Apart from the straightforward uses for encounter-deck-mitigation and card-selection, this is a fantastic tool for letting Lola Hayes mitigate her (potentially crippling) weakness, especially if her deck is low-cycling. If you see 6 non-weakness cards---great, you know you can sit in any class safely for your next 5 turns! If you see one of her weaknesses, make note of where you put it, and then be sure to switch classes to something with no assets out just in time to draw it.

Compared to Scroll of Secrets (3, seeker version), this gives slightly fewer safe draws (5 vs 6), can't be tutored by Research Librarian, and doesn't auto-discard weaknesses it finds, but is much more flexible in what roles Lola can sit in (you aren't locked into swapping back and forth with Seeker continually), doesn't take a hand slot, and can be played on Lola by a friendly mystic, not just by yourself.

I can't match how entertaining the other review on this weapon is, but I do want to chime in and say that this doesn't actually look that bad, if a bit on the bland side. When a person building a fighting-focused deck looks at this, they (rightfully) go "meh, I can do better than +1 damage per action." That said, this is a very solid weapon for the fighter who doesn't care that much about fighting, but is still expected to do it:

Leo Anderson wants to do ally shenanigans, but definitely wouldn't mind a solid (cheap!) weapon for smashing little fellows, and he can still put his back into it for bosses.

Roland Banks (particularly Parallel Front Roland playing with Due Diligance) might feel like focusing a little more into his investigative side, but would want a damage boost to murder nuisances who get in his way.

Tommy Muldoon, if he's playing a tank role for his teammates in a multiplayer game, or is investing his time and effort into working Agency Backup.

Silas or Daniela are less likely to go for it, but it's still an option for some builds for them. Basically any time you're going to be building most of your deck around something that isn't fighting, but still have 4+ fight and would rather smash things than run from them, this is a solid choice, if you can stomach the xp cost. Like Fire Extinguisher (3), getting consistent +1 damage on an unlimited use weapon at 3 resources is a steal, and this also lets you get in on the big fights without any further investment.

Now that we have an investigator that is Items oriented and has access to The Rat, it is maybe time for another review of the #1.

The first ability is here icing on the cake, we can play another Item , but with Bob Jenkins' passive, we will not need it that much. The only 2 cases when I've found it useful was to play an Item when I was engaged with an enemy and I didn't want to trigger an AoO, or to play Leather Coat/Cherished Keepsake fast for 1 resource right after pulling a scary Encounter Card that involves a test ( for example) to absorb the potential failure.

However, the 2nd ability is a must-have for Bob. It is simple to understand: Empty your Flashlight, your .18 Derringer, your Eon Chart and sell them to Mr Vigil. Then go and Scavenge his hiding place to get them back, play them with your Passive and here you go for another round while having paid for the costs of replaying them. Bonus for Eon Chart that you can use, discard, scavenge and use again in the same round.

This can also work in case you do not have any Item to play with your Passive and you want to turn this un-used action into cash: Play Leather Coat/Cherished Keepsake using your Passive action an throw it immediately. Use Scavenging to get it back during a round when you don't need to scavenge anything else and you're ready to go again.

Finally, there is another series of cards that is worth looking at when considering Joey "The Rat" Vigil: the self-discarding type. We can split them into 2 categories, the ones that involve a test and the ones that do not. If a test is involved during the action that would self-discard the Item, then you have a window to use The Rat before the card self-discards. Other cards do not allow you to do so.

Here's a list of all the cards available to Bob:

Backpack/Schoffner's Catalogue: NO - no Player Window when playing an Item

Bandages: NO

Baseball Bat/Lockpicks: NO - no Player Window after ST.3 Reveal Chaos Token

Gravedigger's Shovel/Lantern/Knife/Tennessee Sour Mash: NO - discard is part of the cost

Old Keyring: YES

Talisman of Protection: NO

Colt Vest Pocket/Colt Vest Pocket (2): YES

That is not a lot of cards, but that means that Old Keyring is now as interesting as Flashlight and Bob Jenkins should most likely run both, the Old Keyring on 4+ shroud locations and the Flashlight on less than 3 shroud locations. Colt Vest Pocket is also amazing as you can play it in advance, and whenever you use it, you get your money back right after. This combo makes it the #1 defensive weapon for Bob.

