If I could take this weakness as a player card I would, it’s incredibly useful, on many an occasion have I found myself stuck with other investigators, needing prep and keep thinking “wouldn’t detached from reality be amazing right about now, 2 horror for an elusive and ethereal form blended together and I don’t have to pay for it?! Not to mention my precious deck size isn’t impacted. Overall I’m claiming that this isn’t a weakness, it’s a siesta and Luke doesn’t want to admit it

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.

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.

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.

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.