Geared Up

Not saying that this is a great card, but it's a fun challenge during deck buildung (and upgrading) and makes every opening hand draw exciting. I had some success with Geared Up and Rex Murphy, but most things I noticed should work with different investigators as well.

1.) Try to find cheap items rather than pricy ones. Costs of 1-3 are the right spot. In fact, my Rex' deck contained no items more expensive than 3. You should be able to pay for ALL your items from your starting hand.

2.) Upgrade your items as soon as possible. Not only will it makes your early game more powerful, upgraded items also have better icons for committing into skill tests. Sometimes they get cheaper too or have abilities.

3.) Mulligan hard for items, even if it hurts.

4.) Because you pack lots of items and often two copies, clever ways of discarding copies (with bad icons) from your hand or from play helps your mid-/late-game where you already have your assets out. Examples are Cornered, Occult Invocation, Blood-Rite, Act of Desperation or even mitigating discard effects like in Divination or Mists of R'lyeh. I paired Geared Up with Forced Learning to get rid of double items during upkeep. Items which go away or go empty like Disc of Itzamna or Scroll of Secrets allows you to refill the slots. Investigators like "Ashcan" Pete and Wendy Adams (Hello In the Thick of It / Versatile) for discarding cards from hand, but also William Yorick and Dexter Drake should find ways to utilize left over items.

5.) Remember that you still can play fast cards or use actions on your items in turn one. That's why I love Eon Chart, because as a item it grants free move and/or investigate actions right at the start. The tabooed Scroll of Secrets (all versions) helps you refilling your hand for the mythos. Fast Events like Working a Hunch or Shortcut (2) also are playable in turn one. Funny: If you happen to find No Stone Unturned (5) in your opening hand, you could play it right at the beginning of the investigation phase (but before your turn begins) to catch Schoffner's Catalogue, a critical weapon or signature item or Backpack (2) for playing it for free with Geared Up.

6.) To get the most out of it economy wise, non-fast items comes to mind. But don't be afraid to include fast items like Magnifying Glass, Ice Pick or Segment of Onyx. You will get the resource reducing anyhow. Also fast items don't slow down your mid-/late-game if you draw them late.

7.) The most difficult part for me to make Geared Up work is to find items with different or no slots. Because if you have a pile of cards which required hand slots you'll end up drawing them as essentially dead items slowing down your game. Relic Hunter is a possibility to play more accessories. If you look closely, there are neat items with no or odd slots: Dream-Enhancing Serum and Talisman of Protection just use arcane slots, if you have no spells to prepare. Slotless mentions are Handcuffs, Mk 1 Grenades, Bandages, Tennessee Sour Mash and Liquid Courage. And then there are the great Schoffner's Catalogue and the footwear items, of course. The true winners in my Rex Murphy deck though were 2 Strange Solution, which I upgraded with the help of Into the Rabbit Hole and Shrewd Analysis. 3 Segment of Onyx (also slotless) were fun, too. You shouldn't play much body slot items, because Backpack is the best option here (if it works with Geared Up, playing the item assets one at a time, which I think it should). Once I were able to play all items from one Backpack, followed by another Backpack.

8.) Be aware that there could be a few locks in scenarios, but also cheesy benefits to consider. In Curse of the Rougarou I started the game at a location were I was not allowed to play any assets at all. If you use the tarot deck from Return to Circle Undone, there are all sorts of silly interactions: One tarot card that forbids to play assets turn one, another steals slots or cards in your opening hand, starting resources or your mulligan. On the other hand, “2 fewer actions” don't hurt you at all, and 2 additional mulligans or 2 additional cards in the opening hand get very powerful.

Miroque · 25
I think this is the first card with Hank Samson on it. Wonder what he'll be like. — Pinchers · 132
Played it in a Yorick deck and it s been a blast , setting up so much in one turn with backpack and schoffners catalogue , saving so much ressources and actions.Obviously stick to the plan +ever vigilant is better but it can come close in yorick deck and that s a pretty impressive achievement for a 0xp card — Susu · 36
This doesn’t work with Shoffner’s or Backpack. — Eudaimonea · 5
Without a clear ruling i cant im gonna Play it the same way ever vigilant works.just the fact that you Play multiples cards at once ist clunky and a first — Surp · 1
There doesn’t need to be a ruling to make this card read as written; there would need to be an errata to make it work the way players who want to abuse Geared Up / Shoffner’s / Backpack want it to. The text of the card is clear, and even if we pretend there is ambiguity the Grim Rule requires us to read it more restrictively until official rulings otherwise. That said, I certainly respect your and anyone else’s ability to house rule however you want. It’s one matter to issue a little personal home errata in order to have more fun, but it’s quite another to go on ArkhamDB and point out that this is an awesome card with a powerful combo that (disclaimer) actually doesn’t work unless you house rule it to work differently from its plain text. — Eudaimonea · 5
Cheat the System

This card is an instant classic in big money Sefina, but even better in Underworld support big money. (Why would you run that? Because it gets you a smaller deck which gets you closer to Double, Double.) With scroll of secrets, tennessee Sour mash or any number of spells, this is free real estate. And you can even use it during the encounter phase to boost a well-connected. Definitely worth one XP. And the flavor text is fun.

