I actually like this card. There are a few scenarios where you want to dig through the encounter deck to find an objective that's hidden near the bottom. Admittedly, that's not many scenarios; certainly not enough to justify taking this card in a vacuum. To be worthwhile, it's going to need extra support--and I'd argue that rather than encounter deck manipulation, what you really want is curse tech.

Although digging for a special location or scenario objective is rare, VP enemies hidden in the encounter deck exist in the vast majority of games. Antediluvian Hymn helps you push those juicy mini-bosses up to the top and add up to 5 to the bag in the process. (Literal bonus points if you find a VP enemy, order it to go to your fighter and then fish it out using Delve Too Deep.)

So who wants this card? No, not Gloria--it fits best with Mystics who use curses to fight:

Dexter Drake armed with Armageddon and Skeptic.

Kōhaku Narukami with Manipulate Destiny and Rod of Carnamagos.

Agatha Crane with Olive McBride and Gaze of Ouraxsh.

...you get the idea. This card isn't Scrying and you're not using it to fail less. It's win-more tech to help you locate what you WANT out of the encounter deck, and the curses you generate are going to help you flatten it when you find it.

This is more of a question then a review but can you spend evidence from other cards or just from Alton with the player window action?

Can anyone confirm or refute this idea? Thank you all in advance

"[A]nother instance of one of its skill icons" doesn't have to be one that's relevant to the test, correct? I have a silly idea of using Relic Hunter / Occult Reliquary to pair this with Crystallizer of Dreams.

I want to play an event from hand (dreaming of Blood-Rite in George Barnaby, but any event with pips works), use Crystallizer's discard replacement to tuck Blood-Rite, then commit Blood-Rite from under Crystallizer to the next test I'm likely to fail (or planning to fail with Drawing Thin / Artistic Inspiration / Quick Learner).

Then, I'll exhaust Grisly Totem to add an irrelevant pip, fail the test, and add the event back to hand, to be used again.

Does this work the way I want it to?

Breath of the Sleeper AKA Morning Breath: for my money this and its clue getting counterpart Eyes of the Dreamer are now the best attack and gather spell assets in the game.

When using them and paying the maximum amount of charges the hit rate to find a match is quite high. Obviously this varies a lot depending on the state of your draw bag, but in my experience it is higher than 50%. Filling the bag with blesses or curses will increase the chance of finding a match greatly.

Unless I’m mistaken, even once the 9 charges are depleted from them, they can still continue to be used to at least give your mystic a chance to fight or investigate using their intellect.

Having 9 charges on them also means that these are very useful in combination with Spectral Shield, giving low health mystics an easy way to stay in the game

Notably Jacqueline Fine can supercharge her chances of getting a match on this by drawing an additional 2 tokens

This card looks like a good way to handle situational cards that would be "dead" in your hand otherwise.

Use Cornered to place under George Barnaby your End of the Road or your Pelt Shipment, wait for the end of the scenario and use Grim Resolve to get your card draw, your resource, your action and your experience discount.