Investigator Expansion Review: The Drowned City

Introduction

This is an overview of the player cards in the Drowned City Investigator Expansion. I will be looking at the investigators first, then go over the rest grouped by class. For most cards I will try to keep it short and to the point to not stretch this article even more.
For every group of cards I will nominate the three most useful and the three least useful cards. This isn’t necessarily about raw power, but more about how good they are at fueling a lot of your decks. It will also be informed by how well these cards stand on their own – while i might dip into a card’s role in the full cardpool, this article series is part of the Buying Guide for new players.
Finally, I will give my opinion on how well this selection of player cards stands on its own in total, answering if it’s worthwhile to get as a first expansion next to the core set and if this expansion + Core is enough to support the investigators contained in this expansion.
These articles do ignore the optional list of taboos. This is because they are mostly aimed at new players trying to figure out which investigator expansion to get next and taboo isn’t a thing that I want to weigh them down with. It’d also make things unnecessary complicated. I might mention a gamechanging taboo in exceptional cases.
The ranking I use for cards is Bad < Okay < Good < Excellent < Staple 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. Please don’t take these rankings too seriously and more as a guide line, 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.

The Investigators

That is a lot of investigator images, aren’t we usually only getting 5 per box? Well, two things are special here. One, we get a bonus sixth investigator, Gloria, who had previously been released as a book promo. And Agatha Crane has two investigator cards. But let’s start at the top.
Marion Tavares is The Trawler and our new Guardian. Her specialty is event based play and she gains considerable bonuses as long as you can reliably string two events together every turn. She works quite differently from usual Guardians, with innate card draw that makes her consistent and dynamic. She plays Guardian cards of course, and also has trait based access that lets her take certain events from other classes, mostly Survivor and Rogue.
The Poet, Lucius Galloway, follows the “level 5 mainclass, level 2 sideclass” type of deckbuilding that was introduced in the Core Set. He is Seeker first, Rogue second and his abilities around evasion and clue discovery reinforce this. He is generic and open-ended, as a clue gatherer that can also handle enemies he’s a powerful all-rounder.
The other seeker in the box is Agatha Crane, The Parapsychologist. Like Marion, she supports an event based approach to the game – but in a very different way that rewards token manipulation with the ability to replay cards from the discard pile. At the same time, Agatha Crane is also one of the mystics in the box – you are allowed to choose either of the two investigator cards at campaign start which will modify which cards you are allowed to take. This card access spans cards of their chosen main class and a trait that is at home in that class, but affords some splashes from other classes. She also gets some lowlevel cards from the class she didn’t take for an overall not too shabby range of cards. Her special ability requires very specific deckbuilding that has to balance token manipulation and spell/insight events.
The other mystic is Gloria Goldberg, The Writer. Her speciality is rewriting the story we are playing in, which takes the form of superb encounter deck manipulation. At her best, she can prevent bad treacheries from happening completely while stacking that deck in a way that is the most convenient for everyone. She is a fully capable mystic by herself of course and can (in addition to full Mystic card access) choose between one of three sideclasses to take low-level events and skills from. She’s outstandingly powerful and flexible.
Michael McGlen is our rogue and as The Gangster his interests are simple: Shoot enemies and get paid for it. A very strong combat character whose card access allows him to play all cards that mention Firearms, no matter if its the guns themselves or other cards that interact with them. His ability hands him resources for shooting his guns. Straight to the point and very capable.
Finally, George Barnaby is The Lawyer and provides the counterbalance to this straightforwardness by being a bit more involved. He is a survivor that gets rewarded for discarding cards from his hand. Instead of discarding to the discard pile, he sort of has a second hand from these cards can still be committed and sometimes even returned to his actual hand. Again, this promises big rewards for committing to the bit and making full use of this investigator specific mechanic. He supplements his Survivor card access with level 0 cards from both Seeker and Rogue which gives him a wide range to pick from.

Guardian

The Book of War: Excellent. We are starting off with a banger of a card. Allowing you to play the same event four times is very powerful and there are a lot of synergies to exploit here. But even just as a way to replay your best cards without any shenanigans this is great.
Crowbar: Good to Excellent. It does a job no other card in Guardian does, repeatedly allowing you to contribute to the clue game using your best skill. Cards like this already exist in other classes and are widely played, but the hand slot is more contested in Guardian for sure.
Remington 1859: Okay to Bad. Using its special attack on leaving play often requires taking an attack of opportunity as you play a new gun to replace this one. With just two ammo and a low attack value, this just reaches barely tolerable.

Primed for Action: Good, but requires a deeper collection. Investing a card gains you 2 resources and an action here, which is significant. You do of course need to have a gun and an upgrade ready to play, which is going to be difficult on just Core and Drowned City because there are no upgrades in that pool… but once you open up your options, this becomes a notable card.
Ready for Anything: Good to Excellent. Card draw is what makes decks feel good, it makes your deck more reliable and limits the extent to which random chance can screw you over. Guardian is notably weak in that department, so getting another card that can be played to keep the cards flowing is very good. It also offers some healing on the side which is a nice bonus to get.
Hardboiled: Good. For a level 0 card, this can offer a lot of icons. After taking three fight actions you can commit it for four icons to another players test on their turn, for example. But even just as a way to make sure that your third attack against an Elite will find its mark, this is rock solid.

Hunter’s Mark(1): Excellent. Another Vicious Blow variant, increasing our damage and attack value. Unlike VBlow, this one won’t be foiled by an autofail and it can even help the whole team get some attacks in before cashing in on the extra damage.
Alice Luxley(2): Good. A repeatable way to deal damage that also allows investigations while engaged. All around solid and a good alternative to Field Agent from Scarlet Keys. I never was a huge fan of the level 0, but this seems fine. Notably a lot of sanity soak on her too (while Field Agent pretty much won’t tank sanity for you at all), which is a weakness for a bunch of investigators that can take her.
Bulwark(2): Good. I am a bit sceptical if it’s worth sealing one of your good tokens here, but the effect is certainly nice. A repeatable ready effect is something we barely ever see, so that’s something that this card might get used for. Ignoring attacks makes it easier to use Bold cards and the like, too. So maybe i am even underrating it a bit, but i really don’t vibe with sealing a good token (or even two at the same time) here.

