Wilson Richards

Wilson has two powerful abilities. Firstly, he becomes a completely normal 3/4/4/3 investigator when activating a Tool asset. Secondly, as befitting the investigator who came in the same box as Wolf Mask, he has the ability to make Wolf Mask look underpowered when he plays it.

Oh, and he very occasionally gets a resource discount.

Play Wilson as a pure fighter, and you'll soon wish you were playing any other investigator. Wilson doesn't get the additional clues from Roland Banks, doesn't get the stat boost & draw on demand of Mark Harrigan, doesn't get additional resource like Zoey Samaras, or additional actions like Tony Morgan/Leo Anderson, or recursion like William Yorick. Heck, he doesn't even get Guardian 5 access. Even Sister Mary with a Hammer or Spear fights better.

As a flex, Wilson's tool access means he plays like a 4 mystic who needs to play out more assets to be effective, has worse draw, less skill value, and more expensive assets*. The one upside Wilson has over a mystic is that he can use Geared Up quite decently, but that only slightly offsets the sheer number of assets he needs to play, and you'll find him less useful than even poor old Jim Culver who at least could ward off an Ancient Evil or two. To add insult to injury, he can't even take Michael Leigh.

Ad Hoc would have had decent combo potential if Wilson had any way of stringing a combo together reliably. As it is, you might be able to get off a free hammer swing or a free investigate in the game if you're lucky, but it's no way something you can depend on.

Future tools and upgrade/improvised cards might breathe new life into Wilson, but I wouldn't be holding my breath.


* Investigative tool assets are all hand slots items, which means you'll need to play out tool belt/bandolier/tinker if you want to use a 2 handed weapon. Unlike a mystic who gets away with simply boosting , Wilson has to boost both and to handle high fight and high shroud locations. You also don't have access to draw options like scroll and Arcane Initiate, econ options like Uncage and Prophetic (Wilson can't take Crafty), your recharge options are more expensive. I struggle to see any upside.

suika · 9419
That's unfair, a Hatchet build works great with him. There are enough cards that make use of his investigator abilities and enough cards that can easily boost his stats well, too. He's no vanilla fighter, but not as cumbersome as he looks, either. — AlderSign · 290
Havent played Wilson yet, but I dont see why he'd be a bad fighter so long as he draws ad hoc to get extra fight actions out of his turn. He has huge burst potential with ad hoc and pushed to the limit that other characters dont. — Spamamdorf · 5
Hatchet is a finicky weapon you use when you can't use better weapons. — suika · 9419
@Spamamdorf: Properly set up an in an ideal board state, Wilson has pretty high burst *potential*. He just has no way to reliably realize that potential. The problem is that Wilson has no reliable way to set up ad hoc (it's one copy, you want to play it on a specific weapon and you have terrible draw), or to draw/recur the cards to disard for ad hoc. — suika · 9419
Hatchet is also a fun and strong one with the right synergies. I guess at this point one has to ask themself why they play this game? To overpoweredly win every aspect of it or to solve fun puzzles. To each their own. — AlderSign · 290
What's fun is subjective, what's strong is less so. I've never commented on how fun Wilson is or isn't, I said Wilson isn't strong, and the fact that he can use Hatchet doesn't change that one bit. — suika · 9419
Opinions are also subjective. I don't get, for example, why your review downplays the resource discount and card pool access. If you can deckbuild and get a bit of XP you can make him strong. Just not in a combat-5-fighter-straightforward way. Ad Hatchet (not letting that one go): As someone who used it as main weapon in one of the worst standalone scenarios for it and won I have a huge amount of respect for it - again, you just need the right cards to make it work (which Wilson has access to). — AlderSign · 290
I downplay it because they're not very good? If your opinion is different show me a Wilson deck that performs well in 2p expert I'll be very happy to change my mind and learn something. — suika · 9419
I agree with most of your analysis, but I'd say that in my opinion, if Wilson could find Ad Hoc reliably, then he'd be a fun and efficient investigator, but having no way to find the one card that basically turns your power level from mediocre to good is really frustrating. Hopefully something will come to change this up, but I highly doubt it... — Valentin1331 · 69178
https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/4314607 — AlderSign · 290
Wolf Mask

0/10 because no thought to balance or thematics were given in the design of this and all other masks. I am cursed to forever see ____ Mask played in every single boring deck people play until the end of time because it's blatantly broken. Truly a terrible fate until I get tired of it and stop playing Arkham Horror.

Seriously though, I really hate these masks. Events and skill cards are the more interesting types of cards, and these diminish their use by virtue of being a ridiculous stat boost.

CHA · 7
Weird they didn't get chained. — MrGoldbee · 1452
In my point of view, Wolf Mask is the best (or most easy to use) one for what it's made for in comparison, sharing the place with Sparrow Mask. I think the other ones (Mouse, Fox and Cat) are more limiting in their replenishing mechanic. — AlderSign · 290
In my experience this hasn't happened at all. The masks turn up often but I don't even see them in half of decks, even wolf mask. — Primpod · 2
Frozen in Fear

Cross-listing a ruling here from the Duke page:

If you have Frozen in Fear in your threat area, using Duke’s first ability [Fight] would require spending an additional action, as it is a bold action matching Frozen in Fear's restriction. Using Duke's second ability is an action that does not match Frozen in Fear's restriction, so it does not require spending an additional action.

This squares with the rulings above, that the bold action designator is the critical part, and not the fact that you end up in a different location. So Duke is as much an emotional support dog as a bloodhound.

Frozen in fur. — MrGoldbee · 1452
Hallowed Chalice

A nice little hack to fullfil the limitation of the Chalice's second option is targeting a low sanity investigator and equipping St. Hubert's Key; it helps keep the Key in play while also being able to get rid of the doom easily. An investigator that can take those cards and benefit from the synergy is... "Ashcan" Pete! What's more, with his ability it's also possible to use the first option of Hallowed Chalice twice in rounds the agenda would advance anyway.

Not an insane combo, but you might get more out of this card than you think.

AlderSign · 290
Microscope

This card is bonkers for Monterey Jack. Correct me if I'm wrong, but with his Trusty Bullwhip from Relics of the Past, would it not put 2 evidence on Microscope if it kills an enemy? Essentially evading AND killing the enemy at the same time?

If so, with the help of Leo De Luca, it isn't unreasonable to think that Jack could get up to 8 clues a turn.

Sengy · 2
Sadly no, because Microscope's text says "successfully evaded" which implies the evade must come from an evasion attempt, not an automatic evade. Second, I honestly am not sure if you could even separate the effects (defeat and evade) from the Bullwhip. — AlderSign · 290
You can separate the effects, or at least you can respond to both the defeat and to the evade. But AlderSign is correct that the bullwhip evasion is not a successful evasion because you didn't test for it. If you want to run this nonsense, consider Kymani. They can take microscope 4 because it's a tool, and even with base int 2, testing at 8 is OK in normal difficult. And if you remove an enemy using 2 evasion tests in kymani that's 2 evidence on the microscope — NarkasisBroon · 10
Thanks for the clarification guys. Yeah Kymani would love this card, throw Stealth (3) in there and let the nonsense commence. — Sengy · 2
Kymani is very good at turning what should be singular plural. — Eudaimonea · 5