources of horror. While he does have low willpower, he does at least have a sizeable buffer against horror that will allow him some leeway in dealing with the Mythos.
He’s good but not overpowered, with an ability that can be leveraged in many ways, leaving a lot of freedom for how to build his deck. For veteran players, André doesn’t really add anything particularly new to the game the way that Caro, Marie and Miguel do, but in the pure context of chapter 2, he represents a good baseline for the Rogue class.
Center Stage: Good to Okay. Allows you to take three big actions over the course of three turns. You probably want some extra payoff for these, like oversuccess triggers, but just securing three tests is solid. 3 cost is slighly prohibitive.
Fame: Bad. Math is not in favor of this card, as it requires you to take what is basically 5 resource actions just to get an extra 2 resources out of the deal. That is a major loss of tempo that is very much not worth it. The only way this could ever become worth it is some major Parley synergy because without it you are better off just taking the resource actions when you need them instead of spending a card to force yourself into taking them.
The Grapevine: Good. An inoffensive card that doesn’t ask much from you but can over time save some move actions. Especially if you are the enemy handler or a parley specialist, this sounds very useful. That it doesn’t use a slot means it doesn’t matter if it sits around for a few turns just as long as you find a use for its three charges eventually.
Extravagant Ring: Good to Excellent. An enabler for the oversuccess archetype that will quickly pay itself back and can then be replaced. Especially a low level oversuccess deck can gain a lot of value out of this and André even has a built in payoff for it.
Lockpicks: Okay. I had these break on their first or second use too often to really be excited to put them in my deck anymore. 3 resources are just too much of an investment for that possibility. They are mostly fine as a placeholder for their vastly superior level 1 version but since they are so unreliable i usually just skip them.
Marcus Sengstacke: Bad. Legitimately one of the worst cards to ever come out for this game. Struggles to stay alive for long enough to even pay back his own astronomical cost, nevermind even making a profit. Completely unplayable and a waste of cardboard.
Polished Cane: Excellent to Good. This is reliable enemy handling, good enough to swat small enemies and evade medium sized ones. Elites won’t be affected by this (beyond the one damage from the Fight action), but we can’t ask one card to do everything now, can we?
Clean Sweep: Okay. I feel like i’d rather just play any card with two intellect icons on it most of the time and commit that to a regular investigate. That won’t get me a possible free move, but it also won’t cost me 2 resources. If we get synergies with Tactics, Tricks or just events in general, this might become more relevant but on its own it’s unexciting.
Pay Your Dues: Good. There’s basically two modes to this. Either you grab a cheap clue and push aside a small enemy you hopefully can leave behind. Or you leverage your money to ignore a big enemy and grab a clue alongside that. Both ways of looking at the card are solid, making this a testless variant of Breaking and Entering that can carve out a niche alongside it.
Quick Exit: Okay to Good. As with Quick Exit, any card with two appropriate icons can do a similar job of evading without a resource cost attached. That being said, keeping an enemy down for an extra turn is quite good and justifies the cost as long as you can reliably hit that oversuccess that is required.
A Sudden Fall: Okay. Basic fight actions are pretty bad, so this can’t really be replaced by any card with two icons the way that Quick Exit and Clean Sweep can. This can do the job, but the condition for the enemy to be exhausted makes it unappealing.
Right Under Their Noses: Okay to Good. Working a Hunch isn’t a card i am super excited about, but putting it in Rogue where clues are more valuable and resources are less valuable than either are in Seeker does shift the math enough that this seems solid even with the evasion condition.
Easy Street: Excellent to Good. Up to four icons on a rogue skill? That’s incredible, no matter if used as an oversuccess enabler or as encounter protection. You do need to have some money on hand for this to be good, which is why i won’t just immediately slap the Staple seal on it, but i think this might get one once i revisit these rankings.
Out the Door: Excellent, Staple. This one is easy to call, this card is absolutely fantastic. The icons are outstanding for a level 0 card and gaining some resources without an action is just what we want. This is Rogue’s equivalent to Deduction and Vicious Blow, their signature skill that just immedately makes them good at a certain class-defining thing.
Watch This: Excellent, Staple. Fewer icons than Out the Door and notably lacks an intellect icon which stops it from being committed to a Lockpicks test. It also requires you to have money to make money and if things go bad, it can make you lose money. It’s still an absolute banger of a card which just goes to illustrate how insane Out the Door really is. And for what it’s worth, Watch This can gain you 3 resources instead of “only” 2. I find it hard to imagine a rogue deck that doesn’t just play 2 Out the Door and 2 Watch This unless it’s something like chapter 1’s Preston Fairmont.
