This card is interesting thematically because, while Rogues have a lot of betting in their thematics, they tend to NOT gamble! A rogue, before this card, said "Gambling is for chumps" like the ace hustlers they were and what their cards were more about them being certain about the outcome and deciding to make calculated wagers, not gambles. They leave that for Mystics and Survivors!

It isn't going to affect the mechanics one way or the other, but it does make my rundown of Rogues for new players a bit less accurate!

"Highlander" decks in most games are interesting, because you are ending up with far more variance in exchange for some benefit.

This is an especially interesting highlander card because it is paying you off for rolling highlander... with consistency?

Lets take an opening hand mulligain, assuming a 33 vs 28 card deck with 2 weaknesses and 1 signature, where we ignore the weaknesses and are just trying to hit one, super specific card at all costs.

In a standard deck, if you 'hard mulligain' for the card, you have about a 54% chance of finding at least one copy.

In an Underworld Support deck, you only have a 35% chance of getting that copy.

This means this card isn't great for increasing your odds of getting your one specific card 'by default.' Deck thinning turns out to be fake, yet again...

OR IS IT?

Lets look for situations where it works better! Because this is not an unsalvageable situation

Firstly, there is the case where you have alternatives that are viable. Weapons are a great example. If your deck is normally running two copies of a weapon (As some of you psychos are!) and running Prepare For the Worst, and you happen to get the tutor rather than the weapon early, you have an 50% chance to find one copy in your 9 card search right away, and a 70% chance if you wait 3 turns (and draw 3 cards) before searching to see it in draws and searches, normally. But if you run both Prepare and Prepare with Health, and two DIFFERENT weapons, you have an 65% chance to find it right away, and an 80% chance to draw it 3 turns later.

Some pretty meaningful improvements, if not drawing your weapon in that scenario screws you, you will be salvaging 1 in 10 games that way, roughly. But you will notice the effect is more pronounced if you do it earlier. So as long as you can do this for most of the tools in your deck and bypass the highlander rule, you can get noticeably more consistent both draw to draw and for searches or other bulk draw scenarios.

Deck thinning is only fake if the cost is not worth the consistency, or if you are doing something dramatic and silly to get rid of the cards. In reality, deck thinning is VERY real (every card drawn is deck thinning after all), the question is 'does only running singletons of my cards noticeably make my deck worse more than it helps? It is going to be up to how dramatic the cost of running highlander really is in your classes. Mystic and Guardian Rogues have a lot of redundancy in their best tools, while a rogue hybrid (or anyone with access to level 0 rogue cards!) who have more specialized cards, like Survivors, may struggle to find alternatives for everything. It also limits more niche strategies: Sure guardians have a lot of weapons, but if you are going something more narrow like bless synergy it is harder to find replacements.

And, oh hey... wait a minute... isn't there a Rogue Mystic who doesn't mind having a diverse set of abilities because she can recursively play them as long as she can consistently get them into their opening hand, and who would love to more consistently nab one of her 3 copies of her signature?

Sefina goes from an effectively 38 card deck, down to a 36 card for the purposes of her opening hand. This means, despite her upshot of drawing 13 cards in her opener, her chance of seeing any specific cards she took two of is only 60%. But a lot of her staple tools have viable alternatives. Sure, everyone loves Shrivelling but would it really be such a nightmare to run armageddon in a non-curse deck if it let you ensure you open with a 'weapon' almost 20% more often? And that is just the really bad replacement! Sixth Sense and Rite of Seeking are downright fairly competitive with each other, and there are plenty of fantastic rogue and mystic event cards to populate your deck with to ensure you can cast your bag of tricks.

Sefina is probably most likely candidate for this card for that reason, though it isn't impossible for others to find value from it if they have enough fantastic options, and at the same time I am not holding my breath for this to be a "Sefina Standard" either.

The most 'valuable' aspect of this card though, is to do what Highlander as a format in MTG was originally intended to do: Force you to use more creative decks and explore more of your collection. While it is possible to really math out the benefits and say "Oh wow, a 14% higher chance to get the card I want in X situation" it is always going to be questionable if the increase in getting A tool for the job is better than always getting THE tool for the job.

The real value in this card, and why I suspect it will be popular no matter how good or bad it is, is that it is almost a voluntary taboo that forces you to really evaluate every funky 'offbrand X' in your collection, with juuuust enough reward behind it to make it a pleasant experience... and, maybe, just maybe, if you are a really clever deck builder, a card that can actually give you an advantage.

I think thematically this character is pretty cool, shes the "chosen one" which is probably why she is an mystic. She is sworn to defend others,or fight evil. that's why she upgrades into a guardian, but is a martial artist, so no guns allow, but that's probably why she likes using her agility, this is odd because agility is the rogues stock n trade, but she is not even close to being one.

I think my favorite part about her are her 4 disciplines, and the weight they carry when playing. You chose one discipline at the start, And as you gain more experience, you become more disciplined, which is a unique Idea, granted this comes with a burden.( her weakness's)

Let's say you started with the strength one. It grants you a constance 1+ Strength. Which is great. She fights at 5 now. And can take down many foes. It gets crazy when you start to add weapons(no firearms), and alies. All guardian (or mystic I guess but usually with Will) love to fight at a 5.

