Let me list for you all the Mystic cards with a draw effect, up to Dream Eaters:

• Arcane Initiate (and Arcane Initiate (3))
• Jewel of Aureolus
• Quantum Flux
• Sacrifice
• Scroll of Secrets (and Scroll of Secrets (3))
• The Stars Are Right

...That's it. In 92 mystic cards, Mystics have only four options for card draw. Four, because Quantum Flux and Scroll of Secrets draw one card for one action, the same as the default draw action all investigators can do. And Mystics have the most severe out of class restrictions among all the classes: Father Mateo only has a pseudo-draw with Grisly Totem, Akachi Onyele can only take Decorated Skull, Marie Lambeau can only take Feed the Mind (Hallowed Mirror and Occult Lexicon don't count; they add as many or more cards to your deck as they draw), Jim Culver has 5 extremely valuable slots for out of class cards, and only for lvl 0 cards.

To these investigators, Scroll of Prophecies is a GODSEND. It is consistent, reliable, and most importantly PREDICTABLE card draw, traits that only Sacrifice can boost, and that comes with, well, a sacrifice. the other options are dependant on the chaos bag (Jewel of Aureolus), the encounter deck (The Stars Are Right), or can only draw zero to one spell cards (Arcane Initiate). AND it occupies a hand slot, the second least contested slot for mystics (body being the first).

Now, the caveat. Must you include card draw in your deck? No, you don't. Mystic characters have been just fine up till now, and are not in any way beholden to Scroll of Prophecies. But this card allows you to play with more if not all of your deck in one scenario. You can include more skill cards and events with the fast keyword; high tempo cards with no lasting value. What I see in this cards is new deck archetypes opening up for Mystics, and I for one am excited to try a spell event heavy Agnes Baker again.

Getting the obvious out of the way; solid card in multiplayer, useless in single-player, cheap event that you'll always be able to play and rarely have a reason not to.

Now, with that said, I wish to talk about one very specific situation involving this card; the event you decide "screw it!" and subject yourself to four encounter cards in one phase. This will be a highlight of any game session, and I recommend trying it just for that reason, even if you perish in a hilarious fashion by your own hubris. In the spirit of trying to survive this self-imposed nightmare, here are three investigators who are most likely to pull it off:

1) Zoey Samaras

High ? Check. Benefits from drawing enemies? Check. Needs few cards to come online? Check. Zoey ties with Leo Anderson for highest among the Guardians, but Leo needs a few more cards out before he's ready to endure the encounter deck, and his 1 makes him slightly more vulnerable to the second most common skill test printed on encounter cards.

2) Diana Stanley

Most if not all Dianas will be running encouter hate, meaning that the're often disappointed when they couldn't cancel an effect because someone else drew it. No more! With the highest potential base and decent , she will be able to handle most tests that come here way. Her balanced health/sanity thresholds and access to guardian cards top off her status as most likely mystic to handle an encounter tsunami.

3) Jenny Barnes

Jenny might seem like a dubious choice to take on the mythos, but several rogue cards exist that help to this effect. Her decent and stats can be bolstered with Well Connected, or replaced with Money Talks, two cards that Jennys are already inclined to take. Tennessee Sour Mash helps both with checks AND enemies, Cunning with checks, and Jenny's Twin .45s with enemies too.

tl;dr - Norman is a Mystic, not a Seeker. Build him like a Mystic who can find clues whenever he wants. Norman is the best Mystic, not the worst Seeker.

Wanted to write a new review, as some of the others are older and I want to drive one particular thing home. Despite the color on his card, Norman is primarily a Mystic , not a Seeker . If you came for Higher Education, Deduction (2), or Cryptic Research you are looking at the wrong guy (somewhat obviously), and you should compare him to Mystics instead. Before Luke Robinson, Norman was the closest approximation of "Mystic 5/Seeker 2", but not quite. Norman's deckbuilding (0-5 Mystic 0's, Seeker 0's, Mystic 1-5) is primarily the alternate to Mystics (instead of 's):

• Jim Culver - At 0-5 and up to 5 level 0's of any other class, Jim trades Seeker 0's for Mystic 0's, and can be more flexible about his 5 cards.
• Luke Robinson - At 0-5 and 0-2 Luke's deckbuilding is just a straight upgrade then.