Lockpicks(1): Excellent, Staple. A much needed upgrade over the level 1 which stops the asset from discarding from an unlucky autofail. Usually you can use these over the course of a scenario without them ever breaking completely, just netting you ways to gain clues even on high shroud locations.
Out the Door(1): Excellent, Staple. 4 resources is A LOT of resources to gain without it taking an action. This is an easy xp to spend and likely one of the first things that most Rogue decks will want get after the first scenario.
The Grapevine(2): Good. Attaching a card draw to the activation means it pays off even easier as you could just use it when an enemy is in a connecting location and gain value out of it. A bit of a luxury upgrade, but definitely solid enough.
Marcus Sengstacke(2): Okay to Good. Lowering the resource cost while also increasing the sanity value means that Marcus now will make some profit for you and faster than before. How much is still partially left to chance of course, but if you can mitigate that and confidently pass most tests, he could actually last for quite a while. He interacts favorably with Well Connected and is one of the better ways to get the sort of money you need to enable the likes of Black Fan. That does give him a solid place in the Big Money Hoarder deck or one that wants to play a lot of 2 cost events.
Clean Sweep(2): Good. This still only picks up a single clue, so to be worth the resource cost you do want to hit that bonus move. What i quite like here is that the icons on the card are now good enough that you can just commit the card and do a regular intellect test +3 if that would get you the clue as well and you don’t want to spend the resources right now.
Quick Exit(2): Good to Excellent. Adding your willpower instead of getting +2 isn’t all that great of an upgrade for most rogues, but removing the oversuccess requirement from the “don’t ready” effect is very nice. More importantly however, this is a card that can be committed for +3 to a willpower test which is a life saver for many rogues like André who can go from 2 to 5 willpower to deflect a treachery with this. with the upgrade, you are pretty much gaining a whole new mode for this card and both the commit and the textbox are worth having. I think this is really good and might even become a bit of a sleeper hit. Or outright staple.
A Sudden Fall(2): Good to Excellent. Three damage is a very important threshold to hit, especially with an event it vastly increases the number of enemies you can dispatch with it than with the usual 2 damage. The exhaust condition is still an annoyance, but the numbers on the card are good enough to let this card play the same sort of role that Backstab used to do in chapter 1.
The Black Fan(3Ex): Good to Excellent. Throwing 6xp at the lynchpin of your deck and then drawing it only very late or never is always a problem with Rogue’s Exceptional cards, but when The Black Fan is able to do its thing, it is indeed very good. It does require a lot of commitment to the bit however, as the first threshold isn’t all that great and you really want at least the extra action to be active all the time to make this worth your while.
Silver Tongue(3): Okay. Rogue might be the class with the most resources to throw around, but it’s not like they are hurting for other outlets. If/When we get a parley centric rogue again, Silver Tongue will likely be an enabling upgrade for them, but until then i feel like this is too niche to be worth making sure that you got it in your starting hand.
Well Connected(3): Excellent. A very good payoff for its archetype, but even if you don’t go all the way to 20 resources for Black Fan shenanigans, this can easily give you +2 to a test every round and scale up from there. With enough money on hand, you even start no longer fearing encounter tests. One of the few XP cards where getting two of them is worth it in spite of the Limit 1 per investigator and bad icons, it’s just that good of a payoff if you want to go big money.
Right Under Their Noses(3): Good to Excellent. Grabbing two testless clues without having to spend an action on it is very good. The 3xp cost is slightly offputting, but the effect is a huge tempo boost that will be very noticable.
Contingency(3): Bad to Okay. Paying 3xp for an Unexpected Courage whose best case is to do nothing is hard to swallow. This has the potential to turn a fail into a success, but only with 3 (three!) conditions attached – which is at least two conditions too many.
The Red Clock(5Ex): Good. It gives you massive skill boosts for oversuccess, doubles your passive resource income, hands you extra actions… no matter what part of Rogue you care about, the Red Clock probably enhances it in some way. An obvious powerhouse when it’s in play, but for 10xp it better be! This is fun to go for, but do consider what else you could get for 10xp instead and whether your deck still has a strong leg to stand on while you are still waiting to draw the damn thing from your deck.
