It's been three years since Undimensioned and Unseen came out, and Quick Thinking has had plenty of time to cement itself as a strong piece in the Rogue suite of action efficiency. Let's look at why this card is so great, and where it truly shines.

Assuming the relevant skill test succeeds by 2 or more, you trade one card (Quick Thinking) for an extra action. This is at minimum a fair trade because you can always spend an action to draw a card, and plenty of card effects allow a better rate of card draw, and you get one free every upkeep too. This trade can be powerful though because there are some turns where actions are more valuable than others. Some turns (hopefully not too many!) you idly draw cards waiting for something you can contribute to the Act, and others every single action counts. The extra action can also be literally anything you want. Seekers might not have to risk a skill test to get a free move out of Shortcut, but with Quick Thinking you can also get in an extra attack against an enemy that needs to be defeated before it can hit back, or investigate again to clear a key location before time runs out - literally whatever you need! Quick Thinking is therefore a great way to put yourself one more step ahead of the game.

So far so good, but now we need a skill test we can succeed by 2 or more, and Quick Thinking itself unfortunately doesn't help much with that with only one wild icon; accounting for that, we need a skill test we were already likely to succeed at by at least 1. Notably it can be another investigator's skill test, but you'll probably want ways to reliably produce these skill tests by yourself. Some investigators do great at this already by having high stat values, such as Tony Morgan with 5 combat and the newly spoiled Winifred Habbamock with 5 agility, but the Rogue card pool is also full of cards to grant opportunities for this.

Suggestion and Lockpicks are both low level assets that repeatedly grant you opportunities to take skill tests at very high values, and not only do they make it easier to succeed by 2 but they reward you for doing so by not depleting uses when you do. Events such as Cheap Shot and Slip Away also allow you to add your stats together and reward you with powerful additional effects should you succeed by at least 2. If any of these cards was already likely to be a part of your deck (particularly the assets for their repeatability), Quick Thinking is likely a great inclusion to grant you increased action output.

Notably, there are plenty more Rogue cards that reward success by an large amounts, and as the synergy stacks up the potential value of Quick Thinking increases too. We already mentioned the value of trading cards for actions; if you want your actions to generate extra cards, Lucky Cigarette Case and Pickpocketing both do exactly that repeatedly, and again incentivise over-succeeding. With enough incentive, you can more than make up for the difficulty of overcomitting resources to pass skill tests by wider margins, turning Quick Thinking's fair trade of a conditional card for an action into a powerful piece in a deck's engine that generates extra actions seemingly for free.

Finally, no Quick Thinking review would be complete without mentioning Double or Nothing, which turns many of the "succeed by" effects from great tempo plays into crazy combo madness. With current taboos Double or Nothing is more expensive and you can't double two Quick Thinkings at once, making this not quite as powerful as it once was (but this is really a good thing - infinite actions is definitely kind of unfair). Still, Quick Thinking is one of the more powerful and readily available enablers for Double or Nothing duplicating multiple success rewards at once, allowing for explosive 5+ action turns that let you close out objectives in lightning speed, provided you can set this up. The new Daredevil is clearly a fantastic way to do so, provided you're okay risking flipping a Double or Nothing when you might not want to!

So: you may want Quick Thinking in your deck any time your investigator is prone to clearing skill tests by wide margins, either from a large base stat or due to deckbuilding specifically for the "succeed by" archetype. You can probably skip it if your investigator is a generalist looking to pass lots of different skill tests; with your resources divided among multiple stats it is less likely you will reliably have what you need to invest to oversucceed.

Bad combo piece. This card has only value over the level 0 version if you already know what's the top card of your deck or the encounter deck. It'd be amazing with Norman Withers if his text didn't force you to immediately draw every weakness you see on top of the deck. It might still be ok on him.

Otherwise you need effects like Scrying or Alyssa Graham to make this more valuable than the base version, except these cards already do good things on their own. This card does not justify itself over the base version.

Basically a version of On the Lam for all Survivors(and not covering the enemy phase). Which isn't the most impressive card in my opinion, and I could easily see this being cheaper on exp. Allows you to drag enemies engaged with you around the map or ignoring them while you do other things on your location. This is a very niche effect so the only question is why.

At least it got nice double pips baa . If you buy it for the pips, check if you don't want Hyperawareness (2) instead.

I can’t believe there’s still not a great review for this great investigator! So, shall we start?

Her stats add up to 13 when the average between investigators is 12, so we’re good from the get go. Let’s now take a close up to them:

5 she’s a powerhouse even in her own class! The class that makes every single test a willpower test and is so easy to level it up via some of the staple cards like Holy Rosary, David Renfield, St. Hubert's Key or Fearless.

2 for other classes this may be a hinder but can use Sixth Sense, Rite of Seeking, Drawn to the Flame, Read the Signs or the new Clairvoyance so getting clues without using your book is not a problem. And even if you don’t get those spells, an Arcane Insight is an enhanced Flashlight (and using them together can assure you find clues even on a 4-shroud location). However, this does let you susceptible to parley or treacheries that test raw Intellect, but some Fine Clothes or skill icons can save you if needed.

