Sorcery

My take on this set: Beyond the Veil is one of the most notorious encounter cards in the game. Investigators that go through their deck fast NEED to plan on how they deal with the card or they will just find themselves dying to it or having to resign early. Visions is a great enabler on its own, and in three of four cases, the Sorcery set is grouped with The Beyond for even more deck discard. As a result, this set is responsible for a huge portion of the threat coming from the encounter deck in half of The Dunwich Legacy.
People have argued that Beyond the Veil is too punishing, but i disagree. I like that this card exists because at least at this point in the game’s life cycle, there are plenty of ways to deal with the card and there’s nothing wrong with a campaign coming with its own unique challenges.

What it does: Beyond the Veil surges and has no immediate effect. However, it goes into the player’s threat area and threatens to deal 10 damage should their deck run out. A player can only have one of these, additional copies surge without further effect.

My take: Ten damage is enough to kill anyone, so every investigator will need a plan on how to deal with Beyond the Veil when playing the Dunwich campaign. With three copies in the deck, just crossing your fingers and hoping it won’t show up is out of the question.
I like how much of a looming threat the card presents and how every card draw, every synergizing encounter card puts the player closer to their death, hoping to piece together whatever answer they have in their decks… hoping they don’t end up being discarded. Very lovecraftian. I also appreciate how it takes something that is usually a minor nuisance at best (discarding cards from the deck) and turns it into a mechanic that can just outright kill the investigator.
My one complaint about the card: This one really didn’t need Surge, it’s already always relevant. Conditional Surge when drawn as a duplicate would’ve been totally fine.

Threat level: Very High. Deal with it or die. It doesn’t get much more threatening than that.

Dealing with it: Every investigator should at least have a plan on how to approach this card – even the ones that only draw a card each turn can find themselves decked fairly quick because typically those are more vulnerable to the Willpower tests on Visions of Future Past and Arcane Barrier. In no particular order, possible solutions include:
– shuffling back your discard into the deck (Quantum Flux, Patrice’s Elder Sign)
– tanking the hit with allies and assets
– negating the damage (Deny Existence, Devil’s Luck)
– canceling the treachery (Ward of Protection, Forewarned)
– discarding the treachery (Alter Fate)
– using either encounter deck manipulation (Scrying, First Watch) or “You handle this one” and “Let me handle this” to push duplicate copies to whoever already has one or is best suited to handle it.
If all else fails, resigning early is preferrable to taking the trauma, so keep an eye on your remaining cards. The Rogue and Seeker card pools are worst equipped to deal with Beyond the Veil while Guardians should at least consider the tanking route. Mystics and especially Survivors have the best answers available. Patrice sometimes gets mentioned as unplayable in Dunwich due to Beyond the Veil, but she actually is very good at handling it. Between Flux, Alter Fate, her Elder Sign and possibly Eucatastrophe to trigger it more reliably, she shouldn’t be too worried.

What it does: The player is forced to make a high difficulty Willpower test and then discard cards from the top of their deck for each point they failed by.

My take: Discarding cards from the deck does little to nothing on its own, so this card purely exists to feed into Beyond the Veil. In that role, the card does a good job. Five cards as a worst case scenario are a sizeable chunk of the deck and the scaling test means that every investigator is enticed to chuck some symbols into the test to lessen the impact.

Threat level: Low. Visions of Futures Past is completely dependant on another card to have any impact. Only investigators that do gimmicky stuff with their deck like collecting Myriad sets or relying on specific single cards are a bit more threatened.

Dealing with it: Since its a a scaling test, even low Willpower investigators can gain some partial benefit from committing extra cards to the test. That being said, it’s usually better to have a plan for Beyond the Veil instead, because dealing with Beyond will also turn Visions into a non-issue.