Inspiring Presence(2): Okay. It’s fine, but i find that i rarely want this effect as a one-time deal. If i barely ever play the level 0 from Carcosa, then paying 2xp for an upgrade is unlikely. The most important part of Presence, the Ready effect, is already on the level 0 card, too. That being said, there is some decent value here if you can use all parts of the card (icons, heal, ready) so i am sure this card is for someone.
Locked and Loaded(3): Good. An extra ammo on every gun you play takes a few plays of guns before you get a good cumulative value from this card. As a permanent card it does however also not ask anything from you except the XP to upgrade into it, it’s basically like upgrading all of your guns at the same time for just 3xp.

Quickshot(3): Okay to Bad. Playing these from your hand is pretty bad in terms of just raw value, but sometimes that final point of damage simply is required and Quickshot can then do the job without costing you an action. Those moments are rare however and running up to three cards that do very little if you don’t draw them at exactly the right moment is just clogging up your deck.
Remington 1859(4): Excellent. With the often somewhat tense resource situation in Guardian decks, it can not be overstated how good a 2 cost gun is for them. I have a very soft spot for the .18 Derringer(2), a survivor gun with 3 bullets, +2 combat and 2 cost. All of these things are present on the Remington(4) which makes it a very attractive deal. Of course it costs 2 more XP than the Derringer, but it also offers two extra free attacks (one on entering, one on leaving play) to sweeten the deal. 5 Attacks for 2 resources? Unheard of outside of melee weapons.

Most useful: Book of War, Hunter’s Mark, Remington(4)
Least useful: Quickshot, Inspiring Presence, Remington(0)

Guardian is looking good and healthy here. No real misses and several cards that are sure to make an impression. Art of War and Crowbar stick out as new assets that give the whole class a bit more dimension and perspective, to do things aside from just testing combat to shoot guns and swing machetes. But even the gun archetype gets some cool new pieces here, including the first Guardian pistol since the Carcosa set eight years ago and support for the “Gun Voltron” deck that stacks upgrades on a firearm.

Marion Tavares will be interested in several of these fast events, as they allow her investigator ability to sing. Add some Dodges, Extra Ammo and maybe even a Dynamite Blast or two from the Core Set, add some more stuff from the trait based access and you can cobble something together from the Core and just Drowned City to play an good Marion deck. Obviously, she is an investigator that gains a lot from additional investigator expansions being in your collection, but she’s definitely playable without having to bend too much. Notably, the investigator starter for Guardian is also an event based character, so just getting the Nathaniel Cho deck can increase how much you’ll get out of Marion.

Overall, I’m very happy with all of this.

Seeker

Alton O’Connell: Good. The usefulness of +1 agility on a seeker ally is limited to a very specific audience, but it’s of course a card that some of them are likely to play. I am not a huge fan of the “exactly by 3” trigger, this isn’t going to come up organically all that often and then you do need multiples of them just to collect a clue. That being said, there is no exhaust limitation on the trigger, so if you are able to manage this consistently you could end up with a good payoff here. Certainly a solid card for level 0 and has potential to be useful with shroud reduction effects for cheap free clues.
Artistic Inspiration: Good to Excellent. You have to feed cards into it to keep it going, so this is not just going into any deck. But the ability to modify your skill values after the token pull is certainly powerful and with just a bit of synergy this can be a good enabler for the “Exact Science” archetype or just plain reassurance for skill tests of all kinds.
Forensic Kit: Bad to Okay. This is a bit of a strange place to put incidental horror healing and there are enough conditions here to make this unappealing. The ability to investigate with agility instead of intellect is fine, but the number of investigators interested in it is again limited. And those usually already have access to this effect through the rogue class. Okay when playing from a small collection, but rapidly falls off with more options.

Mortar and Pestle: Okay, but niche. Like Forensic Kit, there is only a small number of investigators who could be interested, but unlike the Kit, it does have an effect that is hard to replace. Consistent extra income is exactly what you want when your gameplay is playing many spells over the course of the game… but the overlap between “plays spells” and “uses seeker cards” is small.
Oculus Mortum: Okay. The damage to Geists is not going to matter a whole lot. That being said, that part is mostly flavor anyways, you run this to gain clues for being attacked which is a pretty neat mechanic if you can trigger it repeatedly. Probably a bit more effort to support with token manipulation than it is worth, but it’s a cute new angle on doing things and it’s at least worth exploring.
Uncanny Specimen: Good. It’s fast, cheap and draws a card to replace itself. That alone is worth taking note of, as it can be used to make your deck appear a bit smaller than it actually is to increase the consistency of your draws. If it helps with a test, even better. This seems like a good filler card for level 0 decks just on that base level. If you have synergies with token manipulation (Agatha), the Science tag (Kate) or Myriad (Dream-Enhancing Serum), then this becomes a downright attractive card on its own merits. It will probably not stick around till the end of the campaign, but this seems like an important enabler for low level Agatha in particular.

Correlate All Its Contents: Okay to Good. This does a bunch of different things and you’ll want to be able to use all of them for Correlate to be worth keeping around in your deck. If you can use this to manipulate your test and cash in on a couple secrets this is solid, secrets have become quite valuable and flexible over the last expansions. As long as you can turn those secrets or charges into more value, this is a nice little card for a level 0 deck.
Cosmic Revelation(1): Excellent. A great way for Seekers to give the whole team a shot in the arm. It scales heavily with player count, but the option to have the whole team gain the equivalent of an extra action can solve a lot of tight situations.
Quick Witted(1): Bad to Okay. It does its job, but honestly it’s just not all that impressive. Only the third one of them gives a better payoff than just your basic Unexpected Courage. If used in a discard strategy, it can be fine as a way to get some miniscule extra value out of the card you have to discard, but it’s really not moving the needle much. Even in a very limited collection, i’d probably run full sets of Perception, Man Dex and Courage before this one.

