With the latest taboo (summer 2021), telescopic sight goes from an extremely situational card that you have to build around… To a situational card you have to build around. It's still a 3xp card you can’t use on others, and it can only trigger off a half dozen cards in guardian, and many of those start at three XP. (You can use it on Becky, the Thompson or the Winchester, but those are slim pickings.)

At its best, this is marksman on tap. Campaigns like Dunwich love spawning aloof enemies and putting them nearby, or regular enemies ahead of you. Same thing with the Innsmouth Conspiracy, although a hiding space or two will make this much more viable. (Oddly, you can use your telescopic scope while driving at 50 mph.)

But it’s a puzzle piece, and if you bring this, you’ll probably want extra ammo, enchant weapon for more damage, blessed ammunition, and well-maintained. And without two or three other players, you simply won’t have the enemy density to make this worthwhile compared to get over here or the riot whistle. Pair with Trish, Rita or Winnie for easier targets and less misfiring.

If you don't built a deck around this card, it's rather useless cause it takes too many actions. You should move and investigate normally and probably gain more clues, even if you 1-2x.

However if you built a deck around it, it gets really crazy! If you have 12+ cards in hand, 2 of these in play and one tome on Abigail Foreman you spend 2 actions to move 3 times and gather 3 testless clues (6 actions worth). It get's even better if you add Knowledge is Power and Farsight with events that discover clues or investigate (Extensive Research, Burning the Midnight Oil). With so much auto cluing, you may not need regular investigate actions anymore, so you don't need boosts anymore.

While all of that sounds amazing, it needs a bit of setup. You need to increase handsize limit and get to 12+ cards in hand.

• Handsize: The easiest way to increase your handsize limit is Dream-Enhancing Serum combined with myriad cards, like Astounding Revelation, Surprising Find, Segment of Onyx. If you have 9 (3 different myriad cards) of them in hand, they occupy 3 slots so you only need 3 others cards to reduce the tome's action cost to . Myriad cards also have a good chance to trigger the serum's to draw a card.
• Draw cards: Whitton Greene as another ally helps locating forbidden tomes and Celaeno Fragments. The fragments also synergise well with our deck strategy. Perception and Plan of Action allow us to discover some clues early game, while drawing more cards. Practice Makes Perfect allows 2 uses of some of these. Deep Knowledge and Preposterous Sketches draw more cards.
• Scroll of Prophecies is very efficient to draw many cards, especially with Abigail Foreman. But it limits the possible investigators to Daisy Walker and Rex Murphy who can include it (barring Versatile). Backpack 2 nearly guarantees you get the scroll in turn 1, as well as the Forbidden Tome.

Sign Magick has good combo with charge spell and non-charge spell, of course. I think it also has good with supporting spell assets, such as Scrying, Clarity of Mind, Alchemical Transmutation, or Healing Words. In many cases, we confront two problem when we use thoes spells. One is leaks of arcane slot; we have only two arcane slots, one for fight and the other for investigate. The other is leaks of action to activate thoes spells. Sign Magick solves both problems.

Absolutely fantastic card for Carolyn Fern. Carolyn can good value out of even subpar healing cards and loves Hallowed Mirror (0). Hallowed Mirror (3), however, seems custom-designed to annihilate Carolyn's weakness. Rational Thought is a nasty weakness that makes Carolyn useless at her primary purpose. Now, with Hallowed Mirror (3), if we have her signature Hypnotic Therapy in play, we can clear her weakness in 1 single turn by healing a mind-blowing four horror in a single turn. That is just spectacular. It is also fantastic if you are playing with her book strength/weakness. Foolishness is a great asset, but starts with 3 horror that must be healed before he's much use to you. That's one Soothing Melody - one action to get Carolyn her personal Crystalline Elder Sign. It's also great protection for her Black Wind weakness as well, as it makes you a much more reliable horror-healer.

Finally, let's consider that Soothing Melody's effect can be split between investigators/allies. Carolyn can (with hypnotic therapy), split the effect between herself and allies, to heal the team of 4 horror and earn the team 4 resources, all in 1 single round! Better yet, if there is currently only 3 horror out there to be healed, Carolyn can heal 3, earn 3 resources, and then reshuffle the card for later use.

And for one more bonus: this new Hallowed Mirror (3) does not cause Soothing Melodies to leave your deck when it does, so if something destroys the mirror, rest easy knowing your melodies are no longer vulnerable.

The versatility of this new hallowed mirror for Carolyn cannot be overstated and I see it becoming a staple upgrade for Carolyn decks.

I would call this the Vicious Blow/Deduction of Survivor. Pretty much an auto-include.

For me this card is one of the strongest Survivor cards out there, maybe even the game, and really defines the class. Being able to recur any card from your discard is just so helpful. It doesn't even cost an action, just a successful test (generally on your turn due to the icons it possesses).

It's part of so many combos. Think of this card as the 3rd and 4th copies of your strongest cards - whether thats a Will to Survive, Look What I Found, Lucky! or anything else that your deck does.... it just multiplies the value of those cards. Not sure what you want? Hold it for later! You are never unhappy to see this card.

This goes in virtually every Survivor deck that I've built, with the exception of Patrice Hathaway. It's just that strong.

It does have limitations. It can only be used to recur Survivor Cards. This generally means that off-class survivors aren't interested in this card. You also need to succeed a test. Most likely this means an evade, and you can get screwed.