Ascetic

I'm a newer player. A friend and I are playing through every campaign in a row. So far we have gotten to Dream Eaters, which needed us to make secondary characters. We both included this card in our decks for those characters (our "interns").

I found this card to be seriously mediocre on first reading, but after thinking about it more there were some situations where taking it makes sense. I will agree with the other review that the "correct" use of this card is to make swapping out to another investigator mid-campaign less painful, but I think that isn't the only use. I would not use it for every character or every campaign, but there are a few situations I think it is worth using even from mission one.

What does this do? In essence, it significantly front-loads your character's power curve. Your character goes into the campaign significantly more powerful than they otherwise would, at the expense of not having as much experience available at the end of the campaign. If you take this and In the Thick of It you can start the game with 13xp, not even counting any other shenanigans involving characters that start the game with xp, or other ways to upgrade cards without paying experience (for example, my character for Dream Eaters uses this and Down the Rabbit Hole to start the game with some unspent experience, then gets more value for it over time).

That seems like a bad deal initially. Campaigns are usually easiest in the beginning and get harder over time. Why would I want to make the already easy part even easier at the expense of making the hard parts even harder? Since this card significantly distorts the difficulty curve of a campaign, let's think about campaigns with weird difficulty curves.

Some campaigns start very difficult, then ease off for most of the rest, so being stronger at the beginning is actually helpful (Forgotten Age springs to mind). Some campaigns are very short, or otherwise don't give much experience, so you aren't really losing that much with this card (the intro campaign, or one half of Dream Eaters). Lastly, some decks just don't need all that much experience. They're fully functional at ~15 experience and don't get significantly better beyond that. In any of those cases this card is mostly upside.

Another hidden upside to this card is the simple fact that you no longer have to care about gaining experience. For us, that has definitely changed how we play the game, and can be surprisingly freeing. Victory locations are meaningless to you so there is no need to try and investigate them unless it contributes to completing the mission. Same with victory enemies. Don't even try to fight them, just evade them or otherwise go around. Heck, Unsolved Case, which taunts me every time I play my main character of Joe Diamond, is a completely dead card in a deck using Ascetic.

I have found this lack of care about experience to actually make the game easier, which is a potentially hidden upside.

Anyway, I hope that made some sense to you and may have encouraged you to take this card in a situation you otherwise wouldn't. I'm sure there are many things I haven't thought about, so please feel free to point them out in the comments. Have a great day and thank you for reading all this!

Jim_Bob · 15
Couldn't have said it better. — AlderSign · 326
Gatling Gun

In essence M1918 BAR's meaner big brother with a prison record, the Gatling Gun is one of the best weapon assets in AHLCG. As it stands, I would say it's a game changer. My thoughts are in a few sections below:


Pros:

  • Able to deal 6 damage in a single action, which is unrivalled across all weapon assets. A fair number of Elite enemies have 3 health, so these can be killed in a single action – tremendously valuable.
  • Can have a staggering +6 on attacks, largely negating the need for other boosters or skills to commit.
  • Starts with a good amount of uses. For example if just dealing two damage per action and so using two ammo, you could take 6 shots before needing to reload.
  • Can kill groups of enemies, which is a massive boon for action economy.

Cons:

  • When facing large groups of enemies (especially swarm enemies) the difficulty for the fight action can become very high.
  • Failure on 6 ammo tests is punishing, as it wastes a lot of resources.
  • If you're using multiple ammo on tests regularly, you need ammo support events in your deck.
  • Sits in the class, and so is inaccessible for Guardians.
  • The 5 resource price tag is on the costly side.

Deckbuilding Tips:


Investigator Pairings:


Overall Gatling Gun is a very powerful card if properly supported, combining a massive boost with very high damage and the ability to kill groups of enemies like the Flamethrower. I'm not sure if it will remain un-tabooed for long, currently 5 XP is well worth the price of admission. I posted a Tony deck with Gatling Gun just before this review, so feel free to check it out for inspiration.

HungryColquhoun · 8904
Strong-Armed is a Nonbo with Firearms. I also don't think, Finn is in the art, or did he grow a mustache recently? — Susumu · 372
Good catch on Strong-Armed. I think it could be Finn, Tony has stubble in his Colt pic but not on his Investigator card. — HungryColquhoun · 8904
Sign of Xelotaph

They were so careful with the limitations they put on Protective Incantation ("Group limit 2 copies of Protective Incantation in play.") and The Chthonian Stone/The Chthonian Stone (being unique) and then they print THIS?! I can even replenish this with Uncage the Soul!

With changes like these you can really see they want the game to go in a different direction.

