Split the Angle
Ire of the Void

Atut

Spell.

Cost: 2.

Neutralne

Norman Withers deck only. Replacement.

: Reveal the top card of the encounter deck.

Exhaust Split the Angle and discard the top card of your deck: Discard the top card of the encounter deck.

...another spell, likewise rendered phonetically, for "splitting the angle" and walking through time in the flesh.
Chris Ostrowski
Ire of the Void #8.
Split the Angle

FAQs

No faqs yet for this card.

Reviews

As other reviewers have noted, this card pairs beautifully with Alyssa Graham. Basically, Alyssa lets you look at the top encounter card for free, but makes you pay a hefty price -- doom -- to get rid of it. Split the Angle makes you pay to peek -- an action -- but then discard what you saw mostly for free. Put the two together, and it's ALL free.

Commenters, however, have done what commenters do, and raised annoyingly rational objections. They point out that you only get one StA, so you might never find it at all, and if you do, there's no guarantee Alyssa is in play, etc. etc., doom and gloom. Unfortunately, they are right...

I think, in the end, StA takes a sweeping deckbuilding commitment to make it reliably good. Step one is including 2 copies of Alyssa Graham. As others have noted, you'll probably want to upgrade into level 3 Scrying. Scrying is especially handy in solo, because it gives you multiples turns of information about the encounter deck in a single use. Say you're solo-ing away, and in the tea leaves you find a pair of ancient evils and something relatively harmless. You can arrange them into an Evils-Meh-Evils sandwich; and use StA two turns in a row to discard the two slices of death-bread, drawing only the mild Meh in between (and something random) -- all for no actions at all. Of course, the downside here is that you are now using both your arcane slots on encounter-deck mining...

As long as you're investing in all these cards that let you burn through or optimally order the encounter deck, you may as well toss in Stargazing (you are an astronomer, after all...). You're much more likely to actually draw the The Stars Are Right if you can dig for it with Alyssa/StA/Scrying.

With 2 copies of Alyssa and 2 copies of level 3 Scrying, the odds are now pretty good that if you do manage to draw StA, you'll have something to pair it with. If you are absolutely determined to make this combination happen, Word of Command can help you find StA or Scrying, and Calling in Favors can help you track down a shy Alyssa.

By now, we're talking about quite a commitment! Is it worth it? Strategically, maybe not, but it might make for a fun thematic build. A prescient astronomer with occult leanings reading doom in the night skies -- and then somehow averting it by means of dubious geometry or an eldritch astrolabe -- that sounds pretty Arkham-y to me.

Correction: Split the Angle does not use up an arcane slot! Thus, you can have both it and Scrying in play, and still be packing heat as well. — Mordenlordgrandison · 425

Uses for this strenght card:

  • Kill a bad treachery. The inbuilt helps make this happen but this use really takes off with Alyssa Graham in your deck. Mind the strict build restrictions and potential inconsistency since youre not guaranteed to draw Split the Angle. If ally slots are hard to find then Scrying and Scrying

Obviously the 5 mythic level 0 card limit can affect your ability to field Alyssa, but take it from me, this is a hugely powerful interaction.

  • Kill a useless draw. Your top card is always revealed and if you see something that isnt helpful, for example Emergency Cache when you're sitting on 7 resources, you can rid yourself of the dead draw action-free and reveal something immediately useful.

Be mindful not to kill cards you need later or yourself with the horror from cycling your deck.

  • Foresight is good. The least useful ability in my opinion, but you can always spend a few actions to spy on the Mythos deck. You wont always see stuff to kill and Norman struggles with action econ, but knowing the future is helpful, especially in larger groups where each unique action is less important. In a 4 player game you can help your friends prepate for enemies and if you spent 6 actions spying and kill just 1 Doom generation thats a return of 6 actions for your investment.

Norman cant gain cards like Deduction, Archaic Glyphs and his is so high that he gets limited returns from Drawn to the Flame or Rite of Seeking, this may mean that youre picking up every clue singly with an test, thus actions will be primo real estate, especially solo.

Tsuruki23 · 2472
My general take on this card is that it's not really worth actually putting into play unless you have Alyssa out there. And I don't think that combo is really worth it, since you only have one Split the Angle and won't draw it most of the time, and Norman has several other allies which are much more consistently powerful. — CaiusDrewart · 3004
I do agree the interaction with Scrying is pretty nifty, but you would really want the level III Scrying for this, and that's pretty expensive... but maybe. — CaiusDrewart · 3004
I think Scrying(3) is pretty good for Norman (mid-late campaign). He doesn't need Rite of Seeking, so he usually has a free arcane slot. You also want to be investing in the expensive XP cards, else why not just play Daisy? — duke_loves_biscuits · 1213
@duke_loves_biscuits: Totally reasonable. I'm definitely not going to buy Scrying III before Shrivelling V, cool synergy with Norman or not, but you'll probably be able to pick it up eventually. (Especially if you spend two of Norman's 5 Mystic slots on Delve Too Deep, which I would recommend.) At that point this combo looks fine. I agree Norman can skip Rite of Seeking and doesn't have a pressing need for his second Arcane slot (though Protective Incantation is a fine way to spend Milan money, and he does need one slot for Shrivelling.) — CaiusDrewart · 3004

I've played as Norman Withers through a few scenarios and this card has come up several times. I have never played this card (although I've been occasionally tempted to play it at a discount off the top of his deck). However, I really like the icons on it. Norman will ideally be doing a lot tests that take advantage of his high and , so being able to augment a critical check with this card is pretty nice. I would say that is probably the best use for this card.

If this had to be played for some reason, I don't know if it's worth it to use the icon unless the lead investigator is close to defeat and needs to avoid damage or horror in order to stay in the game. Interestingly, the effect can be used to remove the top card of your deck if you have a skill card there and you want to try to get a better asset card to play with Norman's top-of-the-deck discount. However, I don't think this is very efficient - if you're using cards that you're ok with going straight to the discard pile, maybe it's worth considering swapping them out of your deck entirely? Also, drawing a card using the draw action has the same effect - it does cost an action, but you also get a card out if it that way. Some weird scenarios do want you to mill the encounter deck, but even then this is not a very efficient way to do so.

In short - it's an interesting card, but I'd normally only ever use it for the icons. The icons are quite useful.

With Alyssa this card is pretty good to remove encounter cards without adding doom to Alyssa — Django · 4855
Does the "Reveal the top card of the encounter deck" ability make you resolve treacheries yourself when they have Revelation effects? — slothgodfather · 7
Ironically (but fortunately) no. Revelation effects trigger when the card is drawn. — Death by Chocolate · 1359