A little bit of interaction gotchas of □□□ Ancient Power and □□□□ Scriptweaver to note. Scriptweaver says different and Ancient Power says same. They are not against each other and can take effect at the same time. For example if you have both customs :

• You cannot spend 1 charge and choose the damage twice to get +2 damage since Scriptweaver prevents it, even though Ancient Power allows it.
• You can spend 2 charges to get (+1 damage and +2 ) + (+1 damage and +2 ) since Ancient Power allows it.

Also you may think □ Inscription of the Hunt can "walk in and fight" similar to Duke's move-and-Investigate but it is different. You need to perform Fight to something at your location, only then you get to decide between moving or engaging using the charge. (EDIT: See comments)

Are the boxing gloves "USE" while attacking? Wondering this aspect of play cause of a new card in the Scarlet Keys name : Lurker in the Dark. --Lurker in the Dark can only be attacked or damaged using Weapon assets. ? Would need a clarification of the term "using" generaly.

This is pretty much only viable in a Nathaniel Cho deck. In that setting though, its pretty good. 3 testless damage is enough to kill roughly 80% of the enemies in arkham horror.

The downsides to it are it has to be the first thing you do in a turn. This means no upgraded taunting enemies over to you first. It must be the very first thing you do.

There are ways around that, namely On The Hunt. A deck then is already starting to form.

I'm surprised that there's no review for this guy! He's.....cute and a total PITA.

I think this is up there for one of the more annoying enemies in TDL campaign. If you are using a melee weapon, you're probably not willing to use it, meaning this is a 6 action sink! Even If you can beat the rough evade, it's still got hunter, meaning you're probably going to have to pay the action tax at some point.

On the bright side, the low fight means that you're not likely to miss, and even your non-fighter friends can likely pile on, so maybe you can share the misery of wailing on this guy?

Props to the guardians running Monster Slayer (5) that get to deal with this in 1hit.

After playing with and upgrading this card, I've really grown to hate it. Not because it's a bad card (it's great, honestly) but because it's so flexible that it will stifle competitive design for other Guardian weapons, especially the low level ones.

Think of it this way: for level 1, its "competition" is The Hungering Blade, which is already...not great. But let's think about future designs, and review what they have to compete with.

With 1 XP invested, Runic Axe is a 4cost 2-handed weapon with 4 charges, recharging one charge per round (and can still attack for +1 Fight with zero charges, giving it a flexibility edge over anything that needs charges or ammo). In addition, Runic Axe will have either

Spend 1 Charge: Get +2 Fight on attack Spend 1 Charge: Deal +1 damage on attack Is a Relic and only costs 3 instead of 4 (nice for Guardians who often struggle to scrounge cash)

OR

Spend 1 Charge: Get +2 Fight on attack Spend 1 Charge: Deal +1 damage on attack Spend 1 Charge: If this attack defeats an enemy, either heal 1 horror, heal 1 damage, or draw 1 card

OR

Spend 1 Charge: Get +2 Fight on attack Spend 1 Charge: Deal +1 damage on attack Spend 1 Charge: If this attack succeeds by the location's shroud or greater, discover 1 clue at location

OR

Spend 1 Charge: Get +2 Fight on attack Spend 1 Charge: Deal +1 damage on attack Spend 1 Charge: Get a free move (that doesn't trigger AoO) or a free engage

OR

Spend 1 Charge: Get +2 Fight on attack Spend 1 Charge: Deal +1 damage on attack Spend 1 Charge: If this attack is successful, deal 1 damage to each other enemy engaged with you

Any future 1 XP Guardian weapon has to compete with that, and compete with the fact that you get 2 copies of it for 1 XP, and compete with the growth over time, and compete with the not-so-unlikely chance that you'll Refine it to make it stronger without even getting charged XP. That basically boils down to forcing "good" future 1 XP Guardian weapons to be one-handed, and even then, they'll feel extremely lackluster unless they come with either guaranteed bonus damage and some kind of reactive ability (for things with ammo), or conditional bonus damage that you can reliably build your deck around, unlike Hungering Blade and some kind of reactive ability (for things you don't have to reload). Whatever the bonus or condition is probably needs to be good in multiples, too, to make spending 2 XP on a pair of copies not feel worse than spending 1 XP on 2 copies of Axe.

Tl;dr: Runic Axe is great, impactful, and incredibly flexible. Everything that makes it a worthwhile inclusion as a card also forces power creep into future 1 or 2 XP Guardian weapons to be worth including in any deck. It's also hard to nerf, and the weakest thing about it is that it takes 2 hands.