Misdirection(2): Good? Maybe only Okay? Let’s go with Good to Okay. When you can trigger it, there is some nice value to be gained here, but it’s just very difficult to get consistent payoff here. Sealing the token is also a cost that i find annoying because it subtly impacts all your tests while you wait for this to matter.
Scientific Studies Grant(2): Okay. Extra hand slots are difficult to come by and this card is definitely useful. But having to find it in your deck and then play it for 3 resources and an action is quite a tall order. This works well to scale the capabilities of your deck higher as two additional tools in play can be quite significant. But you can’t really build a deck that would rely on this card, it’s not an enabler.
Working a Hunch(2): Okay. I am not convinced that this upgrade is really worth it. Working a Hunch(0) is a fine card and worth playing, actually an important card in a smaller card pool even if it falls off once you have everything. But the upgrade doesn’t solve anything that’d be worth spending the extra XP in my opinion. Just finding one clue from somewhere on the map won’t clear this location for you, so you’ll probably just have to move there eventually anyways. And you might as well play WaH(0) then. This changes in solo play of course, WaH(2) is pretty insane there. But that’s the exception.

Antikythera(5): Staple. This gives Seeker an accessory slot item that just keeps handing out value turn after turn after turn. It reminds me a lot of Rogue’s Lucky Cigarette Case in that way. Or the Red Clock. It is level 5, but you get a lot for that here. As long as your investigator takes tests, this just keeps feeding you clues, resources and cards. A level 5 card has a hard time getting the status of a staple card, but this one is just actually good for everyone.
Dial of the Ancients(4): Good. Speaking of Researched cards, here’s the one for this set. The condition for researching this one is a bit akward, but luckily it counts if someone else does the evading for you. So it’s not limited to just high agility seekers. The upgrades then have very little to do with this evasion condition, they are token sealing, a weapon or an investigation tool instead. They also all deal with token manipulation, making them enablers for Agatha. The upgrades all serve their purpose fine, but not in an exceptionally good way. As a limit 1 per deck accessory, they are a bit unreliable if you want to build around them in a more meaningful way, but i suppose Seeker has enough ways to find cards in their deck.

Most useful: Artistic Inspiration, Cosmic Revelation, Antikythera
Least useful: Quick-Witted, Forensic Kit, Mortar and Pestle

Notably trending a lot more towards the “Okay” line than the “Good” line compared to Guardian, the offerings for Seeker here are a bit of a mixed bag at times. There’s some very neat cards in there even beyond the three i picked out above as most useful. I especially like the continued support for the Exact Science archetype which asks players to hit exact amounts of oversuccess on their tests. The seeker investigator of the set, Lucius, even does support this with his signature asset, marrying this new seeker take on oversuccess with the classic oversuccess archetype from Rogue.

Many of the “okay” cards in this Seeker pool aren’t necessarily bad or underpowered, they are just very niche to specific investigators. As an example, Mortar and Pestle is actually quite solid as a way to generate income, but when you ask for a special focus on spell events in Seeker, then that excludes most of the investigators in that class. It is notably a nice card for Agatha though.

Lucius is a very open-ended character that can access a wide range of cards and play all sorts of strategies from Seeker and Rogue. For that reason, he works very well even if all you have is Drowned City and a Core Set. 100% approved on that front.
As for Seeker Agatha (or Sagatha, if you will), she can access Insights in addition to Seeker cards. With just the Core, that is not going to span a lot of ground but thanks to all the token manipulation support from this set alone we can properly enable her anyways.

Seems fair overall. Even if the card-by-card isn’t super exciting, the investigators are properly supported for new players. Meanwhile entrenched players can enjoy some of the exploration in the direction of archetypes that didn’t get much attention before. Having agility support on seeker cards is something to look deeper into, for example.

Rogue

Luger P08: Excellent. Cheap and functionally infinite in ammo, this is a near perfect sidearm if you aren’t planning on fighting as a main job. It asks very little of you in terms of opportunity cost while giving you an ability to dispatch small enemies without having to rely on a main fighter to bail you out. If you want to use this every turn, then the reload actions start to stack up a bit more than is comfortable, but as a sidearm this is a beautiful little piece.
Robert Castaigne: Good. I do not think his level zero beats Lonnie Ritter from the Winifred starter deck in a general sense, but he has his niche. And of course not everyone has Lonnie Ritter in their collection in the first place. His ability allows you to get some use out of extra guns in your hand and that’s okay, but not overly exciting. It still does cost the action as if you had just used a gun in your hand after all. But he is an ally with a relevant stat boost and that’s a valuable thing to have available.
String Along: Excellent. Evading without disengaging seems like a weird thing to do, but there are a lot of good reasons for it. From parley focused players that want to keep someone around they can chat up, to just keeping enemies bound to you so they won’t engage someone else, there is some good utility in this. You can move around afterwards and move the enemy with you which also has some applications. And then there’s of course the card draw and skill bonus to the evade as well. This seems like a very good card to me.

Where’s The Party: Excellent to Staple. If finding enemies is what you actively want to do, then this soars in how good it is. You can use this to find enemies with victory points, parley victims, annoying enemies you don’t want to risk showing up later. You even exhaust the enemy, giving you ample time to deal with it afterwards. A very strong card that is worth it even if all you want to do is dig for Victory while drawing a card or two.
You’ve Had Worse: Okay. There’s been plenty of situations where i would have loved to be able to pay 3 bucks to cancel a Rotting Remains. And since you can use this on either yourself or other players, it has some utility that even “proper” Mystic cancels don’t have at level 0. This solves some common problems that rogue face. There’s alternatives for it in the wider pool, but this does have a place even there. If nothing else, it can go into your level 0 deck before it gets replaced by better cards.
Bum’s Rush: Okay to Good. There is some utility in tossing enemies into connecting locations, especially if those are locations you do not plan on going again. In some cases, this can just straight up deal with that enemy. The damage is largely inconsequential, but just evade and move the enemy does a good job of getting rid of something.

