This is definitely one of my favorite custom cards from SK. It actually does something that I didn't think would be possible because of the likes of melee weapons. It makes playing firearms not only fun, but effective.

Let me ask, do you guys play with the shotgun(4)?

It's a tough card to play with. It gives you +3, and you have the chance to deal round 5 damage per attack. Which kills bosses quick. But you do have to work for this number, and especially on hard and/or expert. You will find that you may forgo using this weapon because it just is not reliable.

-What if you pulled a -6 but the card says "try again"

-What if this card said "+5" instead of "+3"?

-What if you did at least 3 damage, you actually do 4 instead?

-What if using extra ammunition gives you a Chance at 20 damage instead of 15?

-What if you were fighting a big monster off a friend, and pulled that damn auto fail. You DONT murder your friend?!

That's the power of this card WITH 1 WEAPON!!!! It's insane what combos you can pull off, Tony attaching this to saw-off shotgun(5), with +2 fight and the usually over success mechs makes it more reliable to over succeed 6. Makes small side-arms like colt .32 or .45 pack a real punch with quick silver.makes cards like the Mauser c96 and even the Beretta M1918 more reliable. I made an insane deck with Becky being my main damage dealer and custom mod was a cornerstone in that deck, always stick it to "stick to the plan(3)" to always see it in your opening hand.

The only downside is that,you can't negate the autofail. You MUST play weapons. It does require a ton of resources, not just in playing weapons, but it's attachment as well.

But to be real, in guardian, what else is new?

As others have said this card is not helpful on its own.

So how could it be?

Well, if the "non elite" was removed it certainly would. But then, it would be overpowered.

What if it was fast? Doesn't matter, you're out anyway and getting one extra action out before you blow yourself up probably isn't going to make a difference.

How about cost? It's 0. It can't be any cheaper.

What about if the trauma goes away and you're just defeated? This makes it a little better, but you still probably lose the scenario and those penalties can be worse.

The only thing we are left with then is... what if you aren't defeated? Two ways to do that. Either an upgraded version of this card deals damage to you and everyone at your location to clear then out (wait isn't that just Dynamite Blast), or guardians get an ally that specifically intercepts being defeated (something along the lines of "when you would be defeated, Exile this card. It is defeated instead). This would work, but would also technically screw up encounters as some automatically defeat you when time runs out.

So... there is really no way to make this card useful even with future versions. It's a dead card.

This card is esentially "Skids" O'Toole's ability on a different time window, and Skids' ability isn't considered that great on its own. Here you are sacrificing on top of that a card slot to be able to take an action, and you need to draw the card first too: it's not good.

There are some interesting interactions you can make with this card, like having someone fight an enemy, then use this card to pull them off with an engage action so that they can take the rest of the turn doing something else, getting them ready to be fought or evaded by you or tanking the damage for someone else, but even then, not really worth it.

The main issue with this card is that the action you take must be succesful to be worth the resoruces you play, so the best use for this is ironically to take testless actions overall, or in scenarios where you need LOTS of actions

It's not terrible, and I can see being slot as fodder to get to the max legal deck size, but unless you do some real good strategic thinking on how to make the most of an action taken during someone else turn, this is probably one of the first cards you are gonna replace with a leveled up one or with adaptable

Combos well with Ornate Bow, which is a great rogue weapon except that it often leaves you in situations where you have to reload while engaged. Spending an action to evade something that's going to be dead at the end of the round is a waste, and it's impossible to fire twice in a round without extra actions or eating an AoO.

Also has good functionality with Dirty Fighting: You forego the +2 bonus because the enemy isn't exhausted, but since the reaction triggers on a successful evade, you still get the free attack action.

Combine them both in a big ol' 8xp gumbo and you can disengage > attack > reload > attack > reload to take down all but the beefiest enemies. Alternately, combine Stealth and DF with .41 Derringer to get yet another action for free.

With the errata, this weapon triggers on every Bless token, which is insane on Sister Mary. Easily better than Blessed Blade, even though that generates Bless tokens, because this is just a great payoff.