Why then play The Astronomer? To maximize your , and have a good ability during gameplay.

Pros

• Has (in my opinion) the superior 6 Health/8 Sanity to Luke's 5 Health/9 Sanity. This is somewhat a survivability wash, because Luke starts with Gate Box to disengage from enemies, and has a better to avoid some treacheries that do damage. Even still, it's worth noting, and once Norman is going enemies are a complete non-issue.
• Has (in my opinion) the superior 0's to Jim Culver's 0's.
• While Norman requires some set up to deal with monsters, he requires almost none to Investigate. With a simple Magnifying Glass (0) and his 5 , Norman looks for clues very reliably, while his competitors are risking themselves playing Drawn to the Flame. This really sets him apart from other Mystic investigators.
• High "Accuracy". The two things Norman does regularly, look for clues and cast huge spells, he does with very large stat numbers. Generally speaking, something needs to go very wrong for him to fail at these activities.

Cons

• Norman is quite squishy, particularly early in a Campaign. With only 6 Health, no and no Norman is going to be terrible against Grasping Hands, and will need rescuing from On Wings of Darkness before that's the last he's heard from. Later on, monsters will become a non-issue as you use them to move around with Mists of R'lyeh (4), or absolutely demolish them with Shrivelling (5), but before then it's tricky. You'll always be terrible against Grasping Hands et al., and I'd consider some Painkillers for that eventuality.
• If you like flashy elder sign results, this ain't it. Sometimes you can swap something on top of your deck you want to get a discount on, but if you've already played your card from the top for this round that won't work. While you can swap a more expensive card there, that's rarely better than another +1. The only thing Norman gets from the elder sign is a (small) positive number.
• As one of the other reviews states, Norman can feel a bit...slow. He is very likely to succeed, but lacks the click compression of Rex Murphy, Deduction (2) and while he could play Drawn to the Flame and Rite of Seeking, he is unlikely to as it's a waste of his 5 . Just call him Ol' Reliable.
• You might hit your weaknesses a lot. You go through your deck quickly, and as soon as they're on top you draw them. Your signature weakness is VERY tame, so this mostly will matter for any other weaknesses you have.

The Five 0s
For my money, there aren't actually that many options for this, as some are just perfect fits.

• Delve Too Deep - Best to get this out of the way immediately. Norman loves XP cards, and so he loves XP. Likely not worth in solo, at which point I would put in Shrivelling. While normally Shrivelling feels like a terrible use of one of your 0s, in the absence of a friend, you're going to need more than just Mind over Matter. I would play 2, until you can swap them out later.
• St. Hubert's Key - Gives a bonus to your two stats in a slot you otherwise don't care too much about. It's somewhat expensive, but you'll get a discount on it sometimes, and when things are going really poorly it heals you for two horror. Not a sexy pick, but a reliable one. I would start with 2.
• Ward of Protection - Sometimes you're going to read a Treachery card that will make your whole turn go sideways, and you need to cancel it. This may be because it preys on your low or all the usual suspects that annoy everyone. You want 2, but you don't have the space, so play 1.
• Open Gate - Honorable mention to this card; it's an awful selection to start with but after you take out your Delves and upgrade your Ward of Protection you will have 3 Mystic slots again. Filling those again (with whatever you think is best) would cost you 3 XP. Instead you can fill all 3 for only 1 XP and get a triplicate of Open Gates. You can play them as fast off the top of your deck for free as well! It's effectiveness can vary quite a bit between scenarios, but I find it to generally improve later in campaigns, right when you add these in.
• Arcane Initiate - At 0 XP you likely don't have spells to find, and they certainly aren't worth the XP to add the level 0 versions later on. You could put them in as dead draws, but that seems risky, and frankly unnecessary. I never seem to have the XP for Arcane Initiate (3) either, and Norman's deck goes by fast so they aren't really needed (though shuffling could show you a new card to play with your ability). I would rate this choice as "Fine", and you could certainly make it work, but I think there are better options.
• Arcane Research - Gets brought up a lot with Norman, but it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, you're definitely going to be upgrading spells, on the other it makes you a scary 6 HP/6 Sanity, and it will take 1 or 2 of your 5 slots forever, even when you're done upgrading spells. I think this is definitely a build, but not the way I would go.