Intimidation: Okay to Bad. Another way to get rid of enemies. There are some thing that don’t appeal to me here however. For one, you are using just your combat skill here, meaning you might as well have attacked. Sure, the difficulty might be lower in some cases, but then again you want to use this on enemies with high health to even gain something here. You are also paying 3 resources for this which is a lot. At that point, i’d rather just look to Backstab the fool. There is some situational benefit here too, like getting around Vengeance – but then again, you are also getting around Victory. Yeah, i am not seeing it.
Crack Shot: Good. A cool +3 to an attack. This is about as straightforward as it gets. Seems like a great way to help your level 0 deck meet the challenge when something big shows up in an early scenario. Rock solid card that does exactly what it says on the tin.
Doppelgänger(1): Okay to Good. Cards that attach to locations in anticipation of things that happen later have a history of not really working all that well in practice. That being said, they also have a history of costing way too much XP while this one is about as cheap as it gets for a non-level 0 card, with 3 cards for 1XP. Do you actually want all three in your deck? The ability to remote evade Hunters in linear scenarios or to keep a freshly evaded enemy down is pretty good and the trigger on “when it leaves the location” does a good job of opening this one up a lot more than existing Trap cards. But still, that is a lot of deckspace devoted to something that probably is rather scenario dependent.

Mob Connections(2Ex): Okay. This thing just eats up your actions before it starts paying off in a way that would justify 4xp on a one-off that is hard to build around. There are some ways to use this and i wouldn’t want to count it out completely, but on a base level this seems like it’s missing something to really be the engine piece it pretends to be.
Obscure(2): Okay to Good. Free actions are great and if they allow us to handle a hunter enemy that was about to beat us up, that’s even better. There is some promise in this card and the payoff might just be worth working around its weirdness. Replacing your skill value with the shroud value is a bit more whacky than i would like.
Watch This!(3): Good to Excellent. I love Watch This(0) for many reasons, it is actually my favorite player card in the game. Seeing an upgrade to it almost exactly 7 years after its release brings a tear to my eye. All the text is the same, but there’s now 3 wild icons on the side. That makes cashing in on the resources a lot more consistent of course. But the real value here is as a skill that helps with encounter protection. Spiking your willpower from 2 to 5 is amazing for Rogue. It’s a costly upgrade, but well worth it.

Robert Castaigne(4): Excellent. That is quite the glowup that his ability got there. Not only does it turn from an action into a free trigger, but it also attaches card draw or a play action onto the effect. That’s huge! Of course, the level 4 version no longer competes with Lonnie Ritter, but with the likes of Joey(4) or Delilah(3). And you know what, i think he has what it takes to stand out in the range of famously very good rogue allies.
You’ve Had Worse(4): Okay to Bad. Arguably a downgrade from level 0, as you are no longer able to use this on yourself. As the rogue, you are often the one most in need of this effect due to being soft to horror treacheries. There is raw power hidden somewhere in the card, but at 4xp this is not worth the trouble.
Gatling Gun(5): Excellent. This is the new benchmark for two-handed Firearms. Tons of damage per action, skill value bonuses that enable anyone to use it and a bucket of ammo. What more could you want from your high-end murder implement?

Most useful: Gatling Gun, Where’s The Party, String Along
Least useful: Intimidation, Mob Connections, You’ve Had Worse(4)

Damn, Rogue is eating good this expansion. Lots of cards that are just straight up very good. And even the ones that aren’t are at least interesting or fine. I really didn’t expect to find an ally in this set that would be better for Michael McGlen than Delilah, but here we are. And it’s not just the firearm support either, Lucius presence in the box is also felt through several evasion enablers. As a card carrying member of the Rogue Appreciation Guild, all of this gets two thumbs up from me.

As mentioned, Michael McGlen has gotten some special attention in this box. Both the Luger and the minigun are very interesting to him, so his armaments are plenty strong even if this is the first box you are buying in addition to your Core (feel free to use the .45 and Shotgun from there as well!). Definitely very capable from just that small card pool alone. It’s worth pointing out this means that with Lucius and Michael you get a great pair of a seeker and a fighter here which is often the most obvious pairing of investigators to tackle campaigns with. I’d feel confident going into the Drowned City campaign with these two, even as a new player. That strikes me as a very important and commendable thing for them to put into the box. Between Lucius and Michael, you have combat, clues and evasion all covered and are solid or better in all skills. Perfect little core team that splits up among them a small slice of the card pool. So if you are playing in a bigger group, the other players have free range of Mystic, Survivor and most of Guardian.

Mystic

Blood of Thoth: Bad. One of the worst cards in the game, laughably so. Has received significant changes from the optional list of taboos which turns it into a cornerstone card for the doomplay archetype, so if you have any intention of trying this with Amina, check out those changes instead of trying to make this work as printed.
Breath of the Sleeper: Okay to Bad. Unlike its sister spell to which we’ll come in a second, activating this without the bonus is kinda awful. Attacking for 1 damage is just never something you want to do. When you do get the bonus, this thing is pretty great, but i suspect this is just another “Song of the Dead” situation where this sort of unreliability just doesn’t fly on a combat card.
Eyes of the Dreamer: Excellent to Staple. What a difference it makes to apply these mechanics to a clue spell instead of a combat spell. Activating Eyes without getting a bonus is perfectly fine, actually you can just use it without spending a charge at all. Using your willpower to investigate is super strong. There’s already a card in the pool that does this, so there’s a precedent. And Eyes is just straight up better than Sixth Sense.

The Great Work/Lost Homunculus: Okay to Bad. I think it’s just not good at all. That one XP is nowhere near enough to offset the risk of getting turned into the Homunculus. This is going to impact how you have to play, avoid risks and possibly kneecap your whole team when they lose their Mystic. I know that people do a lot for XP, but truth be told, i feel like this just makes you a burden on your team.
Katarina Sojka: Excellent. This seems like a nice way to increase your chances of getting either specific symbol tokens or just symbol tokens in general. She does so with a little less control than Olive McBride offers, but also she doesn’t increase the difficulty of your test as much either. Very cool card.

Sign of Xelotaph: Okay. Tucking away one of the bad symbols can be nice. There were some options available to do so before, but i think Sign of Xelotaph beats all of them. The card does its job, it’s just arguable how worthwhile that job is in the first place.
Spectral Shield: Good to Excellent. I am surprised to see a card like this at level 0, this is some really neat stuff. It’s okay as just general soak fueled by charges (like, say some spell assets with 9 charges on them), but with some synergies this can get spicy. Notably, the effect is Forced, so once you have it on the table that could actually eat out your uses on cards when you don’t want to.
Whispers of Doom: Good. It’s pricey, but impactful. Most campaigns have annoying non-Elite enemies that are hard to defeat, but easy to evade and they have often been prime targets for cards like this. Instead of chewing your way through the 5 health of a Deep One Bull, you can just dump him to the discard pile. It even counts as defeating, for the purpose of collecting Victory. Against Elites this deals 3 damage… and you know what, that’s also pretty good.