However

There is a temptation. Every discipline has a unique action, which when used causes the discipline to break(filp) and you will have to rediscipline yourself afterwords, (or get lucky with her elder sign) you could just forgo using it, stay regit and maintain your discipline so you never lose that 1+.

But getting a 5+ to a skill test is amazing, that can allow you to fight the toughest of foes or pass those parley checks that you have to pass, but afterwords, you lose your static bonus, and are required to not preform a single skill test for 1 whole round. This is a tall ask, especially since this includes the mythos phase, which loves to force test on you, or enemies. You would be amazed of how many skill test you actually do, untill you are told not to perform them.(I'm not looking at you, testless builds)

Your weakness, burden of destiny, is yet again a really nice thematic weakness that pits you with a decision, you break your discipline, or you force you body and soul to maintain it.(1 damage and 1 horror.) This is worst if if you already have a broken discipline, as it forces you to take that damage and horror."how can I save them when I can't even save myself"

I think this game has many investigators that are very thematic, and with as many cards as there is, you can build anything, for anyone, there is a character for you. I can't wait to see more character this game has to offer.

Finally, a Weapon, I would put into a 's hands. I was never a fan of any version of Enchanted Blade, even for Diana, Akachi or Jim, who have 3 , because trading to fight with instead of is still not a great thing to do for them, and spending an arcane slot for it even more awful. (Of course, there are other tools like Sword Cane or in some decks maybe Spirit Athame for , but I wouldn't see their main use as a fighting weapon.) I think, the Cyclopean Hammer will shine exceptionally in the hands of Diana Stanley, who gets an awesome card for Well Prepared synergies to boot with it, which also makes it easier for her to over-succeed by 3 on the test on this card. A disadvantage, compared to Shrivelling or Azure Flame will be, that have to rely more on or pips. Overpower becomes a consideration for them, possibly also Vicious Blow for Diana. This needs extra deck space, compared to a build, where you only rely on . Also, if I understand the syntax of the card right, you will deal the extra damage from over-succeeding only to non-Elites as well, on par with Spectral Razor. (Another interpretation would be, that on over-succeeding Elites would go flying as well, but that would be really strange and sounds silly to me.)

That's not to say, won't like it. They all come with at least 3 , several of them have 4. Of course, in this class, it has to compete with Flamethrower, with it's unpaired amount of damage. Sister Mary likes her Holy Spear, but she could wield the Hammer as well, and it might even be as good and less clunky. On the plus side, the Hammer improves the value of cards like Brother Xavier, Bandolier (2) or Police Badge, because suddenly get another offensive stat, they can buff with these. A minor consideration, but much more important for than , are enemies like Poltergeist or Wraith, who can be squished with the hammer quite easily. But it's really minor, in particular Poltergeists are only to be seen twice in Carcosa, and the first time in the first scenario, when no can currently have a Cyclopean Hammer.

The card is of course expensive in XP and Resources. In particular for , who get an XP discount from Arcane Research on cards like Shrivelling, which cost (at most) 3 resources. But it has not the spill-over effects, we usually see on cards, and unlimited uses (except on a Conglomeration of Spheres), so I think, the card is not overpriced. Some people like to put Spectral Razor on Dayana Esperence, and that's twice the resources (unless you discount the spells with Robes) for 3 uses of a similar effect. (You don't need to over-succeed, you can engage enemies, but can't bounce off non-Elites.) I'm very much looking forward to the release of this box to try it out!

Oh boy... there are bad cards, there are laughably bad cards, there's Flute of the Outer Gods, then there's this absolute hunk of junk. My goodness, what a terrible waste. Let me point some things out...

You'll need dedicated support curse token bag manipulation to make this card even close to being viable. That is going to almost certainly mean help from a red character running the absolutely overpowered Spirit of Humanity. Nothing else is going to come close in multiplayer in keeping the chaos bag stocked full of tokens. Even so.... good luck ever getting 5 charges on this card purely from curse tokens that ONLY you can pull. You're lucky to pull 5 curse tokens in an entire mission with a chaos bag filled with 10 at most times. So even if you DO manage to get 5 charges on it, and you manage to ignore one single encounter card, what have you invested...

You've struggled through the untranslated grimoire, which is just a dead card in your deck.

You've spent a whopping 4 xp to purchase this card.

You've had to find this card early in the mission so that you have a prayer of getting 5 secrets.

You have a precious hand slot taken up for the entirety of the mission.

You make all this investment for a card, that if drawn in the last half or so of a mission, is completely dead. There's no point trying to play this card when you only have a few turns left. It's only viable if found and played early.

All that to ignore MAYBE.... and I say MAAAAAAYBE 1-2 encounter cards (and draw 2 cards).

My goodness. You can make it your life mission to manipulate secrets via Eldritch Sophist, Ariadne's Twine, Favor of the Moon, etc... but my god. You're devoting all this effort simply to cancel a couple encounter cards with a big fat maybe attached.

There's no comparison to say, A Watchful Peace. Absolutely none. Cheaper to play. Far easier to play. No silly untranslated hoop to jump through. No hand slot to take up, and simply 5 bless tokens from anywhere.

I've run a campaign with a dedicated support curse token, Spirit of Humanity Agnes Baker, keeping the bag full of curse tokens, and i proc'd this card precisely zero times. Give it a wide miss.

A simply taboo fix that is DESPERATELY needed is to proc the curse tokens from any investigator at your location.