MrGoldbee · 1485
Untimely Transaction

This card came out in the same pack as Bob Jenkins, and it’s a card about selling something, so obviously Bob should take it, right?

Surprisingly not! While it’s a good way to retain money in the party, you can already split the cost of items, and you get a free action to do so every turn. We slotted this in a four player campaign and it mostly stuck in Bob’s hand, especially when his signature came out.

But other rogues, especially ones who pack double assets for reliability but only slot one… this is upside. Winnifred can sell off her spare lockpick or Mauser to a seeker or guardian. Sefina can give a spare crystallizer to Nathaniel… or if there’s enough money around, double double and sell liquid courage too.

Smart use is giving people things they can’t normally play with (like guns to Preston and Lily). Genius use is using this with your survivor to give them a card that cost just as much money as they have, so they can trigger Dark Horse and you get a nice round number for well-connected. Plus, you draw a card for being such an upstanding player.

Fun fact: the quote for this card isn’t from game lore. It actually came from playtesting.

MrGoldbee · 1485
This is a relatively minor thing, but I did want to mention that you can't actually give Nacho a Crystallizer. Part of the cost of the crystallizer's cost is to shuffle in a Guardian of the Crystallizer to your deck, which Nacho doesn't have in his bonded cards (since those aren't shared, unless he already had a Crystallizer of Dreams in his deck with Versatile, but that kinda defeats the point) — Lasiace · 23
You cannot play the card if you cannot pay the cost. It means that you cannot play Crystallizer with Untimely Transaction in normal case. — elkeinkrad · 500
Does it work if the other person has crystalliser in their deck? — Django · 5154
I'm pretty sure that people really overread the bonded cards - the crystallizer brings the bonded card into the deck, and if the crystallizer comes into play from someone else's deck via shens, they just bring in your copy of the Guardian - the ACTUAL problem is that you only have 1 copy of the weakness, so you'd have to sacrifice your own crystallizer out of the good of your heart, because you only have one copy of the guardian to put into play. — Lailah · 1
Stupid question: You can play this in True Solo to put Old Shutgun with ammo in play, but other than that, it's useless? You don't get to draw a card or get resources? ("they") — Miroque · 25
@Miroque You cannot use this in True Solo at all. It plays the card to "another investigator", which cannot be you. Ever. — adran06 · 19
Butterfly Swords

As dezzmont said, this weapon could be on the anti-taboo list someday, hopefully.

I think the intent of the Game Designers was to force Lily Chen to invest in multiple stats over the course of the campaign, first with Spectral Razor, Brand of Cthugha and of course take advantage of your Spells used to boost the Dragon Pole. Then transition to that helps for every attack, and end the campaign with for all the upgraded cards.

Butterfly Swords, Defensive Stance, Sweeping Kick, Dodge, Fang of Tyr'thrha, Combat Training are all focussed and this all goes to "Sounds good but I will most likely never use it" area as there is literally no reason to use any of these when the Cyclopean Hammer is better on every aspect and doesn't require you to transition from to .

So I was thinking of leaving a review about how I wish to make this weapon better, while still fair.


The Combat bonus:

When comparing to the Cyclopean Hammer, the Flamethrower, the Lightning Gun, Shotgun, the combat bonus of +2 on a Hand x2 lvl 5 card seems a bit minimal for a basic attack.

The exception is the Holy Spear but it comes in a deck that is suppose to pull a lot of to compensate for the low bonus.

Suggested Fix:

It would make sense to have "Add your " This would make it more balanced maybe in that sense, especially as only Lily Chen, Sister Mary and Mark Harrigan have 3 .


Synergy with Balance of the Body:

I like the idea that lvl 5 weapons are "tailored" for the they are released with, like the Holy Spear and Sister Mary and here, the lacks of synergy with Lily is striking.

Suggested Fix:

So how to make these Butterfly Swords more adapted to Lily Chen? A lead could be the Balance of the Body that allows you to make 3 different attacks, meaning use 3 different ": Fight." triggers.

If the swords would for example have the non-exhaust attack as a different trigger than the exhaust one that deals 1 more damage, that would allow us to use the 2 actions of the Discipline activation only with the Butterfly Swords, leaving us only with the 3rd attack to fill in our deck, with Sweeping Kick for example, that would find a good use here (when I would not add it to my deck otherwise), or Spectral Razor that I probably started with.