Most Useful: Out the Door(both)/Watch This, Well Connected, Quick Exit(2)
Least Useful: Marcus Sengstacke(0), Contingency, Fame
Verdict: Unlike with the previous two decks where even the bad cards had at least some niche use, there are sadly some real clunkers in this deck that don’t pass a quick sniff test against Emergency Cache or even basic resource actions. Thankfully, there are other cards in this deck that can play the role of headlining Rogue’s superior resource generation. André’s deck looks overall solid enough and once you start replacing a few of those clunkers or more unexciting events with cards from the Core Set you end up with something that is genuinely capable and good.
I do actually like the focus on event based play that has been put into this deck. Some of the level 0 versions of these events are a bit basic and safe, but their upgrades allow André (or Dexter or Trish!) to make them impactful enough to matter.
Even with the couple bad cards, this is a good foundation for the class to build on and lays out the oversuccess and big money archetypes as valid things to base your deck around. Specifically the “hoarder” version of big money has some good capstone payoffs in Well Connected and Black Fan, but i think they may need some extra juice from further sets to really take off – a bit of collateral damage from two of the resource cards in the deck not holding up to their promise.
From the perspective of a veteran player who has a full collection of chapter 1, this deck doesn’t really offer anything I haven’t seen before, unlike for example the Tommy deck which has a novel focus on flexing capabilities in Guardian and Caro’s deck with all the horror interactions. I acknowledge that this isn’t the goal of these evergreen decks – but still, wih the investigator already being very generic it would have been nice to get something spicier in the cards, especially the high xp payoffs didn’t *need* to be chapter 1 reprints.
With that out of the way, Rogue looks actually quite good from a pure chapter 2 point of view. The rogue pool from the Core was a bit lackluster and mostly propped up by a great investigator, but i feel like André’s deck does indeed fill out the holes in the card pool well enough. One critique i had about the Core Rogue pool was that Dexter was getting very little there, and that too looks very different here. André’s deck fixes his resources and gives Dexter some other interesting pieces like Quick Exit(2) and The Grapevine to consider. We can build our rogues towards multiple archetypes from here and thanks to the resource skills we got something where Rogue is better than anyone else. That’s really all i am asking for from an evergreen card pool.
Mystic: Marie Lambeau
Mystics more than any other class require specific cards to be available for them to do whatever it is they want to be doing because unlike combat, intellect and agility which all have a proactive basic action tied to them, their favor stat willpower is by itself purely defensive. Finding the spells that allow them to turn their willpower into a proactive value is often a weak point to their decks and Marie directly addresses this weak point through a once per phase card draw ability. This does wonders to pull her deck tighter together, making everything more coherent and stops her from just fizzling out from just not finding the right tool for the job. That being said, this doesn’t come for free, as a major theme of her deck is “power at a price” through blood magic. Sure, you might be tempted to even trigger her ability multiple times per round and really tear through her deck, but you better have a plan for the fallout from all that damage. Using her health pool as something that can be turned into cards, resources, damage and more, she’ll need to be careful not to get too close to being defeated by an ill-timed treachery, but in exchange she is able to do some powerful stuff. Her statline does not just give her good willpower and agility to work with, but curiously also puts her at a high intellect. This does allow her to just naturally pick up the odd clue from a low shroud location, but isn’t all that supported otherwise in the early chapter 2 card pool. Historically, there have been Mystic investigation tools too, but for now that high intellect of hers might be a bit wasted.
Still, she’s a good investigator and her innate ability to select and draw cards allows her to really tear through her deck, especially once you consider that her investigator ability also doubles up really well with the one on the Jim Culver ally.
Arcane Initiate: Excellent, Staple. The amount of value you can squeeze out of this 1 cost ally is truly phenomenal. The card pool already includes a good amount of quality spells worth looking for, including a couple of great skill cards.
Offering Bowl: Good. While 5 resources for an action is a lot, three damage is not to be underestimated and you don’t want to end up spending those earned resources on healing. So you need to have more synergies going on to make this worth it.
Bloodstone: Excellent, Staple. Getting +1 to your primary skill is super valuable and this gives you that on a cheap card. The soak is also very good, either as more buffer for your self-damage or to fix up the traditionally rather low health value of your Mystic investigator.