So what about Bob Jenkins and Joey "The Rat" Vigil? They seem like the best buddies to travel to the Edge of the Earth. Bring Dario El-Amin and Leo De Luca in the loop and you have the best undercover criminal gang in the continent.

I think I'm a little less hot on this card compared to some of the other reviews here, and I'm not seeing this as a new "king of weapons".

Yes, it has the potential to be a 3 damage attack with infinite uses, but I think "succeed by 3" is a bigger deal (especially on higher difficulties) than it seems. On most enemies, your token-modified skill value would have to hit 6+, which will pretty much always require stat boosts, even with the will+fight modifier.

On hard, I think this weapon will do 2 damage more often than one would hope for with a 5 resource, 5 xp weapon, and I think on that difficulty lightning gun, flamethrower, holy spear, and the lv 5 mystic spells still compete with, or even outperform (particularly in consistency) this weapon. On standard or easy, I can definitely see the appeal of picking up a big weapon that always does a minimum of 2 damage and often times 3, but it's still got more variance than comparable choices.

And yes, Reliable goes a long way to get you the consistency you want, but now you're looking at a 2-3 cards, and the other options have their own synergy cards too. None of this is to say that Cyclopean Hammer is bad by any means, I just don't think you should binder your other choices just yet.

This card is not a niche card, rather, one of the best, if not the best, level 0 weapon. Its main strength in my opinion is actually the second ability, as I explain below. The first ability is just icing on the cake that adds some flexibility for enemies with low fight and high health. You can choose to attempt 1 (basic attack), 2 or 3 damage to handle a given enemy situation. My only hesitation about saying it is the number 1 weapon at level zero is that it is two-handed, which is unacceptable for some decks.

Why is the second ability so good? The answer is: the +2 combat with unlimited uses plus increased damage. Many people miss this important point when they look at/review weapons: the net damage you deal per action is affected by not only the damage modifier but also how often you hit. It is a mistake to look at .32 colt and sledgehammer and say that the colt deals 2 damage per action and the sledgehammer’s second ability only 1.5. People tend to act as if a given weapon will either never hit or always hit, which is obviously incorrect.

In fact, the +2 combat action often has a big effect on the average damage dealt. For example, using the standard night of the zealot chaos token pool, going from a net even fight test to a +2 increases odds to hit from 4/16 to 13/16, which translates to a more than 3-fold increase in damage! This is why the second ability on sledgehammer is usually better than the first on a per action basis, because you have to be at a huge skill advantage to have the 0.5 damage boost be more important than the 3 point difference in combat.

And it doesn’t run out of ammo. This should not be taken lightly. Those of you that remember how much better machete was at level zero than the firearms at the time will understand. So while the .45 Thompson deals more damage per action, this is not a fair comparison with its limited uses. Direct competitors with sledgehammer at level 0 that increase damage and have unlimited uses are fire axe, knuckleduster, meat cleaver, switchblade, dragon pole (any others I’m forgetting?). Gravedigger’s shovel gives +2 combat but no damage bonus. It’s easy to see that sledgehammer is arguably the most useful among these, its main limitation again that it takes up two hand slots.

What about the first ability? This is obviously best when you are at a large combat advantage, such as enemies with 1 or 2 fight. It is hard to use when your base combat is less than 4, but will still usually be better than a basic fight action, since it deals double damage with hits. It’s not so common that -1 combat reduces your chances of hitting by 50%.

One trick to use with the sledgehammer is gaining an extra action to get two of the double action hits in; for example, the original Skids loves this as he can always swing twice per round by paying for an extra action. Otherwise, you can use the odd extra action for something else, such as a basic attack, an evade, or a fight action on an event or arcane asset.

In summary, for survivors and guardians willing to use both hand slots for a weapon, this card is right at the top of the competition. Please consider odds to hit when comparing weapons.