Eye of Ghatanothoa(2Ex): Okay to Good. I am not sure how much one is actually able to capitalize on seeing the next encounter card. There is some value in it for sure, but unless you have specific tech it’s going to be hard to quantify what this does for you. So that leaves Eye as only worth 4xp when you have that tech.
Sword Cane(2): Excellent. I’ve stopped playing the level 0, but this upgrade can definitely revive Sword Cane. Making it Fast is huge for this type of card and the ping of damage on entering play can do a lot of good things too. If you are looking for a way to repeatedly evade with your willpower as a Mystic, Cane is one of the best options around.
Spiritual Echo(2): Bad. This is just very inefficient for being already so difficult to set up in a way that’d pay off. Just hold this next to Doppelgänger from this set and this becomes quite apparent.

Transfiguration(2): Excellent. The options that are opened up by this card are near endless and the card is utterly unique. No matter if you use this to do elaborate setups where you transplant any card into any investigator you can think of or if you use it in a more reactionary way to change your investigator based on the current situation, it is hard to imagine that you will not find a good use for this card when you have it.
Enraptured(2): Excellent to Staple. This card is insane value. There is all sorts of talk about abusing the card to hell and back with Practice Makes Perfect or Amanda. But honestly, there is absolutely no need for that. Just playing it straight to pass an intellect test and put 3 more uses on your Grim Memoir or Eon Chart is exceptional. Or using it with an investigation spell asset to pass your test and then recharge the asset for three more uses. Just wow.
Lost Arcana(3): Good. Another great source of fuel for your spells. Is massively overshadowed by Enraptured here, but you can just play both and go completely nuts. Arcana also does offer a continuous output of charges which can be relevant.

Deliverance(3): Good. This is a case where i think i need to see it in action before i can properly evaluate it. It’s absolutely a flashy card and I can easily imagine cases where taking the load off of your team is going to enable them to just finish the scenario or at least make great strides towards it. But how does it compare to something like Ward(2) which, while only affecting one, can be played as a reaction when it’s actually making a difference. Super interesting and exciting card in either case, of course.
Eldritch Brand(5Ex): Good. Look, it’s 10XP. But that seems to be actually worth it in this case. Assuming you want to use this with a 4-5XP spell, half of the 10XP already goes towards not needing a second copy. The other 5 then let you draw a specific card and also give an action. This is overall a very good package. While quite the investment, the main trick here will be finding a spell that is worth building around this way. Sixth Sense(4) maybe? I have played curse decks that would have appreciated starting reliably with Eye of Chaos(4), too.

Most useful: Transfiguration, Enraptured, Eye of the Dreamer
Least useful: Blood of Thoth, The Great Work, Spiritual Echo

Mystic cards are always such a rollercoaster. The highs are really high, with near-staples and downright transformational cards around. But the lows are equally low as if to balance it out.

There’s a lot i appreciate about this selection of Mystic cards. There is always bound to be some spell assets around for the classic willpower based gameplay, but this set’s offering is noticably different enough from previous ones. What i particularly like about Eye of the Dreamer and Breath of the Sleeper is that over the course of the campaign you don’t upgrade them, but make them more consistent by upgrading the rest of the deck.
There is also a lot of variety in these cards, which i find remarkable considering that there are fewer in-class cards in this set because of the Specialist cards taking up a large of the box. Many of these cards, like the upgraded Sword Cane, Whispers of Doom or the Spirit Shield make a really nice impression even in the full card pool.

Gloria isn’t really getting a whole lot of support here, if you are building her deck based on just the Core and Drowned City you will find it difficult to really play to her specific strengths. [EDIT: When i wrote this, i somehow completely missed that Scrying is actually in the Core Set, both in its level 0 and level 3. That is of course huge for Gloria and will enabler her well. She will still need to find the card in her deck before she goes fully online, but she does have her most important card there. So it’s a bit better than i thought!] She is still a generically strong investigator of course, but before you can add some of the key Gloria enablers, Agnes is likely going to do the whole spellcasting thing better. That being said, Gloria has the choice between Guardian, Rogue and Seeker as her side class while Agnes has Survivor. So they do complement each other in that regard neatly.

Magatha Mystic Agatha in Core + TDC will actually have to lean a bit on her Seeker splash to get enough cards to recur and enablers to manipulate tokens. This is somewhat weird as this sort of flips once you open up the card pool where Mystic token manipulation is much more numerous. That is not to say that there’s nothing on the mystic side here, just that it’s a bit sparse to stand on its own.

Overall, this is good. The excellent parts easily outweight the few missteps.

Survivor

Anchor Chain: Good. I actually like this a lot as an event. Putting an enemy down for two turns is close to handling it in many cases and Anchor Chain is doing some good work to allow this in Survivor instead of just Rogue as usual. That’s not to say that this doesn’t also have merits as an asset, of course. But then you likely need to go a bit deeper into the discard synergies to fuel repeated activations.
Nautical Chart: Staple. Repeatable ways to gain 2 clues with one action are pretty much always good.There is a lot of raw power in this one, even if you don’t have specific discard synergy. Being able to turn any card in your hand into a Deduction is huge and almost always worth doing.
Hand Hook: Okay. When you take a look at available options for one-handed weapons in Survivor, things are actually looking pretty grim. Things usually have some sort of weirdness or conditions layered on top of their mechanics, having to discard stuff is actually not that big of a deal in comparison. Hand Hook regrettably exhausts on attack which stops it from being very good, but again i think that it’s actually a somewhat decent fight event.

Lawrence Carlisle: Excellent. An intellect ally that also gives you resources? That’s something that has proven to be incredibly good. Carlisle is not quite as good as Milan Christopher, but he’s certainly very good and has broad appeal to many investigators.
Profane Idol: Okay to Bad. The damage soak version of this card, Improvised Shield, never turned any heads and i don’t expect this one to fare any better. While horror soak is slightly better than damage soak (there’s simply fewer options for it), the accessory slot is also a much harder ask for something like this than a handslot.
Catch!: Good. What i said about Anchor Chain and the value of double-evading an enemy is true here as well. I rate this slightly higher than Anchor Chain because that skill bonus can be very signficant. While survivors assets usually aren’t super expensive, getting a solid +3 or +4 is not too difficult here, which is where this becomes an evasion enabler for low-agility investigators.