Sacrificial Doll: Okay to Bad. You’d need a very good payoff for the ability to drop this many resources on this enabler. That being said, as a potentially slotless source of redraws that isn’t limited by charges, there might be a world where this does something. But it’d be on the back of that payoff card, not on the Doll’s own inherent quality.
Cosmic Flame: (Excellent, Staple. While it only comes with three charges, these only get used up on successes (and skulls). Flame can also be used without spending a charge at all to basic attack with your willpower which is definitely relevant. This is a great combat spell.) Core Set Reprint.
Second Sight: (Excellent, Staple. Even if you never end up spending a charge on this and just keep the charges banked to ward of the cultist token, you get a way here to basic investigate with your willpower. Mystics are very interested in this sort of thing and you get a lot of uses out of this card before it runs out. If you draw a second copy or just feel the need to pick up some tempo you can even generate extra clues with it. Another great spell.) Core Set Reprint.
Shadowmeld: Excellent, Staple. As far as evasion goes, it doesn’t get more efficient than this. The movement you can gain here combines with the evasion very well in a way that lets you downright ignore most of the non-Hunters you draw and potentially even some Hunters. Cheap, lots of charges, great at its job.
Consume Life: Okay to Bad. This is just the equivalent of an extra charge for a spell asset, yet it costs the same as a full spell asset that would come with three or four charges. That one point of heal is not significant enough to save this from mediocrity.
Favor of Baalshandor: Good. There’s some strikes against this card, like the lack of icons and being limited to not just by trait, but also to assets. But ultimately, it’s three resources that don’t take an action, so it does the job and it does it well.
Infuse Life: Okay. To be fair, that’s a lot of life healed with just one card. But 4 resources is also a lot. In a deck like Marie’s that converts life to other things, you might still come out on top with this, but even for her 4 resources, a card and an action is a tall order to make up for with 3 points of self-damage.
Mirror Form: Good to Excellent. A cheap and efficient way to drop an asset into play which you can then use up immediately. This is a very powerful effect that bypasses both costs and additional costs of the card that is put into play and only reined in by the trait restrictions. We’ll see if that’s enough. It wasn’t for Sleight of Hand in chapter 1.
Spiritual Charm: Okay to Good. Looking at this as part of your resource econ is probably a mistake, this is enemy handling. A good answer to the the Aloof, Hunter and Evasive keywords and if it also pays out some money on the side, even better.
Blood Curse: Excellent, Staple. One of the best cards in the chapter 2 card pool, the ability to toss 4 icons into any skill test is fantastic. And it’s spell traited as well, which already has synergies. Unless my investigator has only 5 base health, i am playing two, no further questions asked. And even then, i still might.
Cosmic Guidance: Okay. If you are dealing yourself a ton of damage, then this is possibly a necessary concession you make to mitigate it. Definitely not an exciting card and one you hope to be able to shed for upgrades rather sooner than later.
Torrent of Power: Good. Honestly, this isn’t bad at all. It never really got much play during chapter 1, but when it was released back in Carcosa times we also didn’t have spell assets that worked without spending charges. Obviously Blood Curse and Soul Link exist now as well, but i could see this in a skill heavy deck like Izzie’s being played alongside the new spell assets.
Ceremonial Robes(1): Excellent to Good, Staple. These are a game changer for event-heavy decks, nearly solving the resource issue those decks face singlehandedly in one cheap asset.
Eldritch Whispers(1): Good. Requires some token manipulation to be reliable, but getting 2 extra uses is worth the trouble of replacing your basic Guts with this.
Blood Ward(2): Okay to Good. Part Dodge, part cheap healing. But i don’t think either part is really worth the 2xp, not even with the flexibility of being both taken into account. As a healing card this is going to feel good once its in your deck, but paying the 2xp for it is a bit rough. Overall I think this is mostly fine, but nothing more.
Retribution(2): Good to Excellent. This is a very efficient way to either take out a small enemy or to dump a good amount of damage onto a big Elite. Actionless, testless, works on Elites, there is a lot to like here.
Dread Curse of Azathoth(3Ex): Good. There’s a place for a combat spell that has unlimited uses and the doom interactions could even be turned into something favorable. Once we have more doom interactions in the card pool, this might go up in rank, until then this suffers too much from being a one-off that is thus not worth building around and overshadowed by Cosmic Flame(5).