Watch the Stars
In addition to his good stats, and good deckbuilding, you want to leverage his ability during play. Every time you use it you have effectively drawn the top card of your deck, and unless that card was free you also generated a resource. This in some ways makes your deck a proto-version of Joe Diamond's Hunch deck. Skills are a waste as you can't commit them from the top, and cards that are flexible (and ideally Fast) are king.

• Knowledge is Power - This might as well say "must be included by Norman". Fast, free, gives you charges on your stuff, cycles duplicates out of your hand, effectively gives you extra actions. A++.
• Working a Hunch - Good early in a Campaign as it's click compression, and a reasonable cost for 1 if you play it from the top. Later on it's less thrilling, and you're unlikely to want to play it for 2 from your hand.
• Shortcut - Compression, and basically always playable. You don't generate an effective resource when you do it, but it's still great.
• No Stone Unturned - This card is "fine" for Norman I would say. You can have most of the six cards in your "hand" by next turn if you play a fast card off the top of your deck and take the draw action once. I just don't find it to be worth the money and action for your own purposes. Your actions are usually very high quality (because of your high stats), and you don't want to waste them doing "support" except in the first (or at most second) scenario. If you want to use it on your allies to help them out, that's fine.
• Preposterous Sketches - This is better. Same cost, you're often going to be sitting places with clues and puts it all in hand.
• Anatomical Diagrams - Fast and free off the top of your deck, the main drawback here is "at your location". Early on you'll have a babysitter, and you can help them out. Later on when you handle your own problems, you likely don't need it. Even still, worth mentioning.
• Connect the Dots - Expensive, but amazing compression. This will depend on the cost of your deck (and the presence of Dr. Milan Christopher).
• Seeking Answers - Slight compression, but requires a specific board. Decent.
• Mind over Matter - Critical at 0 XP. Less important later (as it doesn't help with treacheries, and you don't need it for the other stuff anymore. Just play it for 0 off the top of the deck even if you don't need to.

Other Notable Cards

• Magnifying Glass (0) - Fast and good. All you need to investigate most things trivially.
• Hawk-Eye Folding Camera - Not fast, but easy for you to activate and gives you a bonus to your other stat.
• You can use Versatile (A Thousand Shapes of Horror, 167) to reload your Mystic 0's, (and give you 2 slots back if you used them on Arcane Research), but you have better things to do with your XP!
• Mr. "Rook" - Finding cards is good. Bonus points for having 2 Health.
• Dr. William T. Maleson - Can help you with the encounter deck. Bonus points for having 2 Health.
• Dr. Milan Christopher - Good for most Seekers, and good for this Mystic. Gives you pseudo-compression by combining clue gathering with making money.
• Crack the Case - Gives you resources at speed, and you're not afraid of high shrouds.
• Protective Incantation (1) - I've found Norman to be both poor (particularly without Milan in play, always playing things off his deck), and to have better things to do with his Arcane slots. While you can make a sealing build you have traded away all your stats for two great stats, and then abandoned those stats for Support duties. Make someone else do this!
• Bind Monster (2) - I've used this as another monster answer. At times it's excellent, particularly in parts of Dunwich, but without a bonus to like Mists of R'lyeh (4) gives you, it can be tough to leverage. Fine, not amazing.

Signature Cards
At the time of this writing, Norman is still only available from his Novella, so I cannot comment on his "regular" Signatures, only his replacements. I do anticipate Livre d'Eibon will be a "Tome", so potentially some synergy with KiP.