Unconventional Method: Good to Excellent. As with Catch, the skill bonus comes in clutch here, giving low-intellect investigators another card to gain two clues with one action (the other being Look What i Found from the Core Set). The existence of such a strong alternative in the Core stops Unconventional Method from just being a new staple card, but it’s certainly very strong.
Contemplative: Staple. A card for a clue is something that is always going to be playable as long as the conditions aren’t outrageous. In this case the conditions are very soft, asking for investigations or Parley happening. It can even be someone else who does that and that is pretty much a given, meaning this is always worth running in your deck, at least at level 0.
Ample Supplies(2): Okay to Bad. What kills this card for me is having to discard it to get to the resources. Without that clause, this could have been a fine long term cash engine for discard decks. Even then, it would have played second fiddle to Carlisle who doesn’t ask you to spend 2xp on it. It’s also super awkward that you can only have 1 in play, but you desperately want to play two in your deck because you need it early enough to matter. There is some potential, but I think the math just doesn’t work out in favor of the card here.

A Glimmer of Hope(2): Good to Excellent. I rarely, if ever play Glimmer of Hope(0) with the plan of committing them. It’s only ever as food for discard effects like Ashcan’s ability or similar. The only one where i’d consider it would be Minh, but she can do better imo. This does change with the upgrade, as getting self-recurring instances of +2 will or +2 agility can be quite nice just on its own merits. If you are just looking for something to toss into your Nautical Charts, then the upgrade is probably not worth it, though. So this upgrade sort of shifts the functionality of the card, turning it into something notably different. I like that a lot.
Good Weather(2): Good to Excellent. Talking about +2 skill boosts, this one can apply to any skill and is global and lasts through the whole turn. That seems great, even just at two players this is really nice. And with more players it just becomes a bit absurd. That you get three of these for just 2xp is a steal, but finding the deck slots can be an issue.
Improvised Weapon(2): Good to Excellent. -2 to the difficulty is pretty significant and in some cases will even drop the difficulty to zero, allowing you to make short work of a small critter or cultist. But even if not, this is just a nice combat event that also draws a card to replace itself. Pure value.

Last Chance(3): Excellent. Unlike the level 0 version, this one does a great impression even if you still have a couple cards in hand. Even adding “only” 3 wild icons and drawing 2 cards is worth the cost in xp and it can be a lot better than that.
Gift of Nodens(5): Excellent. A great capstone for Survivor decks that have some xp to burn. It doesn’t even require all that much specific support, most survivor decks already run some really good skill cards that you likely want to get more use out of.

Most useful: Nautical Chart, Contemplative, Lawrence Carlisle
Least useful: Ample Supplies, Profane Idol, Hand Hook

Oh wow, George Barnaby got showered with discard enablers and payoffs, someone must have been really afraid about him not getting by on Core + TDC otherwise. You know what, i appreciate that level of commitment. Considering that he is the most funky of the group, it was probably a good idea to give players immediate guidance through the card selection here to prevent bad first experiences. Glimmer of Hope and Improvised Weapons are great strategic “reprints through upgrade” that get those cards in the hands of not only George, but also Marion. That Imp Weapon didn’t bring the rest of its cycle along is going to eat at me for a long while though! I really wanted my Winging It(2)!

Eh, i’ll live. After all, there is already a crazy amount of survivor flavored investigation in this box to make up for it. Between Charts, Contemplative and Unconventional Methods a level 0 survivor can rival seekers at level zero. What a great self-contained package and if you add Look What i Found from the Core to it you are just straight up set for clues from scenario 1. And on top of that, you get an intellect ally, too. Worth noting that this is not only great for George and Marion, but also for Wendy and (to a lesser extent) Agnes.

There is very little chaff in this class either. While two cards do miss the mark a little for me, the rest of them are all useful in some capacity.

Neutral

Ascetic: Actually, this one kinda breaks my rating system. Playing this straight from scenario 1 is probably more of a challenge run than a good idea. But there are some shenanigans you can get up to with it. It’s most obvious use case is taking it after being killed or driven insane, forcing you to build a new deck mid-campaign. Ascetic can help you be a productive member of your team straight away again. If you want to get cheeky, you can take this to get past a difficult scenario 1 and then abandon your investigator for your real deck afterwards. If you want to get even cheekier, there is another amusing way to use this: You could abandon your investigator after every scenario and build a new one with 10xp (13, if you also take In the Thick of It) tailored to whatever scenario is next. This is probably not a good idea, but it is a funny one.
Short Rest: Okay to Bad. A card for a heal is not a great trade and if your plan was to make everyone take this card and then chain a bunch of them in one action… let me tell you that trading 8 of these for 8 heal is still an awful, awful deal. Do it once for the memes, if you have to get it out of your system, i guess. I can imagine some situations where this is decent enough in a level zero deck, possibly even only with one or two copies, not even making use of the Myriad. But that’s about it. This is filler for the level 0 Marion deck, i guess.

Confidence: Good. In the right deck, it seems trivial to turn this into an Unexpected Courage and still easy to scale it to 3 or even 4 icons. Not much to say about this one, it’s going to be fairly obvious when you want it and when you don’t.
Spiritual Healing(4): Okay. It’s priced right, after all if this gets too cheap then it just makes the game easier for everyone forever. But i don’t see myself going for this even in emergencies. By the time i start worrying about trauma to the point that i want to throw 4xp at the problem, i will be packing some expensive healing or soak to counteract several points of trauma at the same time. If Roland is sitting at 4 mental trauma, going down to 3 is just not *that* much of a difference.

Taking Stock

Before i move into the Specialist cards, i want to take a short moment just to take stock until here because while the Specialist cards are the new flashy thing i believe that the class cards still make out the most of what you get out of this investigator expansion. Especially as a new player the Specialist cards are very narrow in who can play them… in some cases a new player might not even own a character that can use that card. So i decided to not pull them into my usual evaluation of the card set for purposes of determining how well the investigators are supported and how much this set adds to a fledgling card pool.