Ritual Dagger(3): Good. There is some serious potential here, shuffling cards back becomes very strong once your deck is near depleted. Since it’s a repeatable effect, you can set up loops where you play the same efficient events over and over again. Three xp seems like an investment, but you only ever need one. Bit of a gimmick, but one with tangible payoffs.
Spiritual Intuition(3): Good. When you are doing everything with spells and willpower, this talent allows you to do everything better at a very good rate. I could see this be a build-around, as long as you figure out the resource situation.
Blood Curse(3): Excellent, Staple. A great upgrade to an already stellar card, this allows putting the damage onto any card at your location, including enemies. A Vicious Blow with 5 icons that doesn’t even require a fight action to deal its damage? Exceptional.
Arcane Experience(4): Good. Extra ally or accessory slot from the neutral Permanents usually directly translate into an increase in power because those assets tend to give abilities that stack with each other. An extra arcane slot however usually translates into more options, more spells you can have out at the same time but you rarely get to use multiple spells at the same time. Increasing your options has a place, but more often you will probably want to increase your power first (through upgrading your actual spells) instead.
Jim Culver(4): Excellent. Jim Culver fixes every problem a Mystic could face in one swoop. Cards? You get them. Resources? Sure. Soak? Why not, both damage and horror of course. Willpower? Absolutely. He’s insanely good and the only reason i am not just instantly declaring him a staple is that his level 0 is already so pushed that the upgrade might not be a priority. It is a very good upgrade though, especially those extra resources are fantastic.
Ultimate Sacrifice(4): Good? Question Mark? This is not a card to evaluate for how playable it is, but for how good the stories are you get to tell afterwards. But sure, if you use this to generate an extra turn for everyone and then win or resign before you get any consequences then this will have been very worth it.
Second Sight(5): Good to Okay. You are getting an extra charge, but aside from that, the level 5 offers the same amount of clue compression as the level 0. If you are using Second Sight as your main way to gather clues, then upgrading for the skill bonus and the occasional clue from a connecting location could be worth it, but this does seem like the least significant upgrade of the spell asset suite.
Shadowmeld(5): Good. I like this a lot. Any non-Hunter you hit with the “Evade, teleport 2 locations away” is as good as handled and with 5 charges on this you can do it an awful lot. Obviously, the value of evasion is always going to be a bit dependent on the campaign, but as long as the scenario design allows for evasion to be a valid way to deal with enemies, Shadowmeld is incredibly efficient at doing exactly that. As with the Second Sight, the level 0 does most of what the level 5 does already, but as soon as the card becomes a major part of your gameplan, this is worth getting for the skill bonus, movement range and extra charge.
Bend Blood(5): Okay to Bad. I don’t think there’s enough here to justify a 5xp investment into a one-shot event. While the ability to turn off an Elite for a round is a good silver bullet, this really needed to deal more than 2 damage to its primary target to feel impactful.
Most useful: Blood Curse, Arcane Initiate, Shadowmeld
Least Useful: Bend Blood, Infuse Life, Consume Life
Verdict: The Mystic class gets a lot of fun toys with Marie’s deck. Most of this is pretty much what we’d expect, the usual mix of assets and events that let Mystics do their willpower thing. But then there’s also some cool stuff in there that is just a bit different and spicy enough that they are worth bothering with, like the Ritual Dagger or Mirror Form. And Ultimate Sacrifice, of course.
One thing that i find a bit unfortunate here is that the healing options for Marie are quite limited or just straight up inefficient. While some of the other classes get a wealth of options to remove or soak damage, Marie is apparently supposed to play cards like Infuse Life which take much of the tempo that her ability generated away again. This will mean that a Marie that teams up with for example Miguel or Daniela will be looking much much more capable than one that is either on her own or accompanied by a Seeker. She’s still going to be fine of course, but i can’t help but think that something is missing, that Consume and Infuse Life both simply needed to be more attractive so that her core loop of churning her health would actually work well without off-class support. Some sort of asset to help her use her intellect in a more relevant way would also have gone a long way to make her distinct from other Mystics. Something to look out for in the future.
That shouldn’t distract from how well this deck does set up the class overall though. Blood Curse does cement Mystic as the class that throws around bottomless will icons. We have full suites of spell assets for investigate, fight and evade now. An interesting thing about these assets is that their level 0 versions are all pushed far enough that the upgrade is less of a priority than it used to. Mystics in chapter 1 were very dependent on throwing their xp towards getting their Shrivellings etc upgraded and even had to rely on xp cheating crutches like Arcane Research to get that done. As far as we can tell now, it’s perfectly viable for our new Mystics to keep their spells at 0 and put their xp towards other cards instead. That is a big deal for putting off-class Mystic into a much better place and just makes spending xp much more interesting, as it allows for such things as the Ritual Dagger. Good stuff.
