10xp and using the same slot as your Lucky Cigarette Case is a massive opportunity cost. So what do you get for it?

At the start of the turn, you MAY take all resources, then place one charge. That means you always have access to the 1 charge effect. +4 skill value to the first test you take during your turn is absolutely massive. It boosts tests in your primary stat(s) to nearly auto-succeed levels, and it also boosts tests in your low stats to "has a decent chance to succeed even without commits." The first test you take on your turn is likely to be the most impactful: fighting or evading an enemy. If it's not going to be one of those, you can probably sequence your turn to delay the non-impactful test(s) until later in the turn, such as playing your Pilfer now and doing your basic investigate later. And the flexibility of applying to any kind of test makes you a trump card that can apply to almost any kind of emergency situation that your team might find themselves in.

If you somehow don't take any tests on your turn...that skill bonus doesn't have a time limit on it. It'll float around and protect you from your encounter card, or be there on your next turn if the encounter deck doesn't give you a test.

Honestly, I think +1 resource per turn and +4 to your first skill test every turn is already enough to be worth the costs. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

If you find yourself not needing or wanting the bonus skill value on a given turn, you can go up to the 2 charge level. Even one free move is a nice consolation for not needing the skill boost, but this gives you up to three all at once. Go scout the map so people know where to focus their efforts, gather up a stray enemy or two so your fighter can smash it, teleport to another player or location to help out, there are a lot of options. And if you find yourself not needing the skill boost again on the turn after, you can use the 3 charge effect and just have an extra 2 actions. Nice!

Might be best in type , where they can use the skill bonus to be confident in their attacks or chip in some investigates when there's nothing to fight, or use the moves to fly to the aid of a friend. But it's still really good in any kind of deck.

I probably wouldn't rush this as an early campaign purchase; it is just a single card that could be on the bottom of your deck, so it won't fix an otherwise nonfunctional deck. Use your first couple upgrades to lock in the core functions of your deck. In a Legacy cardpool, you can buy this in installments by starting with The Red Clock. That one is not nearly as good, because of the key difference in the Forced ability (take charges OR place charges, not both). So it can give you the skill bonus at most every other round. Still can be effective if you're working towards the level 5 version anyway.

What if I play Psychology Student and have another copy of PS in my hand, will PS heal 4 horrors in total? And then, if I have PS in play and I play another PS from my hand, will it again heal 4 horrors?

Stalk Prey — the enemy tutor comes to Survivor and not a lot of people care

tl;dr: Stalk Prey is the weakest card in the enemy-tutor family — if you allow the cross-class comparison. For nine years the effect lived only in Guardian and Rogue; moving it into Survivor 0 hands a dozen previously locked-out investigators an enemy on demand, and most of them don’t care. Those who already could are better off with other options.

THE FAMILY

Every player card that searches the encounter deck for an enemy, as of July 2026:

These six sit in three classes, so "which is best" is mostly a category error.

Nevertheless, the ONLY ones that allows enemies to normally spawn is Stalk Prey and Paint the Town Red (and not to our benefit). Given both are from Chapter 2, I wonder if this is a deliberate change in game design.

TWO ARCHITECTURES

Draw replacement (both On the Hunts). Mythos-phase filters: instead of a random draw — a treachery that might screw your finicky sanity — you draw a chosen enemy, engaged with its spawn overridden. No action spent; the table's encounter intake doesn't rise. OtH (0) searches the top 9 and, on a whiff, makes you draw normally anyway. OtH (3) searches the whole deck, so it can't miss while enemies remain, and pays +3 resources on the kill.

Action-speed tutors (the other four). These replace nothing: an action buys an extra enemy, compensated in tempo.

• Kicking the Hornet's Nest pays a clue plus health-in-resources but delivers the enemy ready.
• "Where's the party?" is the safest (arrives exhausted: no attack of opportunity, no retaliation) and pays in cards.
• Paint the Town Red is the leaner Hornet's Nest interpretation from Chapter 2: resources only, normal spawn.

WHAT STALK PREY ADDS

It joins the action-speed group with the smallest payload — one card, one clue — and two properties none of its peers has (not necessarily great):

1. No non-Elite restriction: Good, given you are out fishing for enemies.
2. Positioning: the enemy is drawn and it resolves its own spawn instructions and the final clause grants a free move toward it.

I fail to see how option (2) is positive in the majority of cases: AHLCG rewards consistency. If you get an enemy, you probably should know how you are going to be dealing with it. Nobody should go out fishing for enemies and pull a cultist that puts your team into the witching hour, or a chunky enemy over your unsuspecting seeker. Does this make the card bad? No, but it does make imperative that you have a much higher situational awareness of wth you are doing before using it.

Also, mind the "Then" clause: no enemy in the top 9 cards means no draw and no clue.

NEW ACCESS

Investigators who can take Stalk Prey and could take none of the earlier five:

• Full: Stella Clark, Calvin Wright, Silas Marsh, Patrice Hathaway, Hank Samson, Darrell Simmons, Agnes Baker, Minh Thi Phan, parallel Wendy, Miguel de la Cruz and Isabelle Barnes.
• Splash-limited: Marie Lambeau and parallel Jim Culver, five level-0 Survivor slots each. Not that they care, honestly.

Of these, the ones that care are parallel Wendy, Miguel, and maybe Silas:

• Parallel Wendy — her seal engine fires per non-Elite evaded; Stalk Prey summons the newest bless/curse battery, HOPEFULLY engaged with her, and ready to be evaded. Unfortunately, I don’t think my table will tolerate me playing another || Wendy deck.
• Miguel: his event-only extra action makes it close to actionless, and his traps want enemies arriving AND do not care if they arrive farther from him.
• Silas: kills stuff.

Yorick might be interested, since those graves are not gonna fill up themselves, but he already had OtH (0) .

I wanted to figure out how "Starting" works and the internet told me about a new resource for the game: The Grimoire. It's the new online rules document for 2026 and beyond, found at this url:

Grimoire

images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com

Here's the entry in the Grimoire for Starting:

Starting

Starting is a keyword ability.

After drawing their opening hand and taking a mulligan (but before shuffling any cards that may have been set aside during this step back into their deck), an investigator may search their deck for one copy of a card with the starting keyword and add it to their hand.

• This means that an investigator may begin the game with one additional card in their opening hand.

Had one game with William Yorick and baseball bat. I don't quite see why it is a good fit at all. An auto fail leave the player encountered yet unequipped. Two hand slots means there's no backup weapon. Yorick can only retrieve assets after a defeat. Any two health enemy, at level difficult, could be hard to defeat at difficult level.

I Immediately swapped to .45 Thompson, and eventually went for old hunting riffle, by which time the risk can be managed with eucatastrophe and will to survive. and most importantly old hunting riffle, while jammed, is a valid candidate of act of desperation, which can loop with Yorick's elder sign ability and resourceful.