Counterattack

How does this card interact with Elusive -monster keyword?

  1. The monster attack is considered "effect" and the whole attack is canceled (so it never even started) and elusive doesn't trigger.

OR

  1. The cancel part of the card only targets the effects of the attack. So the attack is considered started. There are no effects but Elusive triggers.
Mordjinn · 1
https://arkhamdb.com/rules#Elusive says the attack needs to resolve for the effects of elusive to trigger. Counterattack cancels the attack, preventing it from resolving. — AlderSign · 480
Spiritual Charm

For a non-Hunter, particularly brutal:

Cluever gets mugged → Luke yanks the monster into the next room → gets ~3 resources → vanishes into another dimension → monster stands there doing nothing.

Testless enemy disposal for one action.

Starke4k · 3
Moxie

Important to note that allies and armor can soak before Moxie has to go!

Sadly, rogues usually could make better use of sanity soak than health soak. Gladly, rogues are often rich enough to pay for more will to protect against treacheries.

Ofuda

I want to like it, but it's just not good enough. The resource, deck slot and action cost is not trivial. Getting it out early enough for strong value will likely delay playing other more critical assets like weapons or allies.

The Good:

  • The effect lasts the whole round, so you can support your allies with it.
  • It's a free, fast engage on aloof enemies, which are often non-Elite and fragile.
  • You can wail on troublesome elusive enemies like Zamacona.

The Bad:

  • Alert and retaliate are most worth cancelling on big scary bosses, but this has the all-too-common non-Elite clause.
  • The bless has to be revealed at your location, so your bless engine better be really humming.
  • Playing it in the heat of battle is almost never worthwhile unless you're absolutely drowning in aloof/elusive enemies.

Like Grievous Wound, this is a very narrow tool that tries to help with elusive enemies, but is still weaker than brainlessly hitting hard. Like Absolution, it's not a strong enough payoff to motivate a bless build unless you were already doing it.

If it were free, fast, or effective on elites it might edge into being usable.

Serpents of Yig

A terrifying adversary! The 3-4-3 alone makes this difficult to beat. But the effect is also debilitating to the Blessed Papa. The advanced version really needs to be dealt with before playing most of the bless seal cards and abilities that Father Mateo has. Otherwise Serpents of Yig truly makes it scary to play any bless cards, let alont he advanced The Codex of Ages. My way of dealing is to try to mulligan and even hard search for this enemy, letting my fellow investigators help me in defeating this monster :D Is nicely countered by Father Mateo's statline being boosted by whopping +1 on all skills.

Plant · 8