Agents of Nyarlathothep

My take on this set: This set mainly consists of a trio of Hidden cards that stand alone until the finale of the campaign finally adds some other Hidden cards to the mix. They are accompanied by a victory point enemy that for the first two appearances doesn’t operate significantly different from such enemies in previous campaigns, but again gets a boost in the final scenario. The three Hidden cards are very weird in their effect, but they do a good job of teasing the final scenario without being oppressive.

What it does: Crawling Mist is a Hunter enemy with Massive, thus following players around and attacking everyone at its location. At 5 health it is pretty tough, which is appropriate for an enemy that awards a victory point. It has printed fight and evade values of 3, however any attempts at evading of fighting Crawling Mist are made more difficult by Hidden cards in the player’s hand.

My take: This enemy is quite dangerous and claiming its victory point can become a bit of an ordeal if the investigator who is designated to fight it is weighed down by Hidden cards. Even a single one of those can make a huge difference in how difficult to beat this monster is. Luckily, there are no additional Hidden cards in either Gates of Sleep or Search for Kadath beyond the three in this set, so that limits the potential of this enemy at least. Search of Kadath even sets this card aside and only shuffles it into the encounter deck when players decide to visit the Timeless Realm. During Where The Gods Dwell the Mist can potentially become enormous, though.

Threat level: High. Very High in Where The Gods Dwell. A formidable enemy that can get out of control if you let it.

Dealing with it: During Gates of Sleep and Kadath, this enemy isn’t far off from the usual victory point Hunter enemies that we’ve seen in various campaigns. As long as players are able to discard their Laws of ‘Ygiroth cards before engaging the Mist, they should be fine. Getting rid of your Hidden cards during the second half of Where The Gods Dwell isn’t always an option, however. In that case, the ability to pass cards between players in the central location can become handy. The Crawling Mist should be dispatched as soon as possible because there’s no hiding from it in the tight scenario layout of Where the Gods Dwell and there really isn’t the time to use precious actions on evading it a couple of times.

What it does: The three Laws of ‘Ygiroth all impose restrictions on the player holding them, forbidding them from playing certain cards. To discard one of these hidden cards, the player needs to spend an action and also discard a card that would be valid to play alongside it.

My take: This is a very strange set of conditions, caring about templating and card layout information that are usually not referenced in this way. This feels similar to the game breaking the fourth wall – something that also happens in other places of the campaign, most importantly the agenda cards of Where the Gods Dwell which has Nyarlathothep directly adress the players. Especially weird is the one card that goes by number of words in the card titles, as that one can even vary in effect depending on the language of your cards!
Discarding these isn’t too much trouble usually, but of course that means that they at least cost you a card and an action which in my opinion is slightly above curve for treacheries. Randomly, they can be more annoying, especially the Discord variant. That one will only allow commiting cards with even numbers of icons to your tests, while the vast majority of cards comes with only one icon. At least that one doesn’t stop you from playing cards, though.

Threat level: Mid. Their baseline effect of costing a card and an action is slightly above average, but not by a lot.

Dealing with it: The dynamic of these is interesting in that they are easiest to get rid of when you are least impacted by their effect. And when you are least impacted, you may actually feel tempted to just keep them in hand. In spite of that, these should be discarded as early as you can spare that extra action so you don’t get hindered by them later on when it counts.