The usual mook from the early campaigns, Arkham Horror gets a lot of milage out of this enemy.

A few things;

• If you draw them as an encounter and cannot place them in an empty location, you discard them! (e.g if 2 investigators are in the only 2 locations on the board then there is no valid location).
• "Note that Acolyte can be spawned into the unrevealed location" (thanks elkeinkrad, posting this here as very important!)
• If it is the witching hour (next turn agenda will advance) then you can ignore them, as the doom they add will be removed on advance.
• These Cultists are never alone! So expect encounter cards that add doom to them or manipulate the board state around them. Games can very quickly spiral out of control if you leave them in play.

Don't let them trick you into ignoring them as they seem so simple to kill! Deal with them sooner rather than later - they have a habit of spawning all over the map in previously explored spots that take a whole turn to backtrack to (which feels terrible and stalls your game).

Also there is something about these guys that makes them a magnet for drawing Ancient Evils the next turn!

An absolute classic.

This card really pulls its weight in Innsmouth. With so many hunter monsters in most scenarios, and damage or horror hits on engagement with a lot of them, this can shepherd those suckers away from players with good regularity.

Didn't get to try it in "Horror in High Gear" yet; sending pursuing cars the Long Way Around while you're scooting directly to the Lighthouse is a pretty hilarious image.

Don't write many reviews, but wanted to chime in on this one. IMO, Tommy Muldoon is a powerful investigator who isn't very fun to play, and I don't recommend him. The combination of Guardian and Survivor cards is pretty good (Yorick thinks so too), but he has a few problems that I think make him unenjoyable, specifically because I think he fails to fulfill his "power fantasy" (the thing you pick him and picture yourself doing/having fun with).

1. The gun - You might think you want to build around Becky, but I don't think you do. It takes both hands so you're always using ammo for even the simplest enemies, and you don't REALLY want to reload her with your ability too much because you'll need that money to pay for your Allies. Which presumably is what you're playing Tommy for. It's also simply not worth the work for the just okay payoff, and cards you include to buff the weapon may not have enough other attractive targets. I'll get to that later.

2. Rookie Mistake - in my opinion, this weakness is both punishing, and more importantly too directly interferes with Tommy being "fun". It is possible to play in such a way that the weakness doesn't affect you much, maybe discarding a Cherished Keepsake rather than your entire board, but until you can trigger your weakness you have to play sort of weird to prevent it from blowing up 13 resources worth of allies (which simultaneously makes your Charisma useless until you refill those slots). I'll probably get hate that it's "not that hard to avoid", and I actually agree if you play a certain way. But that's not the way you wanted to play when you picked Tommy. You might play an entire scenario without having your expensive assets tank for you - but then why Tommy? Special note that Rookie Mistake is particularly punishing for Beat Cop (2), Jessica Hyde, Agency Backup, and The Black Cat, because they take damage and/or horror to do their thing. All in all, I think this is a Weakness that you play around until you draw, and the way you play around is directly disruptive to the thing you want to have fun doing. If you don't play around it, it might undo 20 XP and 14 actions at once between resources lost and card plays. I think it was justified as being needed because Tommy can be very strong, but it kinda ruined it for me.

3. The experience problem - There isn't enough experience in the world for Tommy to get what he wants. This is true for all investigators, but it's true to the point of dissatisfaction with Tommy. Stick to the Plan is as good on Tommy as any Guardian, and possibly better as he leverages that first turn Ever Vigilant very well. Unless you plan to only discard Mr. Pawterson, you probably want a couple copies of Charisma. The most exciting Allies you can fit in are things like Agency Backup, The Black Cat, and The Red-Gloved Man, but they're five each, and that doesn't include the Beat Cop (2) that you probably want. Even with all those things, you still don't have a weapon that costs experience (as I mentioned before), or other general utility cards that your classes can play. Trying to improve Becky is more experience. This gets worse if you try to add Drawing Thin in a post Taboo list world.

Tommy is a powerful investigator, and if you lean in to his Guardian and Survivor roots, you'll do fine to great for yourself. I expect comments on my review to say as much. But he didn't really deliver what I was hoping for, and I suspect others feel the same.

Pros

• Becomes flexible in the later game when you have a choice of skill to pick from your teammates discards
• Becomes more powerful as your teammates gain XP and upgrade their skills
• Provides some pseudo recursion to your teammates
• Triggers Winifred Habbamock's draw ability

Cons

• XP expensive in a class with lots of card competition for XP
• Not great in the early turns as there won't be much in your teammates discard pile
• Only usable in multiplayer (otherwise Unexpected Courage is a strict upgrade)

Obviously it's only good in mulltiplayer and you'll want at least one of your teammates to be running some good skills. Generally though I haven't found that to be a problem, there are plenty of good skills out there and even pulling out an Unexpected Courage nets you a boost.

Ideal targets are in Seeker with:

• Deduction (2)
• The Eye of Truth

and Guardian with:

• Vicious Blow (2)
• Leadership (2)

And not only do you get the benefit but goes back in their deck to redraw so between you and your teammate it's perfectly possible to play a single Deduction (2) 3 times per deck rotation.

The main downside is the XP cost which is prohibitive in Rogue with so many powerful cards to spend their XP on.

Conclusion

If you're Winifred Habbamock and one or more of your teammates has relevant skills I highly recommend including this card, it's both powerful and great fun to play!

If you're a different Rogue investigator it will still be good if your teammates have high impact skills but you'll have to carefully consider the XP cost vs other potential upgrades.

Hatchet Man synergizes with:

• .25 Automatic (0)
• Delilah O'Rourke (3)
• Sneak Attack (0)
• Sneak Attack (2)
• Cheap Shot (2)

If you build around some of these cards Hatchet Man can be worthwhile.

However, unless you build quite hard around it most of the time I don't think this card is worth the slot in your deck. Situations in which you want to evade first and then do damage just aren't common enough and you'll often have this card sitting in your hand for a while before you can get a chance to play it.

If you've got a weapon out or damage card available you're usually just going to use it to attempt kill the enemy off. If you don't have a weapon or damage card that can deal with an enemy you're more likely going to want to move away or seek alternative solutions after evading.

I think this card deserved another symbol so it was more playable even if you weren't going to get value from the text and you'd more easily consider it over a Manual Dexterity. As it stands you need to be playing the combo cards to make this worthwhile