The wording on this card implies that if you are doing an action, have a lighting bolt window, and the shroud of your location is zero, you can exhaust Alton to gain a clue without spending any evidence.

It seems like the obvious choice for this ally to land would be in a difficulty zero cluever or flex deck. This would be especially effective in a difficulty zero Darrell deck, as you could get some free evidence from it as well. Which seems extremely strong, especially in a level 0 deck and for enabling this archtype.

Having tried running Alton in two cluever decks (Monterey Jack and Seeker Agatha Crane), I feel that he doesn't really offer a lot for Seekers who already get a lot of in-class clue compression and very competitive Level 0 allies. On the other hand, Darrell Simmons benefits from pretty much every part of his package and the two should make a great duo.

As noted by other reviewers, Alton's evidence cost depends on the shroud of the location during the player window in which his is used, so the same shroud reduction tricks that worked on Lola Santiago will also work on Alton. Do note that difficulty reduction such as Gumption and Darrell's doesn't actually help because they interact with the test difficulty and not the shroud though.

Without shroud reduction, and with most locations in the game being between 2 to 4 shroud, you can think of Alton's ability as giving you 0.25-0.5 clues per precision success (which already takes some setup or luck in the first place), which is simply way too slow for the class who already excels at gathering clues. Without support, Alton's payoff takes so long to arrive you might as well run Working a Hunch if you want 0XP clue compression in Seekers that much.
Main class Seekers do have some access to shroud reduction, e.g. Arcane Insight (4) and Vantage Point, but then these are also pretty slow cards that don't see a lot of play, and I don't expect Alton to warrant a full built-around Seeker deck.
Another thing going against Alton is that Seekers probably have the best selection of Level 0 allies in the entire game. Dr. William T. Maleson offers better soak-for-money and encounter protection, while Dr. Milan Christopher and Jeremiah Kirby give a boost in a relevant stat for cluevers and either sustain economy or burst card draw, so on and so forth. It's simply too difficult for Alton to carve out a niche among such stellar allies.

On the other hand, look over to the Survivor cardpool and suddenly the possibilities open up significantly. Not only do they have more useful shroud reduction options (e.g. Winging It, Old Keyring, Matchbox), but also the recursion to repeatedly make use of said options and payoff cards for 0-difficulty investigations (Old Keyring (3) and Shed a Light). Darrell Simmons in particular would enjoy working with Alton (even though his innate difficulty reduction doesn't work with Alton as aforementioned) for the following reasons:

• Darrell simply loves anything that generates evidence.
• Darrell starts with 5 and doesn't need a static boost as much. On the other hand boosting his to a respectable 4 can certainly improve his encounter resistance and ability to work temporarily away from the team fighter.
• Artistic Inspiration and Steady-Handed are both in Darrell's cardpool and can reliably enable the precise success. Notably you can also toss Winging It as fodder for Artistic Inspiration for even more tempo.
• Empirical Hypothesis also works on a success by 3 as a side benefit.
• Thematically, Darrell and Alton seem to share a passion in photography.

Such a scenario is pretty likely in a Darrell-Alton deck and pretty much involves only cards Darrell already wants to run:

1. Darrell finds himself at a 4-shroud location.
2. Initiate an investigation at -3 shroud with Old Keyring (3) and Matchbox.
3. Further reduce the difficulty to 0 with Flashlight (3) or Darrell's own ability.
4. Proc Alton and Shed a Light for a total of 5 clues (2 from Keyring (3), 1 from Alton, 2 from Shed a Light) in one automatically successful action and 1 evidence.

Oversuccess also gives an evidence on Empirical Hypothesis, and if Darrell at that moment is testing at his innate 5 , he can also proc both Artistic Inspiration and Steady-Handed to turn that into an exact success by 3 for another evidence on Alton, turning the entire action evidence-neutral or even positive.

Overall, I feel that Alton may struggle to make the cut in a conventional cluever deck, but he is far from unplayable and can become an early (if painfully slow) payoff for precision tech or a fast and testless source of clues in the appropriate decks.

This should go crazy with Ashcan Pete. Use Matchbox to reduce shroud to 0 and double dip on free clues by readying Alton.

This comment is at least 200 characters long. No really, it is. I promise. For real.

This is more of a question then a review but can you spend evidence from other cards or just from Alton with the player window action?

Can anyone confirm or refute this idea? Thank you all in advance