All of the Level 2 talents have the same flaw compared their Level 0 version - at Standard difficulty, the XP only saves a few resources on a card that your probably are using because you have a lot of resources. If this card were Level 1 and otherwise printed as is, I’d consider it more often. I wish the Level 2 talents had the Fast keyword to remove the action cost.

That said, Hard Knocks is the one of the few Level 2 talent cards that isn’t made obsolete by the Dunwich permanents. As fun as Streetwise is, you can run out of resources or only have one left. That happens to me often in Jenny, so having a zero cost talent that allows you to pump Agility and Combat at +1/resource can be okay. It obviously won’t help you with investigating, like Streetwise.

Parallel "Skids" O'Toole is another investigator that can use this to buff fight tests when critical and you can keep the Level 0 version in your deck if you want.

There are a lot of good XP cards that Rogues can spend XP on. This card just seems like a luxury card - if you’re already kicking the scenario’s butt, it might be nice to have.

Bear with me here, because this is going to get weird and as we all know "as if" invites all sorts of weird interactions (looking at you Luke) so I may get some things wrong here. This is simply a list of weird points I've noticed while looking at this card.

Armageddon, Eye of Chaos, and Shroud of Shadows in your hand could let you replenish the charge on True Magick or get the other effect (damage, clues, movement) when you pull a token.

Sixth Sense and Wither don't use charges but are still viable choices for True Magick so you can use them twice a turn and still have a charge left for something else.

True Magick doesn't specifically say "action abilities" so that should allow investigators to use and abilities. Arcane Insight, Obfuscation, and Suggestion all should work fine.

Blood Pact works. Scrying works too.

You can also save on a hand slot with Enchanted Bow if you feel like it.

Feed the Mind and it's upgrade don't work because charges =/= secrets.

As I understand it, "Seal ( )" isn't an ability but an additional cost to playing the card, so no cheating Seal of the Seventh Sign. But if you wanted to run them together, I THINK since True Magick says you MAY resolve the abilities by revealing them you don't really have to reveal the Seal you can just ignore the forced effect while it's in your hand, but I think you COULD if you wanted to? Dunno.

"Seal ( )" might not be an ability, but Shards of the Void really doesn't care since it also has "seal" in the ability. "As if" so... You seal the 0 on True Magick? Then activating it again you can release the 0? Oh, and if that works the way I described, couldn't you just also use True Magick as Shield of Faith? Not sure if that would discard True Magick or not.

This is getting weird, I'd better stop while I've still got 1 sanity left.

To me True Magick means efficiency, you don't need to play a spell for a 1 or 2 odd uses only to toss it away. You can keep a Shrivelling in your back pocket to pick off 1-2 health enemies all game, then actually play it before the final boss fight. It's a bit of a flavor fail that Dexter Drake doesn't mind tossing his spells around and would like this card a lot less than some other Mystics, especially ones with 5 free XP at the start.

Carolyn Fern can take this card as well as Archive of Conduits: Gateway to Paradise, this would be absolutely amazing with Shrewd Analysis. Pairs nicely with my Ancient Stones what an absolutely perfect combo that nothing could ruin.

What? Read the it again? Well if you insist... Oh... Oh no... "Limit 1 per deck." Well at least she can still take the one copy. Now Carolyn, much like my own therapist, can continue to offer her therapeutic services while maintaining proper social distancing guidelines. She even offers jazzercize lessons if your physical health is deteriorating instead of your mental health. She'll even give you her a card.

Assuming you're going nuts with removing the leylines, over the course of 5 actions, (1 to play 4 to burn the leylines), you net 8 damage/horror healing and 8 cards for 4-0 resources (Carolyn's reaction makes 1 resource every time you use it to heal horror.) Of course you also get to spread the healing and card draw around if you've got friends in dire places. I personally would rather run this over Safeguard and Solemn Vow when I'm playing medic so I can wander off to grab clues instead of babysitting the low sanity fighter all the time.

The only thing I can think of with this card is Joe Diamond strapped with his Colt 1911s, jamming an Ice Pick into a shoggoth, slamming it in with a Sledgehammer and dropping one final shot into the thing for good measure. No Bandolier required as both of those tools take up no hand slots as long as he's packing heat!

I wonder, how this card interacts with (non-level 0) Myriad cards. Initially I thought, they should cost +3 XP, if you take a set of three. But the rule for Myriad states: Additionally, when you purchase a myriad card for your deck, you may purchase up to two additional copies of that card (at the same level) at no experience cost. Because "no" is not a numeric like "0", you could add to, I do now think, that you can replace cards into them just for +1 XP.