Luckily, the impressions so far have been almost universally positive. There’s always a few cards that aren’t quite what i want them to be in every set, that’s unavoidable. But by and large this set offers up six investigators, five of which are very well supported in this box. Gloria is the outlier – while she can be played successfully just based on her card pool, unlocking her investigator specific power requires a bit more input from outside the set. [EDIT: This was written without remembering that Scrying(0) and Scrying(3) are both in the Revised Core, which is certainly helping Gloria a lot more than i gave it credit for here.] Considering that Gloria is kind of our bonus investigator for this set, this seems fair enough – i won’t hold it against a set when it has bonus stuff in it.

In terms of archetype support and interesting directions, the box also delivers. We have some support for a variety of things, from firearm based strategies in both Guardian and Rogue over discard synergy in Survivor to sealing in Seeker in Mystic. Plus various other things on the side. Honestly, this box is a real nice addition to a collection of any size, just based on the class stuff already.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the Specialist cards. Most of this is probably going to be more interesting for entrenched players, but i’ll try to keep an open mind when cards are playable by Core or Drowned City investigators as well and check if they are of use to new players too.

Specialist

Library Pass(1): Good. This is another one of those cards that you can abuse to hell and back and break the game through interactions with cards from previous sets. But even just played “as intended” this offers good value, saving on resources and play actions as you keep cycling in new tomes. A bit limited in that you need to run a certain amount of Tomes in the first place for it to be worth it.
Dreams of the Clay(1): Excellent. Mystics can do better, but anyone else with these traits can use this very well. Commit to a test you are favored to pass first, then cancel a different test later on and you got a nice bit of encounter protection for very little cost.
Inquisitive(1): Okay. Near guarantees triggering some payoff from either an oversuccess or an exact success card. Is that payoff going to be good enough to warrant spending a card? You do also get a wild icon here and the card is cheap to get, but deckspace is not unlimited and i don’t think this has quite enough intrinsic value.

Bound for the Horizon(2): Excellent to Staple. Discarding a card for a move is a great deal, even moreso if you can get value out of the discard itself. Notably George is on the list of investigators that can play this one and i think he will usually want to. There is also a bunch of other survivors and rogues that would be able to make fantastic use of this. Seems like a very good card to me!
Forbidden Sutra(2): Okay. It’s somewhat unimpressive when held next to some of the comparable Mystic cards (and Sutra is basically a Mystic card). I suppose it does its job and the token manipulation isn’t bad (just difficult to sustain) so i won’t call it bad, but that horror cost is rough.
Walter Fitzpatrick(2): Excellent. Hey, it’s Milan Christopher for Parley! Clearly a very good card in its archetype, but 2xp is enough of an opportunity cost to not make him an autoinclude.

Name Your Price(2): Staple. There is a rogue event called Small Favor that deals 1 damage for 2 resources. Name your Price is basically Small Favor, except on playing it you draw 9 extra cards (all of which are Small Favor) and gain 9 actions (all of which are used to play Small Favors). You have to pay the resource cost for all of them, but drawing 9 cards and gaining 9 actions? Amazing.
(This review was brought to you by the Council of Click Economy)
Name Your Price(2): Okay to Bad. I love that this exists just because it’ll be fun to pull off. But if we are evaluating the card on how useful it actually is aside from bragging rights and doing it because you can… then it’s kinda jank. There is a decktype that hoards money and will reach 20+ resources fairly easily. That deck doesn’t plan on spending those during most of the scenario, but in the final turns it can just dump the resources on closing out the scenario. Usually this takes the form of spending 12 resources on Intel Reports or the like, but that’s where i could see an unironic use of Name Your Price.
True Awakening(2): Good to Excellent. A bit restrictive XP-wise for such a generic card, but this is good value and an effective deck thinner. Marion can take this and for her this is a really nice boost to her engine. I imagine this can find its way into various other decks as well.
Double Down(2): Good to Excellent. A very flexible card for rich investigators. Throwing money at a problem until it goes away is a great way of dealing with things and up to 7 wild icons will even make a low-willpower rogue finally snap out of being Frozen in Fear. That this can not only work as treachery mitigation, but also to just pass other crucial tests puts this ahead of many other options. You can even commit it to someone else, paying to make their problems go away. Very nice card.

Captivating Performance(3): Okay to Good. An asset that promises an extra action every turn has to be taken seriously, but there are a bit too many hoops to jump through to get there. I imagine you will often find that the extra action has been severely limited by what you did before. And if all you get from this card is an extra resource action or card draw, then it’s sort of underwhelming as there are plenty other cards that can offer that at 3xp. I believe this can probably be taken to a place where it’s good, but it is going to fight you all of the way to there.
Cowl of Sekhmet(3): Okay. Once an enemy engages you (for example after drawing one), this won’t protect you anymore, but you can use this to sneak past enemies already on the map. This strikes me as a card that can potentially trivialize some scenarios, but not quite worth the 3xp if you just want to run it on its own merits as a generic defensive asset.
Dakota Garofalo(3): Excellent. As mentioned with Bound for the Horizon earlier, extra movement is a premium ability. Dakota requires enemies to move to, so she is strictly for enemy handlers, but that’s fine. Her ability is still quite strong. Move and Engage does bypass some pesky enemy keywords (Aloof, Elusive) while helping to combat others (Hunter). I think this is a fine ally, her only problem is going to be the usual one for allies: There is only 1 ally slot by default and there are some filthy allies around in the class pools. That being said, i can see her be worth running Charisma for.

Nose to the Grindstone(2): Okay to Good. I value this as an enabler for Kymani who otherwise doesn’t have the intellect or combat value to use most of the tools they get special access to. Wilson also can use this to make up for having no access to Crafty to boost his tool use. The 3xp cost puts it into a spot where less specialized investigators likely won’t go for this, though.
Sound Support(3): Good to Excellent. Taking the pressure in terms of horror and damage not only from you, but also your teammate with a slotless asset is quite good. The list of investigators that can run it is fairly narrow however and doesn’t include anyone from the Core or Drowned City.
Trench Armor(3): Good. A card that works very well with the Bold line of cards which need to be played with the first action of the turn. Only six investigators in the whole game can run this card so far, but Trish is among them and she too gains a lot from being able to ignore attacks of opportunity. When everything else fails, this is still a 3 health soak for 2 resources which is respectable. I think this is quite good, but sadly very limited in who can take it.

