This has an interesting use case for investigators. The majority of the time any would likely remove the threat from the board instead of evading it. There are already quite the number of limitations to this card. But even if the targets in a particular scenario are plentiful, you need a reason that you would want the humanoid permanently evaded rather than disposed of.

There are plenty of cultists that accumulate doom, but they are usually easy enough to remove from the board except for maybe Brotherhood Cultist. That makes dealing with him much easier. I think that the real use case for handcuffs would be in multiplayer formats or scenarios where the deck shuffles itself from the discard pile often. If are placing handcuffs on the enemy, then they will remain in play and never get shuffled back in. So you will only see that threat once. While not as good as adding it to the victory display, this can still be helpful for some of those pesky humanoids you might hate seeing such as Seeker of Carcosa.

Even non-fighting splashes for a card would likely have many other options to consider over this one.

I think that if this had been a fast asset, then it would have been appealing on its own. Even if it cost an experience at that point it would likely have been worth it. But, if you are planning on using Sleight of Hand, then I think there are likely better options you are looking for than this. You will have a limited number of Sleights, and certainly getting use out of a Lightning Gun or Chicago Typewriter are the kind of situations you are likely looking for. This could be the intermediate weapon you upgrade from into one of those depending on who you are playing while the Sleight of Hand is in your deck until you have the experience to get that.

Without the fast though, I wouldn't use it by itself and I don't see it seeing much play other than the temporary slot before an upgraded weapon for Sleight of Hand.

I don't find myself a fan of this card. Usually when something is dishing out a single point of damage I am looking to take out those pesky 1 cost enemies like a wil o' wisp or a cultist at a location that I can't afford to fail taking out or will slow me down. But, unlike using something like the Lantern which would remove it at any point in your turn, the Coup de Grâce requires (well not quite requires, but you won't want to do so otherwise) you to do it as your last action in the turn. I could wait until the last action to remove the wisp, but then I would be suffering the rest of the turn from stat reductions until then and if I take something out early in the turn I have lost valuable actions in doing so. Of which, I was likely better off evading and just walking away half the time.

There are circumstances that could arise, but I think this will be the card that sits in your hand waiting for those circumstances to arise that never gets played. You end up walking into a room last action and then take something out and draw a card sure, something like that or you fall short in one attempt or two and something needs a finishing blow, or your left something on one hit point left sure. I would often likely find myself holding this in hand and then just throwing it for the icons because those situations don't show up. That's what I feel like the normal use of the card would be as I play.

Funny. Ward of protection and Shrivelling both deal you horror. So in any conventional Mystic deck this thing, intended to empower spells, is guaranteed to get blown up by said spells.

You get to use this thing once. Case closed, thing sucks.

P.S: Unless your spell assets are Rite of Seeking and Mists of Rleth, no Shrivelling in sight, then, eh, sure, it okay I guess, but who would build such a deck!?

This is my favorite Basic Weakness, and I'm writing this review in the hopes that future game designers can take a hint on how to do mechanics like this well.

First of all, while by far my favorite, it is not the card I would chose to put in a deck (not that any of us would pick and choose with a random card selection, right? Riiiiiight?). But when I draw any other random weakness, my thoughts tend to range from "okay, I can deal with this," to "aw, crap. This is gonna be a pain to deal with." The Thing That Follows is the only Basic Weakness that instills an actual emotion in me- a sense of giddy dread.

This card is like a well paced horror movie. It makes every draw an anxious roll of the dice, wondering if this time the unseen Thing is going to crawl out and mess up your day. And while that can be said of pretty much any weakness card, the trick of The Thing That Follows is how it repeats itself. Once you draw the card, the cycle of tension repeats as it moves closer and closer to you across the map. Even if you manage to beat it into submission (not all that unlikely with its stats, but hard enough to mess up some endgame plans), it just returns to your deck, only this time with significantly fewer cards on hand to lower the chances of picking it up again.

It is a masterpiece of the tension/release cycle that is crucial to all forms of horror. Long buildups of dread as you feel it coming, punchy moments of action as it resolves, and repeat. Not scary because it ruins your day, but because no mater how many ways you find to deal with it, it always Follows.

Helping matters is that it's one of the most narratively cohesive Basic Weaknesses out right now. (What, exactly, does Paranoia have to do with resources?) But with the Thing, everything from the name to the art to the quote to the mechanics all serve to instill that key emotion. Not fright, but dread. Consuming, unavoidable dread.

Bravo, Fantasy Flight. You've made a business out of turning Cosmic Horror into game mechanics, and with this one you knocked it out of the park.