• Split the Angle - This has two actions on it. One to look at the top card of the Encounter deck, one to get rid of it as a . People have rightfully pointed out this is not actually very good (it's too slow). You basically never want to waste time taking the slow action (your time is too valuable), and discarding cards at random from the encounter deck is meaningless. Using Alyssa Graham to make this faster is throwing 4 money and a valuable ally slot after a mediocre combo with a single card in your deck - very not worth. I like Scrying (3) to assign everyone their best chance to succeed, but any combo with this is...tangential at best. I do however think most people are sleeping on this card slightly. I would reframe Split the Angle like this: " Exhaust Split the Angle and discard the top card of your deck: Draw a Card." This obviously isn't EXACTLY analogous, but close enough for horseshoes I think. With Norman able to play the top card of his deck, revealing a new card is potentially giving you new options. Late in a scenario, it has good icons, but I've drawn it early and used it to speed through my deck.
• Vengeful Hound - Even if Split the Angle is underwhelming, I'm curious if after his cards come out the Replacements might still be king, and this is the reason. This weakness is one of the easiest weaknesses in the game. It has 2 Fight and dies to a single hit from any 2 damage weapon. It has Prey, but not Hunter so you can just evade it and leave (assuming you never have to go back). This often takes only a single action to resolve.

Upgrades
Not a ton to say here - buy expensive Mystic cards. Shrivelling (5), Mists of R'lyeh (4) (particularly good as it comes with action compression!), Grotesque Statue (4), Ward of Protection (5) or Ward of Protection (2), I've seen people argue for builds that don't devolve in to Spell Combat for Norman (token sealing, etc) but that seems too cute by half and requires you to be rescued all the time. Get tough! Rescue the Guardian!

Fun
Yes. Very yes. Casting huge spells is awesome. Doing everything super well is awesome!

For everyone's benefit, here is a list of the cards that most obviously synergies with Lucid Dreaming (as of Dream Eaters). Please mention any that I miss out in the comments:

Signature Cards:

• The Painted World
• Improvisation
• Tony's .38 Long Colt

Stack-able Hand Assets:

• Magnifying Glass (and its upgrade)
• Book of Shadows (and its alternative)
• Ritual Candles
• Spirit Athame
• Survival Knife??? (Can you trigger two copies of Survival Knife on the same attack?)
• Sign Magick
• Hawk-Eye Folding Camera

Disposable/Temporary Assets With Persistent Effects:

• Beat Cop (and its upgrade)
• Police Badge
• Baseball Bat
• Knife
• Brother Xavier
• The Red-Gloved Man
• Gravedigger's Shovel (and its upgrade)
• Lantern (and its upgrade)
• Key of Ys (when not playing with the Taboo List)
• Tennessee Sour Mash (and its upgrades, both of them)

Most of the Myriad Cards:

• Segment of Onyx
• Easy Mark
• Open Gate
• Fortuitous Discovery

Cards That Synergies With Themselves:

• Hot Streak (2) (not so for Hot Streak (4))
• Contraband (and its upgrade)
• Expose Weakness (1) (not so for Expose Weakness (3))
• Vantage Point
• Fence

And that should about be it. Of course Lucid Dreaming has additional functionality outside of these cards; drawing the second copy of your 5xp sink or your assets with limited uses is always a good thing. And of course, not all of the cards presented are particularly powerful with Lucid Dreaming (e.g. Knife); this list it just a time saver for everyone who wants to know where Lucid Dreaming goes above and beyond a card draw.

This is very probably the best player card in the Dream Eaters deluxe box. That probably doesn't sound like much since a lot of the cards in this deluxe are kind of narrow and wonky, but this, alongside Pendant of the Queen, really make Dream Eaters, in my opinion, a go to box for anyone who loves the Seeker class. Let's talk about why it's so good, what cards it has synergy with, and who should take it. I apologize ahead of time for all of the math.

