So, here we are in the Forgotten Age cycle, nobody has yet reviewed Cat Burglar. He must be useless, right? I mean, look at his abilities - adds to your Agility, but then lets you avoid having to make Evade actions. That is contradictory. 4 Resources seems expensive. And, worst - if you can take Cat Burglar, you could also take Leo De Luca, one of the finest allies in the game.

And yet - he is fantastic. Testless disengage and move, against multiple enemies. Yes, Leo Anderson can runaway like a little girl despite his appalling agility. Even agile investigators like "Skids" O'Toole or Wendy Adams can benefit. Surrounded by lots of enemies? Can't evade them all? Hit Cat Burglar and get the hell outta there.

Consider the card Elusive, which is generally considered as pretty strong. Elusive has advantages in being fast, cheaper, and can take you to any revealed location with no enemies. However, Cat Burglar can do any connecting location - even unrevealed and and occupied - and you get this every turn.

On top of this, you get an agility bonus. Wendy can beef up her for those funny events. Backstab, with added criminality. And a 2/2 damage soak. Suddenly, it doesn't seem so expensive.

So, why don't we see more Cat Burglar in play? Well, I think this is 'cos he's in the same faction as Leo De Luca. More actions is very powerful, and against Leo De Luca, I just don't think the Cat Burglar stacks up, even in an evasion-heavy (so far) cycle like Forgotten Age. If you're trying to just move, or investigate, or play a card, Cat Burglar doesn't do anything for you, while Leo De Luca does.

However ... Charisma is a thing. You can play them both, and enjoy being able to just move away from any enemies, and still have 3 actions. I've done this in a few decks - "Skids" O'Toole and Jenny Barnes - and it just allows you to slip past enemies. It's very powerful against Brood of Yog-Sothoth in Undimensioned and Unseen, and in my opinion, pretty much breaks The Organist.

And for Leo Anderson, Cat Burglar seems a strong pick - giving him alternatives to just killing things. Moreover, Cat Burglar is non-unique; he could have 2. Need to run away from the Harbinger of Valusia? Cat Burglar is your friend.

So not, perhaps, your first-choice ally - but an excellent secondary one with some awesome uses when enemies start to mount up and it's time to bravely run away.

This is an cheap (if clunky) option for horror healing that gains new life as a combo piece for "by-two" Rogues. The ability to trigger an easy test at will provides fodder for "Watch this!" and Lucky Cigarette Case - in combination with Double or Nothing and a willpower talent, a rogue can potentially win six cash in a single test of whiskey-shooting ability.

On a separate note, I absolutely love that the cards for drinking, smoking, and gambling all work together to promote a play style based on risk-taking - what a resonant design!

I did the entire Dunwich cycle with Minh Thi Phan. In eight scenarios, I drew this weakness nine times.

This is my favorite weakness in the game to date, as an amazing combination of theme and mechanics. It interacts beautifully with Minh Thi Phan's flow.

Minh Thi Phan is practically powered by card-draws. Literally any competitive deck of hers will have two copies of Guts and Perception, and probably Manual Dexterity and Overpower as well - to say nothing Resourceful, upgraded Lucky! and Cryptic Research once she's powered up a bit, and of course her very own Analytical Mind.

Two consequences ensue:

• drawing lots of cards is what makes her pick up The King in Yellow; and
• drawing lots of cards is what allows her to discard The King in Yellow.

Which is beautiful, because it means the King in Yellow is the reason Minh Thi Phan needs a lot of card-draw, but the high card-draw also means she's nearly guaranteed to draw it every scenario.

This means that The King has similar impact to other high-octane unique weaknesses like Rex's Curse, but where the Curse places a lot of tedious small roadblocks in your way, The King places one interesting giant roadblock. Really, it's like getting your own private miniboss to fight.

The other interesting thing about this is that you're obviously better off dispatching the King while also tackling a skill-test that somehow warrants six points of commitment. Upgraded Deduction is the most obvious candidate, but whatever you do you just know it's going to be impressive. Get ready to shout "ZHU LI! DO THE THING!"

(My alternative theory is that Min Thi Phan is secretly Batman and she's doing paranormal investigation to relax.)

That's assuming you don't autofail, of course, which can be so disastrous that it's practically a drinking story waiting to happen.

Obviously, this weakness is why Minh Thi Phan must have two copies of Unexpected Courage and Inquiring Mind, because how else is she supposed to reliably have six symbols to commit to a single skill-test? Rise to the Occasion is a dodgier proposition, because 6-difficulty Willpower and Intelligence tests are rare, and 4-difficulty Combat and Agility tests tend to involve doing things she should generally avoid, Batman-ness notwithstanding.

