Vast Expanse

For each point you fail by, take 1 horror. Sentence quite scary since Rotting Remains first revelation. Vast Expanse can be less scary than Rotting Remains, it can be exactly like Rotting Remains but if there is a lot of extradimensional locations in play, its effect can be even worser. Autofailing (5) can end your campaign easily. My own experience. Everything was very good, all Rex needs was to survive mythos phase and resign. It never happened...

johniez · 3
That's why i run Forewarned in all low sanity characters that can get 1 lvl Seeker such as Roland or Joe Diamond to tackle all those nasty treacheries. But Rex has a lot of sanity, so, perhaps this card was overkill.... I think everything is depending from the scenario outcome. — Sotosprotos · 86
We just restarted TCE after daisy was defeated in first scenario. Deny Existence proved to be a live saver (or hand cards if you auto fail diabolic voices) on the second run. — Django · 5174
I meant TCU — Django · 5174
@johniez I had the same result. Rita only needed 1 more clue to resign but I drew this during the Mythos phase and pulled the auto-fail. — DrMChristopher · 544
Open Gate

Two additional janky situations:

  • Have Open Gates in two characters. Then the card does not only skip backtracking, but let's you skip parts of the map. Some copies might be useless, though.
  • Play an Open Gate with "You owe me one" from the hand of your friendly neighborhood mystic. You can do this from the other side of the map. Sure, it's not fast anymore, but enables you to reunite your party. Played this in Lost in Time and Space to pull the Akachi of the team to the top as Mandy.
trazoM · 9
Neither Rain nor Snow

Can't argue with getting 3 copies of a skill in your deck. The ability to cancel the effects of a failure are really just icing on the cake. In addition, it is a Survivor card, and an innate skill, so it can be recurred with either Resourceful or True Survivor.

I mean, really, what more could you want?

Zinjanthropus · 232
Ace of Rods

So I am thinking that maybe there is a character that goes under looked when considering the Ace of Rods and that is our friendly Pete.

So you lose your tarot slot but the survivor tarot is the most easily skipped so no great loss there.

If you don't draw it in your opening hand it can be fed to your dog like any other card so its lack of icons isn't as much a hindrance.

I also find myself flush with cash to burn in my dark horse pete decks so banking an action for 3 resources being the worst use of this card doesn't seem like a bad use of money I typically end up burning anyway.

The end of the day if it was good enough to include in every deck then it would probably be too good for a neutral 1xp card.

Zerogrim · 298
Yeah , it's in a funny niche in the card pool because it has to work as a SPOILERS pseudo story-asset for the Circle Undone as well. So, it's a tiny , mostly terrible, effect but if it were bigger or had more of an impact then it'd risk muddling up the balance of that campaign. I dunno if there's a solution to that.. — bee123 · 31
The Eye of Truth

For a skill card to cost 5 xp, the effect must be awfully useful, and this card definitely is. It's not just that you're helping the entire team pass an annoying treachery easily; you're also permanently removing one such copy from the game, which is useful in every scenario you can think of and especially ridiculous in The Circle Undone with its "if three of these are in play, bad thing happens" treacheries - Terror in the Night, Ultimate Chaos.

And if that wasn't enough to convince you, it's practiced, meaning you can just pull it with Practice Makes Perfect on any kind of non-treachery test you're having difficulty with. Parley/evade/whatever at +4, then get the card in your hand ready for the next treachery.

Erdjo · 329
Yeah, I feel like Practice Makes Perfect combos quite well with this. I think it especially deserves mention for Joe Diamond, as he both has a ton of good targets for Practice Makes Perfect, and tends to get beat up by treacheries a lot. — Zinjanthropus · 232
Wouldn't you not get the card back in hand? It says "add that skill to your hand instead of discarding it", but the Eye of Truth's text prevents the from happening, so the replacement effect fails — Chitinid · 14
Depends on the skill check. You would not get it back if it was used against a Treachery skill check but any other skill check would have it return to your hand. — LikeWise · 1
Yeah, it's great, you get +4 to _any_ test, and then you get it in hand to use against a treachery later. That's incredibly efficient. — Zinjanthropus · 232
As a side note, how does this behave if you commit it to the test on Slumber (from GotA)? The wording would imply that you could remove Slumber from your threat area (which you normally can't do until you lower the strength of the abyss). — Zinjanthropus · 232
@Zinjanthropus ‘If the test is successful, add that treachery to the Victory Display’. It is as simple as that. The ability you mention is a way to remove Slumber, but there is no card text preventing it from being removed by other effects. (For example, see Straightjacket.) There are plenty of other ways Slumber could be removed from play without using that ability, including Cheat Death, Otherworld Codex, and Alter Fate. — Death by Chocolate · 1497