First off, why I love this card so much. Let's get past the major downside first: If you draw one of these, it's literally just an for committing to a test. There's nothing else you can do with this card except as a sacrifice to discard effects. So then you might ask what's the chance that I open with one of these in my hand? That will depend entirely on your mulligan strategy.

If you only mulligan away Astounding Revelation (in a standard 33 card deck) and nothing else:

• Chance you open with no copies: 96.9%
• With 1 copy: 3.1%
• With 2 or 3 copies: 0%

This is because if you happen to get no copies in that opening hand, you mulligan nothing, staying at 0; if you get all 3, simply mulligan all 3; if you get 1, mulligan that 1 and there's a 7.41% chance you draw one of the other two; if you get 2, mulligan those 2 and there's also a 7.41% chance you draw the other one. This is the best strategy to mitigate opening with Astounding Revelation in your hand. It's not necessarily your ideal mulliganing strategy concerning other cards you may want to open with, but I wanted to first illustrate how low you can possibly make these odds.

The other concern aside from opening is obviously drawing it midgame, so ideally your deck maximizes searches and minimizes draw. Let's assume for right now you can search roughly 3 cards a turn, meaning you draw 1 card for every 3 you search. Starting with 28 cards to search through on the first turn, you've roughly a 29.8% chance of seeing at least one copy (if you elect to throw all three into your deck). Let's assume for now you miss it in the search but draw a card from it, and then you draw a card at the end of your turn (from a deck of now 27 cards). There is a 11.1% chance you draw one of these. Let's assume you don't draw it and draw something else instead. This next turn if you search 3 there is now a 32% chance you find one of these in the search, and then a 12% chance you draw one (in a deck of 25) if you don't find it in that search. You get the picture- you're at any point in the game about three times more likely to find it in a search than you are to draw it. If you use a really deep search on the other hand, like Mr. "Rook", on the opening turn you'd see at least one of these 70.4% of the time. You can use Research Librarian to search your entire deck and guarantee getting a copy of this out, which if you do on the opening turn and you also grab a book will reduce your draw chance to 7.69%. You get the point I'm making: if you include a few really solid deep searches in your deck (like Rook's repeatable 9 per turn or Research Librarian's entire deck search), you can very quickly reduce your chances of drawing this card while still very consistently hitting copies of it. The deeper your searches, the better your ratio will be of finding these in a search to drawing them. All in all you can see that I feel the risks on this card are relatively tame, especially since at worst an for an important investigate test is not terrible.

Enough about the risks, let's get to the exciting parts of this card. Firstly, if you run enough search in your deck, this card will thin your deck for you. As long as you hit all of your copies through searches, you've thinned your deck by 3 cards. That means you have a much higher chance through searches, and later on through draws (once you've taken most or all of them out), of getting your best cards when you need them. You will, on average, get them sooner and more often. There is no doubt the belief among many that a thinner deck in Arkham Horror: The Card Game is not as valuable as articles from Magic: The Gathering and the mechanics of other card games would have us believe. The fact remains however that you have a much better chance of drawing the exact cards you need when you need them the less extraneous cards there are. We'll get to some specific cards and investigators who can really benefit from a thinner deck, but for now understand that this is almost universally a plus in card games, and I don't think Arkham Horror is an exception.

Secondly, it's an amazing economy card. Emergency Cache costs 0 resources, but it costs you a card (in its place you could've drawn any other card) and an action to play. This gets you 2 resources at no action and no card cost. That's insane. Even Crack the Case still costs a card and at most usually gets you 4 resources. Sure, you have to activate a search to get it going, so arguably you're mostly refunding the cost of your deck searches for the first pull, but that's still great. I'd happily play Mr. "Rook" for 1 resource, or Research Librarian for no resources. What's more, it can instead net you a secret to put on a card. We'll look at some cards that use secrets in the following section.

