The Sign of Hastur

I have a question regarding this card. Does the Forced effect of the card kick in only when you place horror on your investigator card or does it also work if you place it on any of your assets e.g. Cherished Keepsake, Peter Sylvestre?

red.hexapus · 29
It triggers whenever you take damage/horror, which is before it’s placed. You take an extra no matter where you place the first. — StyxTBeuford · 13050
@StyxTBeuford Great thanks! I thought it would be the case but wanted to be sure. — red.hexapus · 29
Copycat

Now that scroll of secrets let you grab the bottom of peoples decks, this is very handy to get someone’s card from the discard pile back into their hand.

Update: This is pretty expensive, but it could be amazing clue tech for a seeker (or Roland). Adding deduction, Take Initiative or perception back into their deck means they can find it with practice makes perfect. That means you’re giving potentially --three-- uses of it. If everything goes right on Deduction(2), that’s a six clue shift for one skill card. If you team with Mandy, pick two cards!

But if you’re teaming with a mystic and/or a survivor, you might want to pass on this one.

MrGoldbee · 1492
Armageddon

The Fight version of Eye of Chaos, it has the same set of considerations as that card. If you are in a Curse-heavy environment, this might work out well. On the other hand, it's essentially a Shrivelling, where you pay an extra resource for one fewer charge and a slightly janky reloading mechanic. You also get to skip the horror ping for an unfortunate token draw.

It's worth noting that you don't cancel the Curse token, so your best case scenario is attacking at -2 hoping for 3 damage, which will get tricky with even 4 fight enemies unless you have some serious boosting or are throwing icons at the test (which is another cost). Maybe there will be a Level-3 version with a +2 bonus?

On reflection, Dexter could go heavy in this card suite with False Covenant and erase the negatives on the Curses. That's not a bad synergy.

My understanding is that cancelled tokens don't trigger "if revealed" effects, so False Convenant doesn't really synergize here. — Neofalcon · 23
This card says “If a Curse token is revealed,” and False Covenant says “When a Curse token is revealed,” so the Armageddon trigger would go first. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
I'm gonna have to agree with neofalcon on this one. By your reasoning playing counterspell when attacking with shriveling would result in you still taking horror. FAQ on counterspell says otherwise. — Fishfreeek · 2
From "If" in the Rules section: "Some abilities have triggering conditions that use the words "at" or "if" instead of specifying "when" or "after," such as "at the end of the round," or "if the Ghoul Priest is defeated." These abilities trigger in between any "when..." abilities and any "after..." abilities with the same triggering condition." False Covenant's "when" would cancel before any "if" effects. — TheDoc37 · 468
It's also worth noting that the effect from drawing a curse token isn't adding 1 damage to the attack, it's immediately dealing 1 damage to any enemy at your location. That means three important things: you get to deal at least one damage even if the curse makes you fail, you can defeat two enemies (with 2 and 1 remaining health) in a single action, and similarly to Wither (4) you can sometimes make enemies leave play before the skill test concludes (which is most often relevant for Retaliate) — Thatwasademo · 58
False Covenant

I've been messing around with a Dexter deck that was using Faustian Bargain for economy. It works pretty well, but the Curse tokens were occasionally annoying. This card would make it work better (and maybe encourage Dexter to mess around with more curses), but is it 2 XP worth of good? That probably depends on whether anyone else is dumping Curses in the bag.

At least, spend 2 exp in a card that will be always with you is way more interesting than spend exp to another card that could not be drawn for entire scenarios. Anyway, as you said, all that bless/curse mechanics seems interesting only if there is a good portion of the investigators commiting to it. — Venti · 1
Stirring Up Trouble

Well, it's a way to unlock that Cryptic Grimoire....

Otherwise, it seems kind of expensive in terms of XP and Curse token to get a couple of clues, which is not something the card pool has ever had any trouble doing. It could help with those very few annoying high shroud locations that even Seekers struggle with, but it seems like you would regret the decision more often than not, unless you had some way to bleed out the currse tokens.

Is never upgrading the Cryptic Grimoire and using it as a way to ameliorate the number of Curse tokens you are throwing in the bag a viable strategy? It seems kind of card-intensive and inefficient.

This is more a splash card than anything else. Two testless clues as 0 resources is incredibly solid clueing tech for off seekers like Tony potentially. — StyxTBeuford · 13050