3 makes you more comfortable fighting against 1 fight enemies (a.k.a. Swarm of Rats) without spending those beautiful charges from your Shrivelling or even if you still hadn’t got your fighting spells. This can be leveraged by using a simple Knife, a powerful Spirit Athame or my personal favorite Enchanted Blade, which puts you on 4 or 5 combat and lets you deal 1-2 damage, which scales even greater with any of the upgraded blades. Even if you need to test your strength for a scenario card, an Overpower will do the work.

3 is not that bad, since it is sometimes tested by some treacheries or is needed for some enemies. And yes, you guessed it, a Manual Dexterity can put you in a great place to pass a test when needed or you don't have your evasion spell cards like Blinding Light, Suggestion or Mists of R'lyeh.

So far so good, eh? And we haven’t even spoken about her ability which is bonkers good! Get an additional charge for the assets you anyway want as a Mystic? This means you get more uses for your money than any of your fellows. A 5 charges Shrivelling can take down a boss without needing any other combat support, and this is the same for all the options Akachi has for fighting, investigating and evading (listed above). Besides, some other powerful cards can take advantage of this too: keep more time in play your Seal of the Seventh Sign, commit Torrent of Power without too much worry or cheat on the game with Grotesque Statue. It may not sound very impressive at first, but it’s nuts compared to other , and oh this gets even better with her signature.

Spirit-Speaker is both your recharging tool as well as a resource engine if needed. We all know Mystics needs their spells to succeed in a scenario, but when once your Shrivelling runs out of charges and a boss is coming to you, you’ll be in a hurry to find your other copy. However, once Spirit speaker is in play, Akachi only needs one of her spells and a way to tutor for them (Arcane Initiate or Word of Command) and your good to go. Imagine being able to bounce back and forth your Grotesque Statue before it runs out of charges, or needing only one combat spell and never worry about finding the other one. Of course you need to pay for those assets again, but between Emergency Cache, Alchemical Transmutation, Uncage the Soul, David Renfield, Sacrifice or Spirit-Speaker itself you have plenty options to get those precious resources.

Even her weakness is not that bad. Angered Spirits does take away some of your charges, but anyway you have plenty of them and can play back if needed (once Spirit-Speaker is out, of course), and the exhaustation doesn’t prevent you from using your spells (except for Suggestion) nor it takes away any of your actions. Did I mention this stays in your threat area so once it’s out you don’t have to worry about drawing it again?

To sum up, Akachi is one of the most powerful investigators, very flexible (can be a generalist an specialist and even a support) both in solo and in multiplayer. And would even recommend her to a new player because of how straight her ability is and the limited cardpool; so go ahead and try her, you won't be disappointed.

This card raises a question with regards to base skill vs skill value. As other people have pointed out, this card will synergize with Dark Horse but not Duke since Duke effects your base skill, but Dark Horse simply grants you a bonus. Given that Dark Horse shores up all the skill icons (, , , and ) it is safe to assume that any other asset that grants a passive icon boost such as Peter Sylvestre or Moonstone would also apply here.

I bring these up because if I am playing Calvin Wright or Patrice Hathaway with their measly 0 or 2 in the majority of their stats, it isn't all that uncommon to find 4 value targets to pitch Rise to the Occasion, putting you at +1, then whatever additional bonuses you gain from your assets or additional committed cards. Coincidentally, running upgraded Peter, Moonstone, Dark Horse, +1 from Dig Deep, puts me at a 9 vs 5 when dealing with Watcher from Another Dimension, and all I had to do was pitch this and spend a resource. What I'm saying is, RTTO gives you one up or at least evens the odds of a particularly difficult test, and then it's up to you to do the rest of the legwork. If the test is important, then you'll be glad to have this card along.

The philosophy of the card isn't to make you succeed though; it's designed to give you a fighting chance at a skill test you ordinarily would have no business attempting. You might wonder why you'd attempt to do something you aren't good at to begin with, but I'd argue that comes up far more often than you might think, especially in solo, and especially if you have specific goals you want to achieve.

This card would be helpful for someone like "Ashcan" Pete because you can only use Duke for Fight Actions, which means you can't use him to break down Locked Doors or to break into the Museum Halls, and don't even think about making a Parley. You also might need just one more hit on enemies with 3 or 5 hit points. Most scenarios do in fact have enemies and shroud values of 4, and sometimes even 5. William Yorick and Rita Young both might like a copy for checks on Treacheries of 5 (combined with Guts, not instead of, is the key. Or like I mentioned, combined with Dark Horse, Peter, etc.) or for tests on high shroud values, especially if playing solo or if there isn't a in the group for whatever reason. Or if you're simply seperated. The rule of thumb is to be 2 up, so in most cases, you'll only need one other card to pitch, but you don't even need to do that if you've got an asset or two giving you passive +1's everywhere.

The trick with this card, I think, is to know which stat you'll intend to use it for when adding it to your deck. If you have 2 , then most likely you'll use it with that. If you have low , then hold onto it for that lethal encounter card. And who knows, you might find yourself facing those rare 6 shroud or combat values, and suddenly you have a shot against something you couldn't have predicted.