Everyone seems to think that this is a weak-ass weakness, and everyone is right. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Winifred gets a -1 to all tests until she fails one. This might mess up some "succeed by 2 cards, but Winifred tends to over commit something fierce.

The discard condition: Fail a test with this committed.

All in all, this is a way below average signature weakness, maybe the weakest in the game. It's not all that likely to hurt her success, and every Arkham investigator fails now and again. It's pretty hard to imagine a less impactful signature weakness, a mere roadbump on the way to whatever Winifred wants to do.

This is a very situational signature weakness. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Diana has to discard cards beneath her (reducing her and invalidating the Twilight Blade and her effect, otherwise, she has to take horror. The latter is somewhat fraught, as Diana is pretty average on Sanity, especially compared to other investigators. This can be bad, if you are playing a Diana who cares about or utterly irrelevant if you aren't. The horror cannot cancelled, but it can still be negated by Deny Existence.

The discard condition: One and done, unless the weakness will have no effect, in which case it gets reshuffled.

All in all, this is a below average signature weakness, way below if you have a Deny Existence in hand or don't care all that much about Diana's . Edit: if you really care about Diana's , this weakness's threat gets upgraded, although, as long as you can keep a Deny Existence in hand, it's extremely manageable.

A flavorful signature weakness. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Ready enemies at Finn's location or a connecting location. Hunters within one location move towards Finn. Note that they do not engage or attack at this time, so, if it gets drawn in upkeep, Finn has a whole turn to deal with the fallout. Mostly, this gets reshuffled, which is annoying, but hardly scenario-ending. Once in a while, it can trigger in-turn and leave Finn vulnerable to a lot of attacks in the Enemy Phase, but it mostly sets him up to do more evading, which is Finn's bread and butter. Heck, if he has Pickpocketing (2), Finn might welcome this.

The discard condition: One and done, unless it has no effect, in which case it goes back into the deck to try again.

All in all, this is a below average signature weakness, mostly because it keeps getting reshuffled until it hurts you. It might even be way below, in scenarios without many hunters. Edit: This weakness probably gets upgraded in 4-player, as more enemies mean more trouble for Finn.

The most powerful card in the game

The payoff for playing this card is gigantic, especially in higher player counts. In a 4 player game it skips a minimum of 4 encounter cards, and sometimes more because of surge effects. It works no matter the type of encounter card either, so perils and enemies are indiscriminately blasted from existence.

You could argue that you don't get to choose the encounter cards you want to cancel, and that you're not really cancelling them but instead delaying them. Both those points are true, but ultimately every time you play this card in a 4 player game you're seeing 4+ less encounter cards during the scenario.

When played early you get incredible tempo setting up and getting ahead of the game. Played late you get certainty in closing out the scenario or pushing for more victory points.

What's the cost of this incredibly powerful effect you ask?

• 1 resource
• 5 bless tokens

Now Survivors might not have the most powerful economy but 1 resource is a pitiful amount even for them!

Ah, but it costs 5 tokens, those must be difficult to come by at least? Nope, turns out blessing generation is incredibly easy. Even in class Survivors have great access to easy low cost generation with:

• Keep Faith (0)
• Predestined (0)
• Signum Crucis (2)
• Spirit of Humanity (2)

and also the neutral:

• Tempt Fate (0)

It's fairly trivial to keep the chaos bug stuffed full of tokens all game with very little investment.

But wait, this card is in Survivor , a class with a primary mechanic of card recursion. Even with a simple 0xp investment of 2x Resourceful and 2 x Scrounge for Supplies, both already commonly played cards, you can play this 6 x per deck rotation. With further Survivor shenanigans you'll be able to replay it much more than that.

Not only is the effect incredibly powerful it's also very un-fun, Arkham is a game of fighting against the odds and battling against adversity. You'll occasionally be able to breath a sigh of relief as your Mystic plays a Ward of Protection against an Ancient Evils. However, this card allows you to pretty much skip the challenges that game would try and throw at you.

It's so powerful that if you're only aim is to win then I can't see any Survivor deck not spending their first 6xp on 2 copies of this. I don't know what happened in the balance meeting when this card was discussed. I can only assume that it was thought that generation would be much harder than it actually is, as a number of bless based card in this cycle seem way overtuned. Once you realise bless generation is trivial this card is obviously busted just by reading the text box.

Summary:

• Incredibly powerful effect
• Very low setup and cost to play
• No downsides
• Easily recurred

Absolutely needs taboo, completely game breaking.

As a card on it's own it's great. A 2xp permanent with pure upside is unlikely to be bad. As long as you have some bless token generation in your team pulling one during a test will almost always result in a success and you'll never need to use up more bless tokens than necessary.

However, alongside Favor of the Sun this card becomes game breaking.

This mini combo is available for just 4xp and is currently available to all Survivors , Agnes Baker, Father Mateo, Tommy Muldoon, Preston Fairmont and Minh Thi Phan.

With a single fast action and +1 resource play of Favor of the Sun you get 3 turns with a guaranteed +2 skill test.

This is a hugely powerful affect, +2 should usually translate into an auto success for most attempted skill tests. However, even if +2 isn't enough you'll know exactly how much you'll need to boost/commit.

It's also immensely flexible. You can pick the exact tests you want to succeed and the test doesn't even have to be on your turn:

• Guarantee success against dangerous and difficult tests in the mythos phase
• Guarantee success on an important investigate/fight/evade
• Guarantee avoiding a disastrous cultist, skull or elder thing token in the last turns of the scenario
• Guarantee a big combo/commitment play (less relevant in Survivor but huge for the Survivor secondaries)

Survivor has great access to easy generation with:

• Keep Faith (0)
• Predestined (0)
• Signum Crucis (2)
• Spirit of Humanity (2)

and also the neutral:

• Tempt Fate (0)

This combo is incredibly easy to pull off and requires no slots or build around, 2 x Tempt Fate is more than enough to keep the chaos bag stuffed full of bless tokens. With some reasonable card draw you can keep up Favor of the Sun the entire game.

I've play tested this in Preston Fairmont and it's degenerate and triviliazes the game even at expert difficulty. Comboed with the success / over succeed mechanics in Rogue this effect is far too powerful. While occasionally being able to cheat the bag is fun, being able to reliably do it once every turn takes away a lot of what makes Arkham the experience it is (the chance of drawing the ).

Rogue is the most able to abuse this with big all in plays, see my Preston - The Favoured Sun Over Succeeds deck for an example of what's possible.

Survivor is the only class that has a somewhat hard time abusing it and even then it's way overtuned. I would suggest that Ancient Covenant needs to be tabooed to only be usable on natural bless token draws from the chaos bag.

Between this and A Watchful Peace I think the Innsmouth playtesters forgot to turn up to the Survivor balance meeting!

Summary

• Great on its own
• In combination with Favor of the Sun absolutely game breaking and deserving of taboo, especially in Survivor secondary classes