Let me know in the comments your suggested fix and I'll try to keep this updated!


Last little comment for anyone wondering: you can exhaust the Butterfly Swords on the 1st attack and keep using the normal attack for the following attacks. The only restriction is that you cannot exhaust them twice (unless you use Galvanize).

Valentin1331 · 78232
I think the core issue with this card is that it is a low damage weapon with the gimmick based around overcoming that. Low damage weapons are better than most people think (the guardian tommygun is amazing in the right deck) but if I want to do high damage with a weapon I would just take a good weapon. A 5 XP weapon that does 5 damage a full turn of attacking better have an even better upshot than 6 damage and 3 resources. Having played with it, it is mystifyingly bad, and spamming attacks is a strict downside (as you want to minimize bagpulls in Arkham). — dezzmont · 222
what 5xp weapon does 5 damage for a full turn of attacks?, butterfly swords does (in theory) seven damage, you get 2 attacks per activation regardless of if its exhausted or not. — Zerogrim · 295
Butterfly Swords is not nearly the level of bad that cards have previously been to justify taboo buffs. 'Slightly disappointing in comparison to the Hammers' is not that level of bad. Making more tests in a turn is generally worse, but if we ever get more cards in that archetype, or that allow skills to be committed across multiple tests in Guardian (a la Written in the Stars), this card will suddenly become incredibly broken. — SSW · 216
@zerogrim, the fact you repeatedly draw tokens heavily pushes the expected damage of this weapon down. Assuming either there is an 'effectively autofail' campaign symbol, or you are rocking a 75% success rate by being 2 above the target on normal (where this weapon would be the best), but the speed boost pushes you into 'expected autohit' range, you expect to lose about 2 damage. @SSW, this card actually strongly resembles two weapons that DID get a buff, the Springfield and the Winchester. Equiping the Springfield, much like the swords, makes you far more likely to lose scenarios compared to just sticking to a regular weapon, while like the Winchester it is a case of 'interpreting a weakness (unreliable damage in the winchester's case, and spam attacks in the swords case) as a plus. While a hypothetical 'boost a turn of attacks' effects would help, it would need to be an asset you get all the time that works on melee to actually justify playing around a card that has such a negative effect on not just you, but your entire team on some scenarios (it is WILD this card was introduced in the campaign with frost tokens, but there are worse things in the bag than autofails), and I suspect they realize they never can print such a card for the same reason they taboo'd machette. — dezzmont · 222
Brand of Cthugha

I love this spell, and I think it outclasses most other high level combat spells for general use.

For Mystics, one less XP than either Shrivelling (5) or Azure Flame (5), gets you three less total damage and one less +skill value. You also get a downside that is both less likely to trigger on its own and is completely mitigateable by spending other actions first.

But the real upside here is choosing how much of that 9 damage to spend on every attack. No more wasting a three damage charge on an enemy with only one or two health. Charges are also only spent when you succeed, so bad luck with the chaos bag doesn't waste charges. You will get the full nine damage out of this every time.

Nearly every other mystic combat spell demands you combine it with some sort of chaos bag manipulation to get the best results, either to find or avoid specific tokens. Brand of Cthugha works at full effectiveness straight out of the box.

The one downside is that Brand of Cthugha does not get as much benefit out of charge reloading cards as its higher level peers. Each charge is only worth one damage, so you wouldn't waste time reloading it with a Recharge or Book of Shadows. This is the ultimate Mystic sidearm, not a god slayer, so plan accordingly.

But let's not forget that this card is dual class, too! Most Guardians aren't doing much with their arcane slots, so Brand of Cthugha slots in nicely as a sidearm that doesn't take up a hand slot. This works well for any Guardian who would rather not dedicate their body slot to a Bandolier to hold a sidearm. Tommy Muldoon and his Leather Coat come to mind, along with anyone running Flamethrower looking to save supplies while picking off runts.

clarionx · 251
Does the brand user deal the standard damage to a investigator if he failed the fight roll? — FateACG · 1
I believe so. The "instead of" clause only triggers on success. So that's one more reason to love this card - less risk to your teammates! — clarionx · 251
While I think that is the intended ruling, I think it is entirely readible to interpret it as separate, and since you didn't spend any charges on a fail, it deals 0 instead of it's standard damage. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
Not dealing Standard damage is if you succeed, so you still deal 1 dmg to another player on a miss. — Django · 5154
I think that both opinion are acceptable. When I check Strange Solution, it seems that 1 dmg is applied. However, when I check Ancient Stone, Hypnotic Therapy, and Banish, it seems that no dmg is applied. — elkeinkrad · 500
It lets you use sniper rifles reasonably. — MrGoldbee · 1485