Blood of K’n-yan(3): Okay. 3xp for a spell that banishes an enemy to the shadow realm. Requires some building around with the empty handslots, which has some neat enablers in the wider card pool, but very spread around. I don’t think this is quite there yet, but i believe that the designers are building towards something there with all the handslot matter cards we’ve sporadically been getting.
Storm Ruler(4): Okay. Wildly inconsistent between dealing 1 and 4 damage, but to get there you need to reveal symbol tokens. I don’t know that this is really worth the effort. I do like that it only exhausts if you want to make the symbols count, so if you don’t get any you can try again afterwards. There’s a chance i am underestimating this one.
Motivational Speech(4): Excellent. Very powerful card that saves actions, costs and even gives a bit of extra value from ignoring the activation cost completely on that first use. A very worthwhile upgrade to the already great level 0 card from Scarlet Keys.

Archibald MacVeigh(5): Bad to Okay. An ally with +1 int, and after you use his secrets to pay for events he effectively was free. But that doesn’t help with the resource situation when you set up your board at all. And converting other cards’ secrets to money is rarely worth it, usually we expect a secret to me more valuable than that. I don’t hate the text on the card, but at 5xp it’s priced out of range where you can tinker with it.
Library Pass(5): Excellent. The biggest problem with level 1 Pass is that it’s a limit 1 per deck card you need to find before you can use it. This solves that problem perfectly, making it permanent. Even adds some other benefits on top to sweeten the deal. Great engine.
Mauser Tankgewehr(5): Okay. Has some fun uses for Dexter and Mateo, but the rest of the people that can take it have other options that are a bit less unwieldy. I like this to take a 3 combat investigator to 8 combat, basically moving them from “can defend themselves if they have to” to “crackshot sniper” in one go.

Sacred Oath(5): Okay. Seems like an interesting option for Preston or Diana, possibly Patrice. But most investigators that can use this would rather take less restricted cancels that also don’t take that much XP to buy. That being said, Sacred Oath should probably not evaluated as a 5xp card, but as a pack of three 2xp cards that need to be bought as a bundle. And i think they are fine for that benchmark.

On Their Heels(5): Good. 2 resources for 5 testless clues is really good in terms of value. The damage option can also be nice, as long as it saves you an action in the process. Zoey could combine the dogs with her cross to defeat small fry that engages her without effort, for example. Also, Whippoorwills hate hate hate these good bois. Just be aware that these stay in play after being used up and there’s pretty much no way to discard them at will. They also use a unique type of use. So it’s 5 uses and that’s it… even if you have a second copy in your deck you likely won’t be able to play it.
Dimensional Vortex(5): Okay. The ultimate panic button, this solves any enemy based problem your team might currently have anywhere on the map. That can be a huge ace to have up your sleeve. It’s not the type of card that usually sees 5xp thrown at however.
Memories of Another Life: Staple. The best case for this card is insane, getting to play any level 0 card from your collection without paying anything for it is a huge swing. This could allow your Mystic (or Lucius) to just casually drop a free Leo De Luca into play on turn 1. Just need to find a test to succeed at. It’s immensely powerful and (as long as you have a solid card pool) will always find a great option to solve whatever problem you currently have.

Most useful: Bound for the Horizon, Dakota Garofalo, Memories of Another Life
Least useful: Archibald MacVeigh, Forbidden Sutra, Inquisitive

Some hits, some misses. Overall i’d call the specialist cards less impressive than what we have seen in the classes, but there are of course still some highlights. Just the fact that many of these are only available to a very limited group of characters and that often the card is only actively interesting for like one to three of them makes these appear a bit more narrow than I’d like. For being this narrow, many of them could have been pushed a bit more. I mean, it’s not really a neutral card if only 3 people can meaningfully play, right? So they don’t deserve to be balanced as conservatively as Neutral cards.
That being said, there is some good stuff here, both in terms of build-arounds, specific archetype support and generically good cards.

Final Verdict

So, is this investigator set worth getting? To get the obvious out of the way: If you have a decent collection already, let’s say Core + Starters + 2 or more investigator boxes, you do not need to fear that the specialist cards would end up being to narrow for you. At that point you will have 26 or more investigators, which is where the options for Specialist stuff open up. The class cards also have a lot of fun stuff in them, enriching existing archetypes. And the investigators are also great. So yeah. get this box. It’s good.

The more interesting question is how well it squares up as a first (or second) buy for a new player after the Core. This usually depends on if the player cards are cohesive enough to support archetypes without stuff from other sets and on whether the investigators are playable just with what’s in the box. For this set, there is also the concern about the specialist cards however, which due to their narrow focus are more tailored towards those players that can support all those various niches.

My take is that someone who gets this set as their first expansion will not regret it… but it would also not be something I’d necessarily recommend. For a new player, i’d recommend going for sets that give you as much bang for your buck as possible, to get your card pool up faster. If you want to get to a position where you can engage in meaningful deckbuilding, then getting more cards will be better for you than getting fewer, but more powerful ones. The specialist cards from this set don’t do a whole lot for a new player overall. While they might play the occasional one, like On Their Heels in Roland or Dreams of the Clay in Lucius, most of these cards simply need a bit more behind them to shine. That being said, if you want to get this box because the investigators appeal to you or simply because it’s the thing that you see on the shelf in your LGS… it’s perfectly fine. The investigators are well supported in this set, with only Gloria being a bit left out (but to be fair, she kind of is even in the full cardpool…). So you’ll immediately be able to open this box and build decks for a Marion, Lucius and Michael teamup for example and can pit that against Night of the Zealot. Or the Drowned City campaign, once it releases. The player cards are pretty coherent and centered around the investigators in the set. Which also are very different from those in the Core, so you get a good experience from all the class cards.

I’m still recommending either Edge of the Earth or the range of Investigator Starter Decks as the best way to give your collection an immediate shot in the arm. But this is perfectly fine as well, as long as you don’t mind that there’s a group of cards in here of which you’ll have to set a few aside for later.