That's right kids, its "the ultimate wizard in terms of attack and defense."

But really, this is Wizard of the Order that gained hunter, 2HP and while is an immediate threat, still dispenses a doom that may haunt you next mythos phase. It gaining Victory 1 also means he's not just going to get shuffled in all the time, something that Chapter 1's core loved doing.

Overall, combined with Zealot's Aloof and the Treachery, makes an encounter set that you cannot ignore and, takes extra actions / resources to deal with and giving more incentive for the party to stick together.. Comparatively, original cultists made you go to them as action economy, and prioritising Fighters (who had less movement tools to work with back then) to stick to more central locations or head off threats.

If the original cultist set was Arkham Horror the board game's fires that you must go around and put out in Arkham Town, these are the guys starting them.

(I'm mainly here to make the YGO joke, but I also wanted to give my 2 cents.)

This card is better than it looks. A resource event that doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity is something already worth considering for fighters, but the action compression it offers is really great: a (quasi) move, an engage, and a resource action all in one card.

I like running it either on flex investigators, event-based fighters, or in tandem with highly mobile cluevers (the ones you need to be chasing around). If your deck requieres a lot of early setup, a conditional resource card might not be the best card, though.

In chapter 2 specifically I like it on Isabelle decks because she can use it to trigger traps! It is a fun interaction, and I believe it is worth building around.

Strikes me as very weak in the absence of Short Supply, especially for 2xp and in a Miguel de la Cruz deck. It actively sabotages your ability to use his crit effect, Scavenging, or the new Do-or-Die if used carelessly. Your chances of actually drawing a reshuffled card are probably not worth the effort.

All that said, it does replace itself. That makes it very cheap and easy to play on Miguel. It's a card that really begs for you to abuse the best 0-levels (until they get taboo'd).

Chapter 2 review

The Polished Cane allows Rogues to attack with a boost from their (typically strong) stat. Note this is still a Combat test so you need to commit or icons to these (and not icons). As you can evade the enemy with an over-success of 2, in some ways this allows you to target the weaker of an enemy's fight or evade value to exhaust them (either with an attack from the Cane, or a conventional evade action).

An unsung beneficial feature of the Cane is pinning Elusive enemies if you manage to trigger the auto-evade. "Succeed by" is checked during the test, while Elusive triggers after an attack resolves and only if the enemy is ready (which they no longer are). Chapter 2 seems to be leaning into Elusive being a common feature on enemies (especially in the Children of Blood campaign) and so the Polished Cane can be extremely useful in these situations.

In terms of how you want to use this, it's a nice means for Trish to kill Black Chamber Operative in a single card. You can lean into combat more with any Rogue if pairing to M1903 Hammerless (scoring the evade and damage with the Cane, and then continuing to shoot them with your gun) - and with André specifically this triggers your additional action allowing up to 7 damage in a turn (almost Guardian levels of damage, and with the enemy exhausted). While Rogues won't often want to run dual weapons, Prestidigitation makes it very easy to flit between Thieves' Kit and weapons on the fly - so it's not necessarily an either/or situation.

Overall I think the Cane is very good. The fact that it test is a necessary balancing feature, as most Rogues typically won't want to run many cards with combat icons in their decks (unless we get a high Rogue at some point in the future for Chapter 2).

Ask yourself whether you're losing to health or the doom clock more often and how polarized the defense on your team is. This might be good in your deck if your answers are "often" and "very".

You can save a lot of actions if you assign the enemy to the fighter every round for 3 rounds. If you have Monterey Jack, keeping will checks away from him can be a big deal.

Most of the time, I'd rather draw/spend xp on something that actually helps me deal with enemies or finish the scenario faster.