This and Dreamer's Curse probably contend for some of the most brutal cards from any encounter set. Especially in TDE where there's -4 in the bag on Standard and you really don't want to draw it or the autofail on this one.

Do you chance taking 3 horror or damage, or do you dump out cards in your hand that might actually have proved useful next turn? Horrid, horrid quandary. Hate making the choice every time I draw these.

This weapon had been surprising in a lot of ways. It's not until I actually tried that makes me realize multiple fight let me virtually pump temporary accuracy (commits, Physical Training, Hard Knocks, etc.) once and get more benefit compared to attacking separately and having to pump twice to hit both. It is more test compression rather than action compression.

In effect, investigators with low like 1 or 2 gets more benefit, since normally you would require massive pumps to land a single hit. I am currently running Wendy with this plus the Jury-Rig, surprisingly bringing her 1 to 5. Suddenly, I am very willing to pump 1 or 2 resources with the good old Hard Knocks to ensure the hit. Crafty in the same package is an excellent temporary pump card to support a play like this.

At 2 it is quite flexible how you use that extra action in a test-less manner. Other than moving in and swing like you are in Monster Hunter, I had some cool plays like keep evading on the last action for long fight with the big guy, or for high enemies, having other investigator take engagement away to tank damages each round and then engage back on my first action to prevent smashing my friend into pulp.

So... this card lets you cancel any card drawn from the encounter deck by you. This includes monsters which I guess if you're swarming in baddies or don't have an enemy handler can be helpful, but there are genuinely better ways to handle monsters. What this card doesn't let you do is cancel Ancient Evils drawn by another investigator. This means that this card has at minimum a chance to cause you to lose six actions (since there have to be minimum 2 investigators for this scenario to come into play), two cards and two resources. This only scales upwards the more players in the game.

I cant think of any monster that takes more than 2-3 actions to deal with except boss monsters, and they aren't in the encounter deck. Plus, On The Hunt basically serves the same function by spawning it with your fighter, for 1 resource and skipping the mythos draw for the fighter.

As such, this card is basically a never pick in my view as being unable to cancel Ancient Evils just isn't worth it any other benefit.

I was curious if there was any way to fannagle getting two people into a locked room with this, so I asked the dev team. The short answer is no. The long answer is the email below:

Thanks for the questions! For the answer to your question about moving into the Vault with Safeguard: The text on the Vault states that you cannot enter the Vault unless you control the [Elder Thing] Key. The text on Safeguard lv 2 allows you to move to a connecting location with an investigator AS they move. Here's the breakdown:

Since your investigator moves with your friend to the Vault simultaneously, and the Vault specifies you cannot enter unless you control a specific key, you are unable to move with your friend as they move to the vault, since you don't control the key, and the "cannot" in the Vault's unrevealed side is absolute. The wording on Safeguard also doesn't trigger off of your friend declaring their intention to move into a location: it only triggers as they move into the location. As a result, you can't use Safeguard lv2 to enter the Vault alongside your friend under any circumstance (in the situation you posited), because you don't control the [Elder Thing] key. Additionally, if you have the [Elder Thing] key, you cannot Safeguard with your friend who doesn't have the key into the Vault, as they cannot move into the Vault unless they control the key in the first place.

Please note, though: with the wording on Safeguard lv 0 ("After another investigator moves from your location to a connecting location, exhaust Safeguard: Move to that location."), you are able to follow your friend who controls the [Elder Thing] key into the Vault, as the timing of the move occurs After​ they move into that location. So oddly enough, Safeguard lv 0 is more helpful in this situation than the upgraded version!

Thanks for playing!

Not the greatest of clue finding cards, but can have a niche for investigators who are good at evading but not as great at investigating, such as Rita, Silas, parallel Skids.

The fact that you have to succeed by 2 is rough, but will happen often enough in, for example, a Rita Young deck that just stacks agility using cards like Track Shoes and Peter Sylvestre. And the fact that it's fast and 1 resource makes it easy to play when such an occasion happens. Just don't count on it as your main way of getting clues.

Another important thing to mention is that automatic evade cards such as Stunning Blow and Stray cat do not work with this card, since automatic evasion is not the same as automatically succeeding as an evasion test (by contrast, cards such as Hope or Stroke of Luck do synergize with this card).

Tl;dr Nice card to have if you're planning on evading (by) a lot anyway, but not a must include by any means and certainly not for every deck.