You just need two items to break even.

But there's an additional downside to taking this that neither of the existing reviews have pointed out: this card makes your mulligan feel terrible.

Even in the most item-heavy decks, you have other events or assets that you'd really like to open with. That Beat Cop (2) or Safeguard would be great to have in your opening hand, but if you've only a single item to put down, are you going to mulligan away your ally? Your tarot? That Stand Together or Enchant Weapon or Pathfinder? Sure, you can say you won't take those cards, but that's a lot of good cards you're leaving in your binder just because they don't play well with Geared Up.

Two copies of Studious and backpacks later, an asset heavy Joe Diamond can be fairly reliable at getting efficiency out of this card. The problem is how it cripples him before he gets those two copies of Studious and his Backpacks. Neither of those cards are high priority upgrades for any investigator, and yet they are mandatory for Geared Up to function at all. If it weren't for the "Purchase at Deck Creation", this would be much more playable.

Fortunately, most guardians can actually purchase this card after deck creation, where its just known as Stick to the Plan and Ever Vigilant.

This card is a cool replacement for Arcane Research, or a nice boost to it, depending on your upgrade line. HOWEVER, It is an anti-fun card.

This card essentially makes it so you build a deck with a bunch of purchasable upgrades, and reduces your desire to get new cards. Now you could see it as offsetting the new cards, by only buying 1 new card a scenario, and upgrading atleast 1 card, leading to a net 1xp gain. For "every mystic deck ever" archetypes this card is strong.

However, If you enjoy breaking the mystic mould I see this as a detriment. This card keeps you on the straight and narrow, upgrade your Shrivelling, Rite of Seeking, Mists of R'lyeh. Grabs you Recharge, Arcane Initiate, and Ward of Protection, Grotesque Statue, Robes of Endless Nightand have at it. I just see this as dull. Don't get me wrong those cards are all core because of how powerful they are and I would take them and this upgrade into a difficulty spike campaign i.e. trying to beat expert or complete achievements, but for standard this is a buzzkill.

Is this card good or bad? as a mystic running your typical build this card is insane, as someone who loves pure xp it's insane value, but as someone who enjoys trying new builds and playing with non typical cards this isn't the card for you.

Another way to add charges, just like Recharge (2) and Recharge (4). Except this one is more reliable, costs only 1 XP, and actually adds charges to non-Spells/Relics. So far, that means Flesh Ward, and the new Close the Circle and Bangle of Jinxes. Adding charges is good, especially for expensive assets, ones with high XP, and those that are Exceptional. Akachi Onyele is a natural fit, and hey, she's already on the card. But all Mystics running powerful assets should consider this. You just have to have a spare action and resources lying around.

If you want to save that action cost, there's that juicy reaction ability if you draw this on your turn. Mystics, unfortunately aren't known for drawing cards, although you may hit this with Scroll of Prophecies or Guts (2). But you know who does have good option for card draw? Seekers and Rogues, a number of which can (and want) to take this. They also have similarly-written cards based on card draw: Cryptic Writings and Easy Mark, respectively.

If you have Seeker access, you have a lot of options for card draw on your turn. Filtered card draw is best, of course, so Eureka!, Mr. "Rook", and Old Book of Lore are good choices to find it. Cryptic Research and Preposterous Sketches are good choices, too, because you'll still need to hold onto some resources to pay for Winds of Power. Speaking of, Old Book of Lore (3), with its built-in cost reduction, will do that for you. As far as the investigators go, Luke is the standout because his Gate Box would always like charges and it starts in play. Norman Withers has powerful Mystic Spell access to drop the charges on, and can see this card coming with his ability. Daisy Walker and Mandy Thompson have the best card pool and abilities to pull this out of their deck on their turn, and their targets for charges aren't bad either: extra charges will keep Pendant of the Queen in play and have Archaic Glyphs or Archaic Glyphs last longer. Arcane Insight is also a good choice or even to combo with the previous two. As an aside, these Seekers were probably already considering running Enraptured, which also doesn't cost an action, but also doesn't cost any resources.

If you have Rogue access, your best shot is to draw with Lucky Cigarette Case or especialy its upgrade Lucky Cigarette Case (3) on your tests you oversucceed on your turn. Pickpocketing or its upgrade will help. Sefina Rousseau has all the pieces to make it work: oversucceed on Suggestion (4), draw two cards from LCC and Pickpocketing for your trouble, and hey, Suggestion even has a use for those charges itself. I'm not sure you need 5 free attack cancels from non-Elites, but there it is. Other options would be The Red Clock (2) or The Red Clock (5), but those compete with the Accessory slot. As does, by the way, the Crystallizer of Dreams, which can take advantage of two willpower icons for tests. The 0-2 Mystic spells/assets are good, too. Dexter Drake is the other investigator with Rogue/Mystic access. He'll have a tougher time digging this one out through oversucceeding, but he'll have many more targets for the extra charges. A Pickpocketing Dexter with Shroud of Shadows certainly can work! That said, Dexter's play style encourages discarding the spent assets anyways.

Very surprised that there has only an off-handed mention for Luke Robinson. This card is insane for him. Luke naturally likes Recharge, and with the new taboo on this card, it makes it a natural combo to use Pendant of the Queen with Recharge. Furthermore, Luke can take the magical Whitton Greene, which boosts his will (which needs help) and his intelligence, it also combos with Hawk-Eye Folding Camera to create a 5-6 intellect mystic. FINALLY Luke always has access to a new location, so he can activate the search 3 times, with each one having a 1/3 chance of finding a piece, not including ANY other locations (looking at you Side A dream world).

Therefore the combo for Luke is; Segment of Onyx, Whitton Greene, Recharge, Premonition, Hawk-Eye Folding Camera, Lucid Dreaming and for added spice Astounding Revelation. This makes Luke, a testless, teleporting, high intel high willpower, MACHINE. All for the low low price of 9-13xp.

*If You know the scenario well, and know you wont be able to explore much Backpack is another great option. Either way HARD MULLIGAN for Whitton Greene, even if it means you lose a segment.

Let me pop this into the collective consciousness of the AH community:

With the advent of the Edge of the Earth permanents (which all severely muck with your deck at 0 XP), where does versatile stand?

Should it be taboo'd down to 0? Should the number of new level 0 cards be changed from one to two so you can at least run a playset?

I think both. Versatile has a lot of problems as a design: Adding one card to your deck and increasing its size by 5 creates a very intense anti-synergy that makes it hard to justify this card. Likewise, being 2 XP to downgrade your deck in most ways is rough, and the only way to justify it is if you built your deck around a card you lack access to and you seriously risk never drawing it outside of Seeker.

But the idea of being able to get just ooooooone playset of a very useful card into the 'wrong' type of deck is very interesting, but the cost of 5 extra cards is pretty extreme on its own in a way that is not intuitive until you run the math.

At the very least one of these two things could stand to be changed. You have a little under 50/50 odds of getting what of getting the thing you paid 2XP for and ruined your deck probability to nab even with two copies on a hard mulligain, but at least that is remotely likely compared to going hard for your single splash and only finding it maybe twice a campaign in your opener as a 28% snag. Or if you could start with it you can build your deck more appropriately around those extra cards and you get at least one more chance to find that card you hurt your deck to get.