Corsairs

My take on this set: Not a terribly exciting set of cards. The Corsair itself is a fairly bland enemy that only becomes a problem when there’s a need to evade it and even then it’s fairly minor. Hunted by Corsairs can be discarded with an action and a test by any of the investigators. All things considered, these are low profile cards that mostly act as filler in their encounter decks.

What it does: Corsairs have low fight value, but four health to make sure they require multiple actions to defeat. Their agility is very high and failing an evasion attempt gets punished by the Alert keyword. However, they only deal a single point of damage and whenever they attack from the Alert trigger, their evasion is reduced for the rest of the phase.

My take: Corsairs are just somewhat beefy road blocks that require two actions to take down but pose little threat otherwise. Evading the Corsair also takes two actions (or considerable investment in high agility for the test) but can still be an option since the Corsair does not have Hunter.

Threat level: Low. Only slightly more dangerous than a standard Ghoul, the Corsair just doesn’t do a whole lot. His spawn requirements sometimes even let him appear in places that players already visited and have no intention of returning to.

Dealing with it: Only investigators like Rita or Ursula who are really focused on evasion should even try to evade the Corsairs. In most cases, plain old violence should deal with the Corsairs in a much cleaner way.

What it does: Hunted by Corsairs attaches to the current Act card. When the act advances, every investigator is dealt two damage. To stop this from happening, any player can take actions to test either intellect or agility at four to discard the treachery.

My take: Two damage to everyone is of course a big deal, so players will want to pass one of the tests to discard the card. This usually shouldn’t pose too much of a problem, although the difficulty of the test can require pitching a card just to be sure. Considering that anyone can do this test from anywhere, the card is easy enough to handle that the harsh consequences of not doing anything about it should barely ever come into play.

Threat level: Low. The timing would need to be really bad for Hunted by Corsairs to trigger its Forced ability. Advancing the act is usually completely in the players hands, so making sure that the treachery is dealt with first should rarely if ever be an issue.

Dealing with it: Whoever has the best agility or intellect will just have to spend an action or two. While this can potentially distract a Seeker for a bit, it’s rarely going to warrant special consideration.