The final agenda card in the core set is . . . confusing. This is doubly so for players who want to have a blind playthrough of the campaign. Having just completed the Midnight Masks with its fantastic reveal, why would anyone want to spoil the finale? That's a problem because this card is easy to misread:

Forced - When this agenda advances:

• If the investigators are at Act 1, put the set-aside Ritual Site into play and spawn the set-aside Umôrdhoth there.
• If the investigators are at Act 2 or 3, discard all enemies at the Ritual Site and spawn the set-aside Umôrdhoth there.

The key to understanding the flow of the finale is understanding that "When this agenda advances" means the forced action happens after the 5 doom threshold is reached and not when this agenda card is revealed. For people who read this correctly the flow is sensible:

1. Agenda 3a is revealed giving investigators 5 doom to either stop the ritual (R1) or prepare for Umôrdhoth's arrival.
2. After 5 doom, make sure the Ritual SIte is in play and only has one enemy: Umôrdhoth.
3. The Devourer Below replaces both the Act and the Agenda. It's no longer possible to stop the ritual, but the investigators can defeat Umôrdhoth by either by giving it 6 + 4 per investigator damage (R2) or sacrificing Lita (R3). There's no time limit, but Umôrdhoth is massive (engaged with all investigators if not exhausted) and dishes out 3 damage and 3 horror so the fight will be pretty quick.

So what happens if you misread the card?

1. As soon as Agenda 3a is revealed, the Ritual SIte comes into play with Umôrdhoth.
2. If the investigators are somehow able to stop the ritual with a massive enemy taking attacks of opportunity, they can still get R1. This is unlikely unless they have made significant progress before Agenda 3a has been turned.
3. If the investigators sacrifice Lita, they can get R3 instead.
4. If they somehow survive 5 doom, The Devourer Below replaces the act and agenda. If Umôrdhoth has been defeated they get R2 but are defeated if Umôrdhoth is still alive when the card flips.

Of course this makes an already difficult scenario even harder. If you read it right the first time, you might wonder why anyone would think the game would be so aggressively mean. One reason might be that The Ritual Begins adds unmotivated obstacles:

• enemies are stronger after the previous agenda spawned a monster with doom on it and
• a very difficult will test that will put a madness from the player's collection into their hand.

A 5 doom timer to kill the big baddie seems like more of the same.

The solution, of course, would be to put the Forced action on the back so that it's only revealed when the agenda actually advances. That would fit with how the rest of the core scenario agendas work. My guess is that this wasn't done because the artwork on The Devourer Below side is so awesome.

At any rate, now that I know how this scenario is supposed to end, I'm going to try it again. Up til now I've just ignored the entire finale as unfun and unfair.

This card is nuts, and I don't think people quite understand the sheer power creep it bring for a level zero card (granted, there are leveled up cards that are even more insanely power crept than this, even at Level 0)

At first glance, this can looks as just a slightly more powerful version of Cheap Shot, with the extra bonus of moving an enemy to make up for the fact it can only be used against foes engaged with you.

That is not even half of the story

In the framework of the Rogue cardpool, this being an Evade is a game-changer, as it has more direct synergy with what Rogue likes to do: Evading! This can benefit from both Pickpocketing and String Along at once, in ways cards like Breaking and Entering cannot, and it can get around Retaliate, unlike Cheap Shot which counters Alert. That seems a minor thing, but Retaliate, is much, much more common as a Keyword than Alert (in fact, Alert didn't exist until Forgotten Age) so most of the time, you are going to avoid a painful counterattack in case you auto-fail the skill test

Bum Rush has also much better synergy with certain Investigators than Cheap Shot and Breaking and Entering:

1) Finn can use with his extra action to basically disable an enemy for a turn or more and still do whatever he wants

2) Jenny and especially Preston aren't good evaders by default, but the cards let's them move a non-elite enemy even if they fail the evasion attempt. Look at the wording: it's listed as a separate effect, unlike the evasion and damage being part of the reward for succeeding the skill test. So this basically becomes "spend 2 resources to move a non-elite enemy 1 location away", which against enemies that are not Hunters, Patrollers, Warring or move by any other effect, it's often as good as killing them: the rest is the icing on the cake for them

3) Rita and to a lesser extent Wendy can use this card in combination with Belly of the Beast to gain a clue. Belly of the beast is a crappy event, and this will basically bump the resource cost to 3, but turning an evasion attempt into a clue is often less work Roland has to do fighting an enemy multiple times to defeat it.

4) Combining this with Cheap Shot lets both Michael and Tony have ways to reliably and regularly evade enemies. That opens so many shennanigans with Dirty Fighting for them that Tony couldn't enjoy with Stunning Blow

5) But I think the worst abuser of this is without a doubt this gender fluid bastard: Kymani can use this on their evasion attempt on an exhausted enemy to also add their Combat on top of their Intellect: that already doubles their skill bonus to +4 before addtional modifiers and bonuses. AND deals them one damage, which if it does have the same timing as resolving their reaction ability, can make the test even easier. It's insane the amount of crap Kyman can get rid off with this, even Agent Fletcher eats shit here.

I am probably missing some other very good synergy with some Investigators or cards, but I believe I made my point none the less. I am just glad that FFG decided not to print a Level 2 version of this in the style of Breaking and Entering and Cheap Shot. But if it ever gets made... Oh god.

I wish he had extra ability to help him with action economy and push his high risk/reward playstyle. Something like "If you have 2 or fewer health and sanity remaining you may take an additional action during your turn".

The Drowned city expansion actually added a cool new way to play Parallel Skids. You can now play 6 Glimmers of Hope since A Glimmer of Hope and A Glimmer of Hope are both cards with the fortune trait. I believe since Glimmer refers to the name of the card it will pull out all copies (the level 0 and level 2 ones both). This in turn makes it very easy to trigger his front +3 resource ability, and/or to go for overachieve cards such as Pilfer.

I'm thinking we can use Daredevil to get all copies to the discard pile and Friends in Low Places to dig out daredevil and/or other fortune cards to make this more consistent (or other card draw effects).

Let's talk about hunch deck. Of course you want to use it every turn, so the possibility to refill it seems great and it is surely if your hunch deck is made perfectly, so that you can use all the hunches each turn during scenario. But scenario usually have 14/15 turns and your hunch deck have 11 cards. So if you recycle i.e. 2 out of 11 cards, it means that there will be need for replenishing two more cards max and that is only if you did not reveal any . Therefore Detective's Colt 1911s ability is almost unnecessary and you can ignore it, unless you're certain that you have built perfect hunch deck and even if you did you have to deal with its low stats and high costs. Overall pretty disappointing signature.