At first glance, boxing gloves seem almost offensively bad. Compare them to machete: One fewer hand slot, +1 damage, and the same boost to attack, at the cost of some draw power? Of course, Spirit events are quite common in Guardian (with Stand Together being the best, perhaps), but with Boxing Gloves it's extremely important to consider the opportunity cost of two hand slots. Barring some Bandolier shenanigans, you aren't going to be dealing more than 1 damage with non-event attacks. This game is balanced around dealing 2 damage with those attacks, so you're going to need to play +damage events or skills whenever you need to fight. And with the Guardian's notorious lack of early economy... event based fighting doesn't seem particularly good outside of Nathaniel Cho.

This game is balanced around dealing 2+ damage per attack. I have a feeling that even Cho is going to want to grab Machete or Enchanted Blade and leave the Gloves behind.

On tap micro Lucky!. Once per turn. Helps your friends too. Holy moly this chick is up there with the very best allies in the game and by far the hottest girl on campus!

Lucky! is historically among the most useful "deck grease" cards in the game, it makes you better at everything and anything and since playing it is an afterthough it gives you a LOT of leeway to either depend on it to cover the really harsh tokens or to try and beat a test you have no business beating in the first place.

Granny Orne is expensive for a card, the faction doesnt typically require you to gather resources and many characters can coast by by the merit of their natural gains, playing Orne means you need to hold off on playing too many 2-3 cost events like "Look what I found!", Trial by Fire and weapon assets like Meat Cleaver, Ornate Bow and Timeworn Brand become the sort of financial pain that characters typically deal with.

Thankfully,Granny Orne is worth the cost. An on-tap mini-lucky to effectively raise any skill retroactively by 1 is a brilliant ability, and she also sports a defensive boost to and greatly buffs clue-power (effectively by +2 while her ability is unused). All of a suddent a Yorick is clue-ing low shroud spots as though his were 4 and Wendy is clueing like a 5 seeker before accounting for any items she might be using.

I think its fair to say that Orne will be replacing Peter Sylvestre in decks that dont actively depend on Pete's horror regeneration, since the + is objectively better than a + for most characters, the micro-Luckies will easily make up for the added cost and lack of +.

P.S. To whom it hasnt occurred yet, the ability to get a -1 may open the window to play stuff like Eucatastrophe.

The actual strengths/weaknesses of this card have been articulated very well in other reviews. However, this card does something that I think many players will actually enjoy and value that isn't necessarily to do with how powerful your deck is.

I'm a pretty casual player, and I often find myself trying to make a deck being aware of the strong cards. However, at the same time I also really want to try out a different theme or some new interesting cards without knowingly gimping the deck too much. For example, I might be looking at a mystic deck with some core spell assets, but I do really want to try out some of the less common event spells too. However, deck slots are scarce and I run out of space for the fun cards. Sure, I could really figure out a deck without the staples and roll with it, and there's great fun in the challenge of that. But other times it's nice just to have the staples AND some fun stuff, particularly as someone who doesn't actually play the game lots and so has fewer opportunities to try things out.

Versatile allows me to get more cards for fun things like this, even though yes this is actually generally a downside to the card. (Admittedly, being co-op I could always house rule higher card limits, but I like playing to the rules to be honest).

The second thing it does is let you take any level 0 card. This may not be super powerful but can be nicely thematic and flavourful and add to the narrative, which is something that I think some players will get a kick out of. Perhaps Joe Diamond likes a cheeky swig from a bottle of Liquid Courage. Or maybe Ursula Downs never goes on an expedition without her trusty Survival Knife. Or maybe Nathaniel Cho just gets a bit vicious sometimes and uses a Baseball Bat. I think these options would appeal to some players and it's nice to have cards the enable this kind of thing.

So I think there's 3 important things to note about this card that you might have skipped over if you only gave it a cursory glance.

First - the will-check replacement is a reaction triggered ability, meaning you can use your will for ANY check. This makes it markedly different from your normal fist check Shrivelling or Wither which can only be used on a fight action but cannot be used to open a locked door, your normal book check Rite of Seeking or Sixth Sense which can only be used on an investigate action but cannot be used on book check parlays or when you are using an investigate action that is printed on a location or the act/agenda, and your Mists of R'lyeh which can be used to evade but not to beat the evasion check on encounter cards.

Second - this asset takes up BOTH arcane slots, so unless you're using Sign Magick, you won't be able to have this card and one of the more specialized cards mentioned above out at the same time.