EDIT - explanation: I indeed think this card is too powerful, especially with interactions like Akachi Onyele and Uncage the Soul, and that is also what the direction the game moves into is: Power creep, as what happends to every expandable card game at some point. With cards like this I just think it's becoming more and more obvious.

AlderSign · 326
I don't understand point you're trying to make here. I can't see what you mean in your last sentence. Is this card too powerful? If so why? And what's the direction you are taking abkut — bugiel_marek · 24
I agree this is undeniably better seal tech than the previously printed alternatives, but those cards are terrible. There’s a wide range between “stronger than Chthonian Stone” and “too strong,” and I’m not convinced this card winds up on the wrong end of that spectrum. — Eudaimonea · 5
I don't really think this is particularly strong power creep, if you can even call it that. Cthonian stone is unique yes, but can potentially last much longer, especially if you're stacking multiple seal cards like you're implying you want to. If you put two of these down you're guaranteed to lose at least one of them pretty soon. — Spamamdorf · 5
Katarina Sojka

Until you realize the auto-fail is also a symbol this sounds like an amazingly good card. The insanely increased odds to just fail the test, no matter how many Ritual Candles you pack, make this card hard to play, I'd argue.

But who knows, maybe you don't wanna pass the test (survivor tech, anyone?), or just fire Agatha Crane's ability, or have Seal of the Seventh Sign out (although it won't last long if you play this card)...

EDIT - Fun fact: In theory, you could be stuck in an endless loop if you put Katarina Sojka together with Seal of the Seventh Sign and people sealing the other symbols via Protective Incantation, The Chthonian Stone, The Chthonian Stone, Bulwark, Crystalline Elder Sign, Day of Reckoning, Dial of Ancients, Serpents of Yig, Sign of Xelotaph, The Codex of Ages, and/or Unrelenting. This is also a great example why knowledge should be made easily accessible to the players in any game - because I am not even sure if being stuck in an endless loop counts as "having the potential to change the game state" and therefore would allow triggering Katarina's reaction ability or not. Yeah, the chaos bag is not endless, but it is at least undefined, if not an unreachable state. So what happens when you do this?

AlderSign · 326
I'm not even sure this is good in Agatha. If you exhaust Katarina and then reveal a symbol token, you don't ignore anything and then Agatha's ability isn't active, is it ? That makes it really unreliable ... — aurchen · 77
That's true, if your first revealed token is a symbol, that's even more meh. — AlderSign · 326
I agree with the fact that pulling the Autofail 20% of the time sucks, but if that means that you pass 80% of your tests when using Katarina, it can be worth it. Especially if you pack some payoff like Sixth Sense (4). — Valentin1331 · 75572
If you're worried about the auto fail, since the wording is "when you reveal" and not "when you would reveal" it seems like you can grab one token and then decide you dont like it and reveal new ones, so it could be a rudimentary form of test protection? — Spamamdorf · 5
A typical mid-campaign scenario will have the elder sign, auto-fail, 2-3 skulls, and probably 4-5 other symbols IME. So Katarina is probably autofailing only 1 in 8 or so. — OrionAnderson · 100
The good but boring use for this is to hunt blesses for Ancient Covenant, making life boring since 20-whenever it was. — OrionAnderson · 100
I think the timing opportunity in question is the step of the skill test, not "when you reveal A chaos token". — AlderSign · 326
Some investigators can also mitigate the auto fail by taking the upgraded token of faith, which allows you to do the test again. — Tharzax · 1
Nimble

Another rogue card that got a huge glow up when Scarlet Keys and Hemlock Vale re-wrote the whole Rogue playbook.

Up to three moves as a free action is a potentially crazy power level for a level zero card. People run Shortcut to move once. People run Scout Ahead to move three times, but that costs actions and resources. (Both those cards do have other utility, which helps them earn their spots).

But as the esteemed Snacc noted when this card was released, Nimble's value is very situational unless you put some work into unlocking it. By default, the only way to intentionally start an agility test is to evade an enemy. Moving away after an evade can occasionally be a really good effect. But often enemies engage me while I'm at a location I still need to interact with, so I'm not interested in moving immediately. Also, opportunities to take 2-3 moves at once for real value are uncommon in most scenarios, and waiting for an enemy to spawn at the right time isn't reliable.

(All the same problems apply to Agility treacheries)

These days, though, you can investigate with Thieves' Kit or Forensic Kit and use this to zoom around on your own time. (Investigate a location with no clues on it if you have to). We can murder someone with a British Bull Dog and zoom away from the scene of the crime. Or Grift an aloof enemy before doing the same. This card is also the best argument I can find for actually using the Bolstering upgrade on Friends in Low Places, which will give it a wild icon letting you commit it to anything.

OrionAnderson · 100