This weakness has a lucky interaction with Lily Chen, who sports up to 4 copies of Burden of Destiny. When Through the Gates draws one of the Burdens of Destiny cards, resolve the Burden. Then Through the Gates' 'if' phrase has been "successfully resolved in full", so the last sentence kicks in, and all other copies of Burden of Destiny get removed for the game! Cull 5 weaknesses from your deck for the price of 1!

A Principle Guide to Play These “Good” Dogs and Be a Winter Olympic Champion:

Contra to some of the previous negative reviews, I shall argue that this combo is actually a "good" combo in its own right when properly built. Here's how the combo can or should be set up:

1) It requires your “full commitment” from the get go in order to make it shine. The combo will cost you 5-6 desk space, 1-2xp (4 dogs + I recommend 2 Rod of Animalism for consistency. If you commit to this build, you might as well go all in for it), five actions and $10 to set up (almost always play your Rod first before the dogs). Seriously consider In the Thick of It for 2 Rod from the start if you really are going for this build.

2) Choose the characters who can make this combo reliably works: they are those with the (innate) ability to do consistent + fast card draws (+ good economy). You want to get Rod and dogs out reliably so that by mid to mid-late game you are all set for it.

3) For example: Harvey Walters can reliably cycle his desk 2+ times per scenario. He’s get strong economy to put the combo down (with free actionless cash in Cryptic Writings, as well as Dr. Milan Christopher, Crack the Case and Burning the Midnight Oil). The same can be said for Winifred Habbamock, especially once you have got Lucky Cigarette Case + Pickpocketing (and, better, its lv. 2 version) down for draws, and $ isn’t an issue for Rogue. Carolyn Fern is another candidate who will find this combo beneficial, and can make is combo work, although her card draw will still be significantly slower comparing to Harvey and Wini.

4) Now the last obstacle for making this combo work is the total amount of action (5!) that it requires (unless you are using Leo Anderson which I won’t address his case here. Guardians minus Carolyn in general don’t need the dogs to help them fight anyways). This obstacle is real, and my advise is to realistically think of this combo as (usually) a mid-to-late game combo. You can get this combo set up early-mid game if you’re lucky. But it’s perfectly fine to be patient and wait. The key is to not feel that you are “forced” to play Rod and dogs down when you have other more important things to do in early game (i.e., stuffs that help you to get clues!). In early game you usually don’t need to use the dogs’ strongest +4 move and +4 fight/damages abilities anyways. So, if you are Harvey, in early game play Rod and dogs down only if you need their soaks that protect you from being badly damaged by his weakness Thrice-Damned Curiosity. Or, If you are Wini, start playing the combo down when you have nothing better to do after your Lockpicks is exhausted. Remember, having 1 dog down is useless, having 2 down is weak (although it occasionally helps you move 2x for an action), having 3 down is the turning point, and with all the commitment you really want all the dogs to fight for you & teleport you across the map.

5) For low fight characters, you will need to prioritize and pack ?? (or fist) skill cards that can help you to land the dog bites. For example, Harvey fight at +5 with 4 dogs out. So you want to pack some (upgraded better) Essence of the Dream (via Dream Diary translation), Plan of Action, Inquiring Mind and maybe even an Unexpected Courage or two. I would take Plan of Action over Perception, for example, if I know I am using this combo in a Harvey desk. And, of course, another way to help with having your dog bites land on a tough enemy is to ask your teammate to give you one of their Promise of Power or Overpower, etc. Wini can fight with +7 with 4 dogs down, plus you will have her signature Anything You Can Do, Better + multiple ? skill cards (Opportunist, Unexpected Courage , "Watch this!", Momentum, Quick Thinking, etc.), so this should not be an issue for her.

6) In conclusion: Is this the most efficient or powerful combo in the game? Well, it isn’t. But it's still rightfully good when properly built. Sure, it is certainly the one combo that requires both careful planning and commitment. So why do it? Because coming with this level of commitment I would argue that the level of satisfaction that you will be rewarded after all the effort made, is also unparalleled. It’s a satisfactory 10/10 level combo when it works and you see your dog bites landed and finished off a boss, dealing as much damages as your fellow Guardian teammates and stealing the show from them; or when you see your dogs sled you to the finish line to resign or pick up that final clue from afar just before that stupid final doom ruin your scenario and spare you from taking (another) mental trauma. You are a Winter Olympic champion in the story of Arkham when all is said and done.

