Power Word

Power Word

This is my favourite card in the Scarlet Keys pack (among many great cards).

Why?

  • It's flexible: Customisable offers lots of ways to lean into a card giving lots of replayability in future campaigns.
  • It's powerful. It's REALLY powerful.
  • It's a puzzle. If you manage to get 3 enemies with Power Word in play, managing them all each round is a challenge, and sometimes a negotiation with other players. When you solve the puzzle, the benefits are huge. Sometimes the "solution" means an investigator has to compromise in some other way.
  • It's a story. I play AHLCG for the RPG moments and this card creates many. I had turns where I Commanded 3 enemies to do things to my will, then blew them all up with Storm of Spirits, followed by an Ethereal Slip across the map to victory.

But more than anything, it's the best card because It's ALL those things combined. There are many great cards in the game, that do one or another thing very well. Consider Grizzled. It's hugely powerful, and flexible, but, in the end, it boils down to "just" an incredible Skill card.

And that's why I love Power Word because it enables us to enjoy every aspect of what makes a great card, in one place.

acotgreave · 886

Hidden Pocket

Hidden Pocket

Thanks to this card, any 4 of the Dunwich investigators who aren't above taking things can work together to create a garbage can lid that has 7 other, smaller garbage can lids hidden inside of it.

Has science gone too far?

EDIT: No it has not, due to the play-from-garbage-only clause on shield, which I overlooked. Wow. What a literally garbage card.

HanoverFist · 744
The garbage can is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside ! — aurchen · 141
Sadly I don't think this works. I'll take that plays an item from your hand, and improvised shield can only be played from your discard pile, and doesn't use "as if in your hand" in its text. I don't think you can steal garbage can lids — NarkasisBroon · 10
That might not be the problem if you can discard the shields reliable, like Petes or Wendy's abilities. The more interesting question is how do you get the 5 other hidden pockets you need to put all in one. — Tharzax · 1
It's a problem because unless you can't have an illicit garbage can. I'll take that can't play improvised shield, whether it's in your hand or discard. You can't have 8 nested shields. The best you might manage is a shield with 8 guns in it :-P — NarkasisBroon · 10
The method is to have all 4 investigators play 2 shields each using "I'll take that!", and place Hidden Pockets on them. Then, use Teamwork to have any one of them create the trashcan lid singularity. — HanoverFist · 744
... except yes, only now am I seeing that improvised shield can only be played from the discard pile. ffs. Welp, that won't work. — HanoverFist · 744

Snake Pit

Snake Pit

There are plenty of sad stories behind this location... Most often, it is a place where one of our beloved investigators is buried forever. An extremely hilarious place for the first blind playthrough.

chrome · 60

Decorated Skull

Decorated Skull

This is a neat card thematically, but let's do the math.

For the purposes of this, let's assume actions, cards and resources are an equivalent value, since you can always spend one action for one of either. They aren't, but weighting the value of actions and cards is even more unkind to the skull.

Playing this out costs one action and one card, starting you at a -2 deficit for no return. You have to do this early on, because things need to die around you before you can actually use it, and you can't guarantee when that will happen.

Clicking once costs one action for one resource and one card, so you're still at a net -1 deficit.

Clicking twice costs another action, so you've now broken even. You've now spent three actions and a card to gain two resources and two cards. That's equivalent to not playing the skull at all and simply clicking for the cards/resources, except with much less flexibility, and you're wasting your accessory slot for the privilege.

It's not until the third activation, requiring three dead enemies/allies and four invested actions to actually start to come out on top economically, and only barely. At that point you've heavily invested in improving your basic Get Resource/Draw Card action, something you (ideally) aren't actually using in the back half of the scenario.

That said, the upgraded version is phenomenal, if you can stomach 3xp. Assuming you can play it out and wait for three things to die around you (or two with Akachi), you can jump from a -2 deficit at install to a net +3 payoff on the first click. It even compares favorably to the elite ciggs, which continues to only draw one card/turn. It is a shame that 3xp prices it out of Leo or the ever-hilarious Bow Wendy decks, but Tony and Akachi can make great use of it.

CombStranger · 287
Probably your salesman can sell you one if you are a guardian, solving the two main problems for the guardian doing his job — Tharzax · 1
Even tossed to someone else via Bob it just isn't that good return. The guardian probably would be much happier with you giving them a Lucky Cig Case than a creepy bedazzled skull. Or heck... just play Faustian Bargain targeting them! As for the original math by CombStranger, its even more dire than all that! Instead of playing this card, you could play emergency cache! For 1 card and action (the same price as this), you get 3 resources right then and there. You then can just click 2 times for cards, which puts you at +2 cards and +3 resources, the equivalent of hitting deco skull 3 times, putting it 1 action behind and making it take whopping 4 uses to catch up to a mid tier economic card. Even if you value resources late (and rogues often do) your just so much better off playing economy and draw events. — dezzmont · 221
The salesman would not likely use up one of his preciouse level 0 slots, but rather purchase the upgrade. Still, selling your own objects to other players needs to have "Shrewd Dealings" in play (or hiting it with "Black Market"). I would rather take cards, Bob can reliably use himself, too. He's not that great of a fighter, nor an Ally-centric investigator. — Susumu · 381

Stealth

Stealth

Ludicrously good card for any evasion based rogues: you don't always care about exahusting enemies when you attempt to disengage with them, especially if they are not hunters nor if there are no clues in the location or reason to stay. This card makes it trivial to evade most foes given that rarely there are ones with more than 5 agility, and it's very good to trigger effects on evasion too

This card is straight up broken with Kymani: it allows them against any 2 agility foes to test for a base of 7 against 0, which is more than enough to discard anyone that does not have health value per investigator, of course you still want someone paired up with them that can take care of elites and victory enemies in the old-fashioned way... (Although Kymani can as well by fighting dirty with a chainsaw, it is just exp pricey) And it only gets more ridiculous with its level 3 version allowing them to defeat enemies with one action

It's even good in multiplayer: you evade a foe and leave them active to be engaged by the local guardian that cares about engaging enemies for special effects, making it a very versatile ability in the right hands: to top it off, it's ludicrously cheap too for Rogue standards, who have more than enough money to spare.

Absolutely brilliant card, don't understimate it like I did, especially if you are planning a trip to the jungle...

HeroesOfTomorrow · 57
#Kymani does not interact with #Stealth like you're saying. Kymani's ability only triggers when the enemy is exhausted but Stealth explicitly does not exhaust them. — Tralfagar · 7
@Tralfagar Kymani's ability *does* interact with Stealth, but only when used as the second evasion - aka after the enemy is already exhausted from a normal Evade, you can use Kymani's free re-engage and then use Stealth (which explicitly is an Evade check) to attempt to discard the exhausted foe. — CaptainPlanet · 1