(For extra-fun thematically-appropriate headaches, get Drawing the Sign as your basic weakness, like I did! Hastur-obsessed much, Thi?)

I'm getting the growing sense that the Louisiana Lion is held in far higher esteem than he deserves. Even in my Jenny Barnes deck, he never quite managed to carry his own tremendous weight. In my "Skids" O'Toole and Finn Edwards decks, he might as well have been a blank card for all the good he did.

First of all, a fourth action will not make an investigator 33% more effective - not even close. Investigators run on cards and resources, and any kind of "once per round" economy the investigator has (including the usual card and resource during upkeep) will be spread much more thinly over four actions rather than three - fewer resources to pump into Hard Knocks, fewer skill cards to commit to tests, and fewer charges of Flashlight, compared to the number of actions you have in which to use them. You could always use the extra action to draw a card or gain a resource, but if all you want is some drip economy, why not just run Lone Wolf or Pickpocketing, which pay for themselves much more readily?

Second, unlike most of the other pricey allies, Leo doesn't give any skill bonuses - you'll be taking more actions, but you'll waste a lot more actions on failed skill tests. For example, Dr. Milan Christopher's +1 makes the actions you have that much more efficient, and he's cheaper to put into play and serves as an (admittedly slow-to-wind-up) economic engine. See also Peter Sylvestre, Cat Burglar, and of course Beat Cop.

Third, by occupying the ally slot, he prevents you from playing those other aforementioned allies.

Fourth, he's crazy-expensive, which makes him awkward to play in most situations:

• Getting him out early costs one more than your entire starting resource pool. Unless you're lucky enough to draw him alongside Hot Streak, this is a crippling opportunity-cost; he's going to be your only significant asset for the first few rounds.

• Getting him out midgame has a similar (but more manageable) opportunity cost, but he takes so many rounds to pay for himself that he may just barely break even by the end of the scenario, and in the meantime you've deprived yourself of the tools that might have rescued you from a dire situation if you had run a different card and not sunk a small fortune.

• Getting him out in the late-game is usually a waste. If you only have a few rounds left, you should be able to spend six resources on something more worthwhile than two or three more actions spread over the remainder of the scenario.

And all of that assumes that you aren't forced to discard Leo early because of an Encounter card, which could be a serious possibility depending on the scenario, especially if he's your only asset in play at the time.

If anything, his relative economy actually gets worse for high-XP investigators. In the Rogue class, Streetwise is a fantastic way to pump skill tests, and it plays better with high-efficiency limited-use cards like Lupara, Deduction, and of course Double or Nothing, not to mention the highly efficient pumped "Watch this!". I'd much rather move once and take two amazing actions than move once and take three mediocre ones.

Therefore, Leo is at his best when paired with cards that can turn actions back into resources (or at least cards), so he can recoup his costs faster. Alchemical Transmutation is a strong combination (provided you have the for it), and Decorated Skull and Burglary are at least situationally useful.

I think the basic principle in play here is that extra actions are generally weaker than optimized actions, and those are more easily achieved with other cards.

I think this card is pretty useful. Now, in multiplayer, taking away the Elder Sign from the group to give Father Mateo +1 Willpower is not the best idea. If Father Mateo is taking a lot of Will tests, it actually isn't that bad of an exchange in a 2-player game; but at higher player counts it does start to hurt the group. More importantly, removing the Elder Sign takes away fun from other investigators and will quickly make you the least popular player on the table. I don't recommend it!

But this card is still fine as a kind of janky Seal of the Elder Sign. Just wait until you need to Shrivelling V a high-fight enemy or Rite of Seeking IV a high-shroud location, or attempt some other similarly high-reward, high-difficulty test, plop down The Codex of Ages, and use it right away. The 1-action, 1-card, 2-resource cost of the The Codex of Ages is easily justified by the guaranteed success on a critical test, and of course Father Mateo's Elder Sign effect will make back some of that anyway. It's a strong play, and I wouldn't use The Codex of Ages for its icons unless I was desperate.

Obviously nice with a teammate's Double or Nothing for e.g. six clues from Rite of Seeking IV. That's a power move.

In solo I would think +1 Willpower would ordinarily be superior to having the Elder Sign in the bag, even considering how useful Father Mateo's Elder Sign is. So you probably want to just play the Codex in advance there, if you have time. This will also make it easier to use the Codex against enemies, something that would otherwise be tricky in solo (but less so in multiplayer).