Crystal Pendulum

This card is a Mystic's Rabbit's Foot, except it can also randomly draw cards if you don't get hit by a check, and gives a buff to the one stat that you really care about. It also gains value as the difficulty of the campaign increases, since you will end up eating more random (3)/(4)-difficulty treachery checks on your bad stats - declare that your stat will go to zero, get hit by the usual -3 token, and hey, free card.

Really kind of a shockingly good card for level 0, and if you're trying to play a strong Mystic then I would call this an auto-include. It's powerful synergy with commonly-played cards like Premonition is the icing that it didn't need.

Hasa · 1
Teamwork

It is an excellent card in unique circumstances. For example, this saved in 'Stick to the Plan' and a Rogue in the party that generates a lot of resources suddenly makes expensive cards not so expensive to use for the entire party. You lose one round coordinating in exchange for bringing the 'big guns' combo of your deck, this can turn over on an elite encounter.

The bad part is that you are limited to a Guardian and a Rogue, and having too many expensive cards (for this to be useful) can be counterproductive early.

mlucas · 2
I feel, the card only got worse with the growing card pool. All classes got their own cash cards, Schoffner's can even pay for others, as long, it's just for items, hence won't help to play a Agency Backup, that's "Uncage the Body" from TSK is for. There are a lot of cards, that can do stuff for other investigators, and each of them is a small nail in the coffin of Teamwork. No need to shuffle some soak around, given how many cards (in particular in Guardian) can soak for others. So this card is mainly for jank like passing a firearm to Lilly. — Susumu · 385
Well yes the expanding cardpool reduces this card's value in terms of helping a player with a struggling economy, but increases the potential for ridiculous jank setups such as the sled dog army. This isn't a card to generally include in any deck, but for groups that like to coordinate an involved plan for some fun jank. Just the fact that this card exists blows the walls of deck building wide open for folks who like to look for unique group deck builds. — rockmaninoff · 3
Custom Modifications

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?

"I'll see you in hell!"

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.

drjones87 · 212
I did play this in calvin, and I did end up using it once or twice, and the icons are nice. But that's what we call "niche". — Therealestize · 78
How about dealing damage to elites? — Tharzax · 1
An errata to let it deal 3-4 damage to an elite enemy could be thematic. Example: you have The king in yellow on the ropes, but you're out of ammo...you give one sad look to your friends before lighting the fuse and stopping the madness. Maybe add "You may choose to deal 3-4 damage to an elite enemy, if so, your investigator is killed." Reinforcing this as a "I can't win...but they can'' card. This also keeps the option to not die from using it if you just swarmed by non-elites. — , · 580
Swift Reflexes

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

I think you have to see the two agility as a solid use of the card, if you never plan to commit it then there are better options, but if you do need +2 agi often holding this as a panic button until it gets committed is fine. — Zerogrim · 299