Third - the card is Myriad, meaning when you get it, you're allowed to put 2 more copies of it in your deck for free (so potentially 2xp total for 3 of these guys).

So is this card good? Eh... probably not. The 2 arcane slot usage makes it very difficult to put in a deck. Ultimately once you're in the lategame, Mystics are going to be relying on the powerful effects that their upgraded arcane slots bring. From Shrivelling you get 3 damage attacks with a +3 will on your roll, and with Sixth Sense and Rite of Seeking you're looking to get multiple clues with one action with a +2 will on the roll. Simply swapping out your fight or investigate action with will without any bonus to the roll really hurts (though granted you'll probably have a Holy Rosary and possibly Four of Cups to mitigate against the need for the bonus) - and not having any bonus damage or clue pickup per search makes the card lackluster.

Now of course, the benefit I discussed first, that it can be used in any type of check is immensely powerful. But Mystics already have good tools for dealing with these sorts of checks. If the check is coming from the encounter deck, you can just cancel it with a Ward of Protection (or the level 5 version Ward of Protection if you're playing solo). Otherwise you can fix the token bag for non-investigate or fight action skill checks with cards like Dark Prophecy or Defiance or Counterspell or even Seal of the Elder Sign if you're feeling spicy - and this is not to mention that often a bad roll can be undone with Time Warp or the effect ignored with Deny Existence. So you're paying a very hefty price (the loss of the bonus will to the roll, as well as the extra damage or clue benefit discussed above) to cover a weakness that Mystics already cover very well anyway.

The other issue with it is its limited usage. It's got 3 uses. It tries to make up for this by being a myriad (meaning once you've got 1 on field, you can still have 2 in your deck or hand), and allows you to discard them from your hand as a free action to put another 2 tokens on. If you go with that option, that's 7 uses. That's it. 7 uses total, and it cost you 3 cards! And the entire time it is up, it is hogging both your arcane slots, so you're using it for every check - you can't leave the fight and investigate checks to the specialized arcane spells because you can't have those out! So these burn off pretty quickly. Of course, you could replay them instead - but in that case, you're paying 6 resources and 2 actions for just 2 tokens - so that's almost never going to be worth it.

That said, I can see some use if you are planning on running Sign Magick x2. If you can keep this card in reserve so you only have to use it on the checks that your more specialized cards can't do, it can probably be used as an alternative to all the cancels I discussed above. But the setup is harsh - 9 resources to get both Sign Magick and this card out, and your hand slots are gone (so no The Chthonian Stone or Ritual Candles if you were planing those, and no Twilight Blade - not that Diana Stanley would ever want to get rid of the cancels anyway).

The other potential benefit of this card is that it can act as a buffer card if you're having trouble finding your spells. We've all had our Shrivelling and Sixth Sense at the bottom of the deck, and having a myriad card like this with 3 copies to give us the willcheck substitute we need in a pinch has undeniable value. The issue though again is that it hogs both arcane slots, so once you find one of your specialized cards, you're going to have to discard this card to make room for the specialized card if you want it out on the field. This a problem because that means it will fail to substitute for the second card (for example, if you find your Shrivelling first, then you'll have no way to cover investigate checks until you get your Rite of Seeking.) So it is really only an effective substitute so long as you have NEITHER of the specialized cards. So you're better off just using the tried and true Arcane Initiate initiate x2 to find your spells rather than rely on this as a stopgap. And to add insult to injury, this card only has a test icon of +1 will, so it's not even that good when committed to a test - so if you're using it as a substitute card and you draw it late, it's almost a dead draw.

The obvious comparison is between this card and Emergency Cache, but the more pressing one is between Hot Streak and Another Day, Another Dollar. I think that Hot Streak has a place in a few decks, but you generally need to satisfy one or more of these conditions:

• Your deck will still have Emergency Cache. Emergency Cache is a good card, and 2 more copies of Emergency Cache + can be good for some decks (Leo)
• You're Sefina. Enough said, the card is absolutely insane with her.
• You're running 2 ADAD already and still need resources most games. I'm not sure what deck would do this, but it seems fun. Hot streak it up.

Otherwise, I'd strongly recommend just grabbing ADAD instead. The benefit of Hot Streak over an Emergency Cache is +2 resources; for just one more xp, you can get that benefit at the start of every single game (and not have to worry about hot streak's high initial cost).

Hot Streak (4) is more of the same, except even more variance-heavy. Unless you have ADADx2 or some insane draw power, grab ADAD first.