Card Reviews · ArkhamDB

In the Thick of It

It's a strong enabler with permanents.

You just start with 1x Charisma. Leo Anderson loves that. Every Seeker loves not having to choose between Dr. Milan Christopher and non*-allies like Research Librarian.

You just start with 1x Relic Hunter. Wendy Adams loves that.

You just start with 1x Ancestral Knowledge. Minh Thi Phan and Amanda Sharpe love that.

You just start with 1x Another Day, Another Dollar. Money-builds might love that.

You just start with 1x Blood Pact. Marie Lambeau loves that.

You just start with 1x Higher Education. Rex Murphy and many other Seekers with a Dr. Milan Christopher love that.

You just start with 1x Keen Eye. Cops and other guardians with money might love that.

You just start with 1x Streetwise. Rogues with money might love that.

You just start with 1x Studious. Everybody who likes to mulligan hard for special cards might like that. Big handers as well.

You just start with 1x Versatile. Everybody who needs additional cards likes that. E.g. Tommy Muldoon with a Joey "The Rat" Vigil or Harvey Walters who wants a True Grit, a Leather Coat and/or a Deny Existence to counter his Thrice-Damned Curiosity.

Everybody who wants a covenant (Sacred Covenant, Blasphemous Covenant, False Covenant, Paradoxical Covenant or Ancient Covenant). Starting with a Ancient Covenant and some bless token engine in scenario #1 is a stong enabler.

9/29/21

GrueneLupenAufheben · 140

Ancestral Knowledge is excepcional — Pawiu14 · 202 9/29/21

It could be interesting to analyse what Mateo and Parallel Roland get out of this card, too. Starting at 8xp lets you, say, start with two copies of Sixth Sense (4) for Mateo or 2 Quickdraw Holsters for Roland. — Prinny_wizzard · 251 9/29/21

For Mateo, 4 traumata seems a bit much. And I think, he will always rather take double AR. Unless of course, if you build him with hardly any spells to upgrade. For parallel Roland, I stand to what I wrote in my review: give him the SttP and EV combo for 7 XP. — Susumu · 381 9/30/21

Stick to the Plan to start with Parallel Roland is pretty lovely. Leaves two to add in versatile and one astounding revelation... — John Keel · 9 11/13/21

Should parallel Roland feel as unable to get started without his friendly surprised rabbi telling him the plan as the original anyway... — John Keel · 9 11/13/21

Deny Existence doesn't counter Harvey's weakness as it only prevents damage from encounter cards or enemies — Josemmb97 · 241 1/19/22

Thirce-damned curiosity is treated as a treachery (i.e. an encounter card) when being resolved, so Deny Existence definitely works. See the rules on "Weakness". — koaexe · 34 1/24/22

Add Occult reliquary in Bless and/or Curse builds to the list — Fedorwin · 15 6/26/24

The Man in the Pallid Mask

If I want to use the card -> Investigate, so what action is correct:

1 - Would I need to have The Man in the Pallid Mask in my threat zone? 2 - Or just I can use this action because I am in the same location and it is no neccesary to have it in my threat zone?

9/29/21

Emisario · 4

It's an Investigate action. Aloof only matters for Fight, so that SOMEBODY must be engaged with him to attack. — Susumu · 381 9/29/21

The answer is 2. — toastsushi · 74 9/29/21

Relevant section of the rules is under the activate action: "Activate" is an action an investigator may take during his or her turn in the investigation phase. An investigator is permitted to activate abilities from the following sources: ... A scenario card that is in play and at the same location as the investigator. This includes the location itself, encounter cards placed at that location, and all encounter cards in the threat area of any investigator at that location. — suika · 9511 9/29/21

Bob Jenkins

With Bob Jenkins's of 4 and his access to Lola Santiago / Gené Beauregard, he looks like a good candidate as a cluever in a duo. And with Shrewd Dealings, Scavenging and the free action to play an Item each turn, you have a great combo to cycle Old Keyring / Flashlight as long as you succeed your investigations by 2.

As Flashlight doesn't discard by itself, you can use Joey "The Rat" Vigil to discard it for a profit and have it in your discard pile ready to be scavenged.

