Malfunction

What it does: Malfunction is attached to the nearest vehicle, where it stays until an investigator at the location spends and action and passes an Intellect test. While attached, the action abilities on the vehicle can not be used.

My take: This card plays very differently depending on the scenario. During Devil Reef, it attaches to the fisher boat and until the treachery is discarded, it can not move around. Fairly simple. The intellect test isn’t too bad either. So unless you are playing solo with a low-intellect investigator, this will just take one or two actions. Could be a bit of a pain when the kraken is around, but otherwise it’s probably fine. Things are a bit different during Horror in High Gear. For one, the time pressure is much bigger there than it is in Devil Reef. Often, you will have only one turn to deal with your location and having to allocate actions towards discarding Malfunction is a much bigger ask. Also, during High Gear, this card doesn’t actually stop the car from moving. In fact, it stops the car from stopping! These two circumstances make it play very differently between those two scenarios and i appreciate that a lot.

Threat level: Low. Ultimately it can be discarded in an action by most investigator teams, so on paper that’s not a big deal.

Dealing with it: In Devil Reef, there isn’t much choice. You need the fishing vessel (unless it’s late in the scenario), so you will need to discard the card. During Horror in High Gear, an argument can be made that you can let this thing stay attached if you can spare the action that would now be missing on investigating the location. It’s worth pointing out that Alter Fate does an excellent job of discarding this, bypassing the test and not even taking up the action. A cancel would have a similar effect, of course.