Survivor: Miguel De La Cruz
As is often the case with Survivor card pools, the Miguel deck is a grab back of different effects for all sorts of situations. There is a particular focus here on events, but not as much as you’d maybe expect when you read his investigator ability. In addition to that we get a healthy dose of healing, primarily for damage, but also a standout horror healing card. We got our usual Survivor recursion, some weapons, some investigation tools and ways to pass test even with a flat statline like Miguel’s.
Miguel’s investigator ability suggests a playstyle focused around using events to get things done, but is flexible enough that you could also use this free action simply to play your Emergency Caches and recursion, possibly once the card pool widens up more even ignoring traps completely.
Miguel is the sort of investigator that doesn’t bring huge innate power but can use his card pool very well. Similar to André he will need to find a way to use his cards to turn that non-remarkable statline into something that propels the game forward. Thankfully, his cards allow him to do just that.
Daniel Jameson: Excellent, Staple. An outstanding ally that not only gives you a skill boost, but also lets you retake your important tests while also giving you yet another skill boost on top! Don’t overlook that he also lets your retake fight tests, not just evasion tests. He’s autofail protection at level 0. He’s cheap. He even has good soak. He’s a contender to Jim’s throne as the best ally in the chapter 2 evergreen card pool.
Hunting Dog: Bad to Okay. This guy however is underwhelming. That he can only give you a free move at the point of the enemy spawning is just so bad. Most enemies will spawn on top of you, which leaves this to only matter in a few multiplayer situations or when the act spawns an Elite somewhere else. Pass. With Daniel to the left and Loner to the right, this dog looks pretty silly.
Loner: Excellent, Staple. And back to something outstanding. The restriction to empty locations is definitely very relevant and will stop you from using this aggressively and will be awkward in multiplayer situations. But even just getting a free move every other round is still fantastic for a cheap slotless asset.
Old Compass: Good to Excellent, Staple. What makes Old Compass really tick is the interaction with Look What I Found to guarantee clues on 3 shroud locations. But the ability to retake tests does also allow investigators with middling intellect to attempt investigations that’d otherwise not be worth spending an action on and that’s valuable on its own as well.
Pocketknife: Okay. I see the vision here which is using the knife to finish off the 3 health enemies that your trap couldn’t quite kill while gaining some resources that go towards the next traps. I am not super convinced i do want to spend 2 resources up front for that however. I might be undervaluing this one, but chances are that any other solid weapon can easily replace this.
Rabbit’s Foot: Good. As long as you got nothing better to do with your accessory slot, this is a good cheap way to just collect a card here and there, making it an early staple at least. Interacts favorably with the cards that let your retake tests, which is neat and might actually give this a bit more play than i am giving it credit for right now.
Same Old Thing: Okay. Has the same rate as an Emergency Cache. Costs resources upfront, limits what you can spend your earned cash on. In return, allows multiplayer synergies. This can be fine as ECache #3 and #4, but unless you find some good synergy, this is just not that great.
Decoy Trap: Okay. Those icons guarantee that this will always be at least okay for you. The effect is even more scenario specific than the one on Glassing and Lie and Wait and the ability to evade with intellect isn’t high on my radar either. It does hit Elites and that’s where i see this card’s biggest potential, but it’s going to be tough to reliably put into practice.
Glassing: Excellent to Good. Just triggering this once means you get to try and discover 2 clues without ever having to take an action. That’s pretty sweet and shifting the test to agility is relevant often enough. Again, great icons on this one too. Might be a bit awkward to set up in some cases, but will probably work often enough to be worth the hassle.
Guerilla Tactics: Good to Excellent. This is a great way to deal with Aloof enemies and worth including for that alone. That it can also finish off something that walked into a trap or evade an enemy without having to engage it first is sugar on top.
Hidden Shelter: Okay. Pretty good in a multiplayer situation where everyone sticks around on the starting location for a turn, but aside from that this seems clunky.
