Anyone who has had a chance to give Gloria Goldberg a try has likely been delighted. With an absolutely killer stat line and TWO phenomenal investigator abilities, Gloria can neutralize the ill effects of the encounter deck better than anyone we've seen so far.

This is no thanks to her artist pal Ruth Westmacott, who I think is rather unimpressive as far as signature assets go. And hey - don't get me wrong; Ruth's ability is actually super cool! But there are a lot of factors in play that are likely to prevent you from triggering it with any reasonable amount of consistency.

The first big problem is that Ruth won't generally get to trigger a bonus on a fight or evade action simply because you probably don't want to be placing enemies beneath Gloria in the first place. The ever present fear of Liber Omnium Finium will serve as a pretty serious deterrent to stashing enemies away, as Gloria really doesn't want to take a surprise non-cancellable attack and THEN be stuck with an enemy on her. Sometimes you can get Liber Omnium Finium to trigger early on on something relatively harmless, but otherwise you'll need to be aware of it for the rest of the scenario.

On the flip side of this, the card you really want to hide away beneath Gloria doesn't have a test at all, so Ruth doesn't help you there. I'm referring of course to Ancient Evils. Even though it doesn't appear in every scenario, it's just so so helpful to get one or more of these cards out of the deck, especially in multiplayer.

But let's address the real elephant in the room - Ruth takes up the hotly contested ally slot, but our old friend Alyssa Graham has nearly unbeatable synergy with Gloria's ability AND gives her that awesome +1 boost. Alyssa basically gives Gloria the ability to look at two encounter cards and pick which one gets resolved. And she can do this, actionlessly every single turn.

To be fair, I think that Ruth has the potential to be quite strong at higher player counts, especially if you are aggressively stashing cards under Gloria since you are more likely to find a test with a matching trait on the card. It's nice that the investigator doesn't have to be at Gloria's location, and it's also nice that discarding the card reduces the difficulty of the test rather than granting a positive bonus, as it turns 1 and 2 difficulty tests into auto-successes (save for the token).

And of course Ruth also has great icons, so it's not like you'll be sad when she turns up in your hand.

Guardians with unique weapons have to build around them. Especially since those weapons, (Becky and Roland’s special) are guns. But Becky reloads itself as Tommy sends allies into his deck. The special requires effort. With a few copies of reliable, the special will take you through almost any bag standard can throw at you. On hard and expert, you’ll probably need methods to deliver clues to your location, but Agent Banks’s access to seeker cards can take care of that.

Unfortunately, contraband is innately not available to the Fed. And the maximum of two damage per shot will require other methods, like vicious blows, marksmanship, and custom ammunition, which are all within faction. Stick to the plan, grenades, and agency backup work around the fact that this is a one-handed weapon.

Edit: The advanced version is +4 sometimes. Worth building around! And it works with the Quickdraw Holster!

A promise is a bridge to the future built on faith.

Promises are easy to keep if you know what will happen.

Jacqueline Fine can give you three options, or a bad option with no chance of automatic failure.

With this promise, she can evade the cagiest enemies, punch the deadliest foes, or pass truly remarkable literary challenges.

If she’s recalling the future, those heights go from extraordinary to ludicrous.

Perhaps you’ll fail a future challenge because of a promise. But as you draw three tokens, more than any other mystic, failure comes on your terms.

I am a firm believer that this is the worst card in the game as of 2020. Sure, Henry Wan's ability is usually awful, at least he is 0 exp and he can soak for you. The Springfield M1903 is rightfully ridiculed but with support it can be a worthwile janky weapon. Book of Shadows (1) is slow, clunky, expensive and just feels bad to play. At least the 3 exp version gives you an arcane slot, which is somewhat useful for most decks that rely on spell assets, and it adds charges for no continuous money sink. And mind you, the upgraded version rarely sees play. So that tells you enough.

Absolutely awful.

As far as weaknesses go, Tony's Quarry is on the mild side. 4 fight would be an issue for many investigators, but Tony fights at 5 right out of the gate and often goes way beyond that. 3 health is pretty average and means that most set-up investigators can take care of this monster in 2 or even 1 action(s). An evade of 1 is laughable and 1 damage is standard. 2 horror is a bit scary since Tony has low sanity but as he can reasonably kill this in 1 turn, that often won't be an issue.

The biggest problem with this creature is that it spawns with a doom on it. That, admittedly, is pretty bad. Worst case, you draw your weakness with not enough time to go hunt it, and it costs you AND your fellow investigators an entire turn by prematurely advancing the act. Also, depending on the scenario, "furthest away from you" could mean in a place you can't reasonably get to.

However, since TQ gets a (free) bounty on it, you will have a bit more leeway in going after it, since you can engage or fight it for free. This also means that killing it gives you a free resource for your trouble. And if the act was about to advance anyway, this is essentially a monster that doesn't do anything beyond camp a location.

All these things considered, I think this signature weakness is not one of the weakest in the game, but it isn't far off. I would be more concerned with Tony's sanity and low willpower if you were to play him!