This spell does 2 damage without spending a charge; you're only forced to lose a charge on revealing a skull, or if you want to do the 3rd, targeted damage. If I'm not mistaken, that is a first for mystic spell assets. Its existence therefore reinforces the potential for a dedicated willpower fighter.

On the other hand, 5 xp is a lot, especially when they decided to reprint 0xp Machete in the same set, which similarly has access to infinite conditional 2 damage actions. They did not reprint Machete, and the new Machete must exhaust for +1 damage. Therefore, I believe a more appropriate comparison for this card is the new Sledgehammer (3). From that perspective, Cosmic Flame (5) seems easily worth its xp cost. It grants +2 willpower, unlike its guardian counterpart, which offers no bonus on the 2 damage/action mode. It offers higher damage per action. It also offers the utility of splitting the 1 damage across a second target, and even damaging an aloof enemy without engaging. All that, and it occupies only one arcane slot, compared to sledgehammer's two!

For those with dreams of using willpower tests to shoot enemies forever and ever, look to this card.

It's hard to appreciate On the Brink with the current card pool, but if you are playing with everything you have this cards gets ludicrously good very fast. It completely outclasses upgraded Unexpected Courage. Having this in hand means you can take bigger risks, and commit more cards in hand to a test you want to pass without worrying about wasting all those card if you draw the wrong token.

This especially helps you a lot with skills that care about succeeding to trigger, like Do or Die and Resourceful, and especially cards that want you to succeed by 2 at least, like Brute Force, Sharp Vision and Expeditious Retreat, while also offering autofail protection, letting you return the card and draw one to replace On the Brink.

It has less good synergy with Take Heart, given you usually want to commit this to test you know are gonna fail, and getting a +2 makes said failure less certain, outside of Drawing Thin, but the level 0 version introduced in Miguel's pack works a lot better for that on the basis it only gives just a +1 instead.

So if you are a Survivor that likes to commits lots of cards, like Silas Marsh and Isabelle Barnes, there is no reason why you shouldn't run this. You won't regret it.

How to understand (Max once per game)? You can heal an investigator only until you fail, or you just cannot take more than one trauma per game once you fail the test? Or maybe you can heal any investigator max once per game and if you fail you get trauma?

Not much to say about this card, except I like how it is very close to the Heavy Rain treachery in Scarlet Keys, so we have consistent rain mechanics.

The reason I am writing this is a maybe helpful suggestion: I was going into the mines on day 2, and I didn't like the flavor of rain underground. In case this comes up for you and you feel the same, and you own The Forgotten Age (as you should), in the encounter set Forgotten Ruin, there are 3 copies of Deep Dark. I am switching these out for this scenario on Day 2. They are not identical, but they both target your clues in a way. Deep Dark seems weaker, but it's a good flavor fit I think. In 4 player, Deep Dark could be worse if it comes up at the wrong time.

So they do buffed .45 Automatic by reducing 1 resource, which is okay. But also with a new name, like why? I don't really see a problem if they just buff .45 Automatic instead.

I don't really appreciate card games eliminating old cards like this, although I can see .45 Automatic are not eliminated totally in Arkham, because you can take them both if you need four .45 Automatic. But still, this gun will replace .45 Automatic completely.