Lie in Wait: Excellent to Good. Heavily scenario dependent, but if you can indeed trigger this multiple times you can get a lot of value here. As a Fast card, it doesn’t take much however and just getting a free 2 damage attack on something can be worth it. And, just like with the Decoy and Glassing, if you have situation where this doesn’t work, then you can always fall back on great icons.
Stalk Prey: Okay. You can find this to dig for victory points in the encounter deck which seems like a better reason to include this than the free clue. Survivors have better ways to get clues that don’t require you to put enemies on the map. The package is fine overall, but not great.
Do-Or-Die: Excellent, Staple. Getting back your best card, no limit on the level? Don’t mind if i do! Can’t pull back skills which is relevant, as is the restriction to Survivor cards, but you’ll get lots of value out of this nonetheless.
On The Brink: Okay to Bad. It’s a wild icon and little more.
Extra Rations(1): Good to Excellent. Compared to Bandages you get an extra use and a more forgiving timing window here. In exchange, you can’t use it on other players or their allies. Sounds fair.
Field Dressing(1): Good to Okay. A strict timing window and a condition, but in exchange this heals 3 points without ever having to spend an action. That’s good, but is overall probably still overshadowed by both Extra Rations and Bandages.
Rough(1): Good to Okay. That can be a lot of wild icons which makes it flexible enough to serve either as a way to secure a combat test or as encounter protection when you are already beat up.
Canteen(2): Excellent. At 6 points healed for a single action and card, this card is exceptionally good at its job. While sanity healing isn’t something you will want for all your decks, this is a one-stop solution to all your sanity-related worries.
Hunter’s Instinct(2): Good. Requires a certain amount of leveled up cards to be in your deck before this even becomes interesting. But once it does, it becomes a good way to let your level 0 Hunter’s Instinct stay relevant.
Winchester Model 52(2): Okay. The main purpose of this gun is to enable fighting for investigators with only 3 combat which will then be boosted to a much more workable 6 by the Winchester. A two-handed gun that only deals 2 damage twice is still kind of niche, but as a supplement to events or spells it could do the trick.
Guerilla Tactics(2): Excellent to Good. Adding an extra damage onto Guerilla Tactics turns it from something that snipes Whippoorwills into something that is able to actually remove real enemies.
Respite(2): Good. Shuffling your 3 best cards back into your deck can vastly improve your draws for the next turns, as long as you do it while the deck is almost empty. Since it draws you a card right away, there is also no tempo loss to Respite.
Rope Trap(2): Okay to Bad. Just worse than Lie in Wait in almost every way. Worse icons, takes an action, can’t deal 2 when necessary, randomly discards itself. It’s testless and bypasses Aloof, which gives it at least one role… but it’s one that a couple better cards in this deck already fulfill.
Levelheaded(3): Okay. If you absolutely want to start with encounter protection in your hand, this does the trick.
Longbow(3): Excellent to Good. There are very few ways to deal 3 damage in one attack and this is even infinitely repeatable. Let’s you fight with agility. Beats Aloof, too. There is a lot of power packed into this card, the only real cost to it is the two handslots.
Makeshift Bomb(3): Okay. While probably not the most efficient way to go about things, this does provide a big effect that is worth jumping through a few hoops for. Hitting multiple enemies at the same time with this without blowing yourself up is going to be difficult however, much more so than with Dynamite Blast in chapter 1.
Timely Intervention(3): Good. Great card when taken by itself, but massively overshadowed by Scrape By(1) from the Core which offers an even better effect for only 1xp.
Most useful: Canteen, Daniel Jameson, Loner, Do-Or-Die. Yes, i am putting four down. Sue me.
Least useful: Rope Trap, On the Brink, Hidden Shelter
Verdict: There’s some really strong cards in this deck that do a great job of setting up Survivor as the jack-of-all-trades class. They get movement, they get attacks, they get investigations. A solid amount of fail protection and nudges towards fail forward are also present.
Miguel’s trap gimmick thankfully doesn’t take over the pack more than necessary. There’s enough here to make it work, but the deck is broad enough in its scope that you can take him (or other survivors using his cards) in many different directions. Well done on that front!
The thing that most surprised me was the amount of healing still in here. The Core set survivor pool already went pretty hard on healing and soaking which i scratched up mostly to Daniela’s presence. But Miguel’s deck further doubles down on it and Survivor now has a lot of choice in which cards to take for those purposes.
It will remain to be seen how well the whole Trapping thing is going to play out in practice, but even if it doesn’t pan out there is definitely enough to like in here left.