This thing is crazy. It's half of Ice Pick (3)'s reaction four times, except you don't have to discard it and it takes up no hand slots and it's free. I can't stress how important extra damage is on your own terms in this game. Getting extra clues for free is great, but doing the exact right amount of damage to an enemy keeps you from taking damage/horror yourself. Edge of the Earth has a few nasty enemies that care about doing any amount of damage at once, so this card is extremely useful to avoid shuffling in extra Tekeli-li. Oh, and the icons are insane -- if you have access to Well Prepared in this campaign, you take it.

This card is amazingly useful in return to TCU. That campaign is filled with two health foes, but worse, enemies that explode when you kill them in your space. And the finale has foes that spawn way out of your way, and possibly several clues away because of the level’s gimmick. It might be a bit overcosted and it’s definitely situational, but this could be the difference between a safe turn and an agenda advance when you’re at the edge of the universe or just trying to make it through the western Massachusetts train system.

Now that more time has passed, more games have been played, and the wider set of Blurse cards is up for consideration, I believe Tides of Fate has a slightly wider place in decks than first anticipated. It's still a finicky form of generation, and will only work when you have a reasonable amount of both generation and synergy, so it's unlikely to see much use if you're only going one way or the other. It will also be of limited use if you don't have a way to mitigate the aftermath, where things shift back to curses. However, if your entire team is playing into Blurse cards, there are enough powerful effects that can be timed such that you can take advantage of the benefits, and avoid the worse of the aftermath.

Getting into the bag is probably the easy part. There are a few cards that have powerful enough effects to warrant adding the odd curse or two into the deck - Faustian Bargain, Deep Knowledge, Stirring Up Trouble, Promise of Power, Ríastrad, Spirit of Humanity, and Justify the Means are all powerful cards that can be used to add a handful of curses. And, of course, a Blurse-happy team will tend towards plenty of Tempt Fate as well. There are definitely other ways to drop a lot of into the bag, but going that far is more likely to be the realm of full synergy, rather than just generation.

In fact, most bless-focused builds are more than happy to run Keep Faith in order to add blessings, and this is one resource cheaper and does more when there are 3-4 curses in the bag. Even combining this with a single Tempt Fate is comparable to that. To get reasonable value from this card, it's more important to make good use of the window of opportunity you have than to make it convert a lot of curses.

And how do you do that? In practice, I've seen three notable ways Tides of Fate can be used.

1. Power turns. Unsurprisingly, if you're near the end of the game, Tides of Fate is capable of helping to solidify the chaos bag. Some characters won't mind having a few more good blessing pulls, and all of the usual tricks can go with it - Ancient Covenant, Olive McBride, Blessed Blade, more reliable Unrelenting checks while drawing, attempts at setting up Tristan Botley or Jacob Morrison, more ways to avoid problems with Lucky Dice, and so on. This can be useful, but you often need to be lucky enough that I would not consider these alone to be worth adding Tides of Fate for. There are more reliable ways to mitigate the downsides, such as...

2. -Sealing effects. Tokens won't be replaced if they're not in the chaos bag, so you can always seal away the tokens to protect them or prepare them for future use. Favor of the Sun, Holy Spear, Rite of Sanctification, and Shield of Faith are all capable of sealing a bunch of tokens on demand. If you're willing to try riskier maneuvers first, you also have a reasonable chance of catching a few blessings using Nephthys, or with the parallel version of Wendy Adams. Some of these effects are strong enough to use on their own, while weaker ones can also be saved for future use by...

3. -Consuming Effects. These effects are expensive, but they're another way to remove tokens from the bag. Both A Watchful Peace and Hallow have been shown to be strong enough cards to warrant addition to the Taboo List. If your group is running these cards, there's something to be said about having a card which can help enable them. And to a lesser degree, even gaining a shot in the arm for a good Radiant Smite can be a reasonable use of your blessings.

Like most Blurse-focused cards, Tides of Fate won't see use in every deck, and will only be worthwhile if your entire group is buying in to the concept. It's also worth noting that many of the cards that synergize are high-XP cards, so not every group will be able to build towards them. However, groups with high-level access, Father Mateo, or parallel Wendy Adams with Blessing keyword access should give this a look. If the group has enough synergy that two -using cards or a single copy of Hallow will show up, this card can be a great way to clean up the bag and squeeze more value out on top.