And once the Old Keyring is free, the Flashlight makes you a profit of 1 thanks to Joey, you can go for a Well Connected deck.

9/29/21

AlexP · 285

Hard Knocks

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.

9/29/21

halforange · 3

The Level 2 talenst still see much more play than the level 0 ones. First, because paying 2 resources for a card, you then have to pay further resources to benefit from, actually matters quite a bit. (Although in comparison Rogues have the easiest time of all classes to do so.) Second, because the second copy is always a card to commit, not play, should you draw it. And level 2 has double the icons. Also, if your investigator can take level 2 Guardian cards, they have great synergy with "Well Prepared", and if you plan to go for level 4 further down the campaign, they are a reasonable steping stone intermediate investment in XP. — Susumu · 381 9/29/21

We've also just gained a niche use for them in decks that plan to run Down the Rabbit Hole and the Level 4 talents. Since its an upgrade in two steps, starting with the level 0 prevents the extra cost and allows for up to 2 discounts! :) (Maybe not super relevant for Hard Knocks specifically, tho.) — Death by Chocolate · 1489 9/29/21

That's true, even if you don't plan to upgrade to level 4. If you go down the rabit hole, you are likely willing to take inferior level 0 cards just for the cheap upgrade. Could also been said for Blackjack, Switchblade, and what have you. When playing Carolyn, I also slottet "Clarity of Mind" level 0, just for the "Arcane Research" discount. — Susumu · 381 9/29/21

True Magick

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.

9/28/21

NorainJS · 59

what fail? Dexter is an illusionist, this is True Magick :D — Adny · 1 9/29/21

and also, the discard on Sheild of Faith is a delayed ability activated when you seal the tokens, so it will not trigger on True Magick — Adny · 1 9/29/21

You would still need to get tokens onto it to use it as Shield of Faith. Of course, as you said, you can three-card-combo by using Shards of the Void to seal tokens since SOF doesn't say they have to be bless tokens specifically. — Death by Chocolate · 1489 9/29/21

Having Arcane Insight and Sixth Sense both in your hand with this would be pretty fun. — housh · 171 9/29/21

Can any investigator take both Arcane Insight and True Magick? Parallel Daisy can't because Arcane Insight is lvl 4. — rshin1121 · 8 10/3/21

Nvm. Akachi can. — rshin1121 · 8 10/3/21

Dexter can use You Owe Me One to "borrow" it from a friendly Seeker as well — Jaysaber · 7 10/5/21

would sleuth work on this for the add to to skill value? — Vicoforbes · 21 10/8/21

Let's break it down. — GrueneLupenAufheben · 140 10/11/21

I actually think it would be great in Dexter's deck. Molly can quickly find it for dexters as it will be the only tome. Then a Bow as a blessed, an Eye of Chaos as a cursed, and you're practically fully loaded. — Otki · 18 4/2/22

True Magick doesn't work with Seal of the Seventh Sign. True Magick's effect is — kongieieie · 28 6/7/22

I think you could use this with spells that don't use charges. Like being able to play Read the Signs over and over. No? — khoshekh · 6 8/9/22

@khoshekh True Magick specifies that the card needs to be an asset, so events like Read the Signs won't work. However you are correct that charges are not required to use True Magick, so Sixth Sense is a valid target for the effect. — Whimsical · 42 8/13/22

Another note - exhausting a card doesn't invalidate using it, as long the use doesn't require exhaustion. So you could use True Magick with the Enchanted Bow, then still use it for Sixth Sense twice (all in the same turn). — khoshekh · 6 12/15/22

when using True Magick to resolve the ability on a spell card, like Sixth Sense or Wither, do you still need to pay the cost for Sixth Sensor/Wither? In other words, do you have to pay the resource cost of the spell card that is in your hand? — CTICSLMC · 1 4/2/23

@CTICSLMC no, you don't pay the resource cost since you're not actually playing that card, you only reveal it and then treat True Magick as if it was the revealed card for things like paying charges, exhausting etc. — jamalix · 1 5/7/23