Here are some cards that work well with Astounding Revelation:

• Mr. "Rook". Not only does he search 9 up to three times for you, he can also have his life extended per copy played (since he uses 1 secret per search). You could elect to take resources and play a second one of him (refunded for the cost of both in the process), or you could choose instead to forgo drawing another Rook with one of your searches and forgo the action needed to play another copy of him, instead taking 3 more searches with the Rook you started with.
• Research Librarian. You will be guaranteed to trigger Astounding Revelation to help pay for that Occult Lexicon or Old Book of Lore.
• Archaic Glyphs. You can either feed the Astounding Revelations you do draw into this thing because of their icon, or you could find one in a search and just skip the secret placing action entirely.
• Pnakotic Manuscripts. A secret on this thing is incredibly valuable, especially on higher difficulties. Now you can test up to 6 times without pulling any tokens with one copy. That's crazy good value.
• Either upgrade of Ancient Stone. Not as nice of an interaction as some others, but testless damage and horror healing are definitely not nothing. Search cards work well with these already.
• Arcane Initiate. Grab spells, then pay for them.
• Calling in Favors, Dr. Elli Horowitz, Flare, Prepared for the Worst, Smuggled Goods. These are all one shot searches of 9. Again, that's around 70% on a turn 1 search with all 3 copies still lying in your deck. Note that Finn's signature card can be used more than once if you find it again.
• Stick to the Plan. This one is really exciting. Already this is a card that heavily increases deck consistency by tutoring 3 useful but usually timing dependent cards. Now you've essentially Another Day, Another Dollar'd yourself into two extra starting resources, and you've thinned your deck by 1 more card.
• Segment of Onyx. Yes, the other myriad Seeker card this cycle. A thinner deck means you can break and reassemble the Pendant of the Queen even faster, as you're shuffling the segments into a smaller deck. The more testless clues, the better. (EDIT: Can only assemble this once a game now, but that's okay! Still good to find them and just have the Pendant ready for when you need it.)

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I do not think it's helpful to list out every card with "secret" or "search" in its text. Obviously any cards that help you search that you would have run without Astounding Revelation, like Eureka! or No Stone Unturned, become just that much better if they accidentally net you 2 resources in the process.

Finally, let's look at some investigators who really love this card:

• Mandy Thompson. Alright, maybe a bit of an obvious pick, but it's an important one. She searches even deeper than anyone else, so her odds are strictly better than everyone else's. (EDIT: A bit trickier now with 50 card Mandy, but come on, you're gonna be searching anyway right?) * Roland Banks. Roland loves this card so much. This with Stick to the Plan gives him one of the strongest openings any Guardian could ask for.
• Carolyn Fern. Slightly more limited Seeker access, but Mr. "Rook" + this card could be a great way to get the rest of your healing engine going.
• Daisy Walker. Really most Seekers can benefit from this card, but I'll single out Daisy as she's likely to want Research Librarian and Old Book of Lore. I'll quickly mention that really only Minh Thi Phan, who runs cheaply and tends to favor lots of card draw, is probably the one Seeker who really does not want this card.

These picks are more left field, but could be cool for the right brew:

• Marie Lambeau. She likes Arcane Initiate and Calling in Favors, so the only big downside for her is the slots it will take up. However, this may be well worth it, as not only will Revelations help pay for all those allies and spells Marie likes to run, but the might actually be put to good use in the worst case, especially if you take Archaic Glyphs.
• Finn Edwards. Like Marie, Finn's slots are limited, so 3 of these is a big ask. Finn after all still wants Track Shoes. If you find a way to reliably dart between Mr. "Rook" and Leo De Luca or Lola Santiago via Calling in Favors, this could lead to some interesting shenanigans. Smuggled Goods works well with this.
• Jenny Barnes. Big money Jenny decks may want these both for deck thinning and for quick resources. Often Jenny runs Mr. "Rook" anyway, so these are a solid choice for her other 3 slots.

I hope I've thoroughly covered what I think are the reasons you should seriously look at this card. I only caution that you use it in a deck that doesn't try to draw too many cards. Perception for example hurts this card. Don't be afraid of Astounding Revelation: take all 3 copies and see how it works for you!