Drawing Thin

It's not immediately clear how this card interacts with Live and Learn. Does Drawing Thin apply to both attempts or just the first one? There was some debate about this, but the final ruling came from Matt Newman himself:

Greetings,

This is a bit of a tricky interaction, so I apologize for any confusion here. I agree it’s a bit ambiguous. I think the ruling that makes the most sense here is the following:

As a general rule, when you use Live and Learn to attempt a test a second time, all effects with a duration that expire at the end of the first attempt will have expired by the time the second begins. This includes effects used during the first attempt that say “until the end of the skill test…”, “…for this skill test,” or the bonuses from committed cards, which are all discarded at the end of the first attempt. Effects that are inherent to the test itself (the test’s parameters, what happens if you succeed/fail, that sort of thing) all remain the same, even if they have a duration of “for this test.” So, for example, if an effect said “play during a skill test. until the end of the skill test, increase the test’s difficulty by 2,” that would expire at the end of the first attempt, whereas if the test itself said “Fight. Increase the difficulty of this test by 2,” that increase in difficulty would exist in both the first and second attempts.

Now for the tricky part: Which is Drawing Thin? Is it an effect that initiates during a skill test with a duration of that expires at the end of the skill test? Or is it an effect which alters the inherent nature of the skill test itself, such that it would affect both attempts? Since Drawing Thin does not explicitly say any variation of “until the end of the skill test” or “for this skill test,” and since its triggering condition is a “when” reaction to the skill test initiating and not something you use during the first attempt, my ruling is that Drawing Thin is changing the skill test’s inherent difficulty to be 2 higher—altering the nature of the test itself. Therefore if you use Drawing Thin when the skill test initiates, and then use Live and Learn to attempt that test a second time, the increased difficulty would carry over to the second attempt.

Again, apologies for the trickiness/ambiguousness. Hopefully this clears up this interaction, as well as clearing up how Live and Learn works in general. Thank you for bringing this to my attention; I’ll be sure to add it in the next edition of the FAQ as well.

Cheers!

StyxTBeuford · 13051
Thanks for posting! — BraidsMamma · 8
Ace of Rods

Did they forget to make this fast? It might have been worth considering if it was. As it stands, if this card isn't in your opening hand then most of the time you are effectively paying three resources to get +2 in a skill test, the equivalent of Unexpected Courage. Comparing it to the other neutral skill cards like Perception or Overpower is even more unfavorable because those allow you to draw a card if you succeed and are completely free. There are a handful of situations where the Ace of Rods will give you +4 in a test, but even then it is still too pricey to seriously consider.

One positive is that because it gets removed after use, putting two in your deck doesn't result in a dead draw. Preston Fairmont can use it as a means of flexing on other investigators to show how little he cares for efficiency.

While all of what you said is correct, I don't entirely agree with your dismissal of the card. In addition to all of that, it lets you take an action *from* a turn where you have nothing important to do (because you wouldn't play this if you did), and move it *forward* to a turn when you need it (because you likely wouldn't use it unless you need it). Is it a great card? No. But action manipulation could come in handy in certain builds. — cb42 · 38
I agree that it's not a good card, but I feel some of the reason for that might be because it's in a fairly weird design nice. — bee123 · 31
*design niche. Like it's got to work as the neutral tarot card and as a kinda pseudo-story asset for the Circle Undone. So it's got to be balanced as a card in and of itself and as part of a campaign level risk/reward and that seems like a tricky card to get right. Like, it's got to be able to do something in most decks, but not outclass the class-specific tarot cards or end up OP in the specific context of the Circle Undone. Given all that I'm not surprised it ended up a bit too small of an effect. :) But I wonder what a balanced neutral tarot would be? Something like the Red-Gloved Man, maybe? — bee123 · 31
This card consistently under performs. You should be paid 1 XP to take this card. It's honestly almost always a dead draw. — StyxTBeuford · 13051
Eureka!

The other review is underselling this card. At least on standard difficulty I think this is one of the top 5 best level 0 Seeker cards ever printed and a card that I shove into most of the decks that have full access to level 0 seeker cards. Comparing this to No Stone Unturned this card only digs 3 deep instead of 6 but doesn't require an action or 2 resources to use. This card is very easy to just throw onto any test that you're all but guaranteed to pass anyway (such as investigating a low shroud location) and then use it to have Eureka be replaced by whatever's the best card in the top 3 of your deck. The icons it has are fantastic, it's basically the only 3 skills you're likely to ever use so it can be committed to almost every test you take. On top of that, there's a lot of tests you might take where you're +3 above the test for example and passing it is important, but you don't want to spend any of your valuable cards to boost yourself up to +4. Eureka is great in those situations because you can insure that you are protected while also having the card cycle into something you need.

The card is just super versatile and is always useful, It's not necessarily a card that'll win you the game but it'll help you find those cards and is never a bad draw.

Sylvee · 105
I wouldn't go quite that far, there are an awful lot of fantastic lvl 0 seeker cards. I do broadly agree though, this is a card that I usually include in seeker builds. Excellent versatility, great filtered draw capability and there's also the added bonus that you may get a weakness which then gets shuffled back into the deck and will more often than not end up being avoided for much longer than it would have been otherwise. — Sassenach · 180
@sassenach I think you are wrong on that end. Sure, you can shuffle your weakness back into your deck, but you could also shuffle the weakness from the bottom to the top. The Chances to draw a certain card in your deck is always 1/n, where n is the number of cards. You dont draw a weakness with eureka!, sure, but the other draws are not affected propabilitywise. — Zimmt · 1
Hmm.. actually that's a good point. Still though, if you draw the top 3 after Eureka then you already know that a weakness that you pull as a result would definitely have been drawn within the next 3 draws. By shuffling it back it goes from 1 in 3 to 1 in however many cards are left, which in theory ought to improve the odds most of the time. I'm no mathematician though, so I could be wrong. — Sassenach · 180
@Sassenach That May be the case when there is a weakness in the top three, but most of the time there won’t be a weakness in the top three so far more frequently it is going from 0 in 3 to 1 in however many cards are left. I could explain the full calculations, but overall, Eureka doesn’t protect you from weaknesses on future draws - in fact by not drawing a weakness you increase the odds of a weakness draw in the future, but that’s just how drawing cards works. — Death by Chocolate · 1484
I didn't say it protected you from weaknesses, I said that when you do draw a weakness with it then it's a nice bonus, because in that scenario you do significantly improve your chances of not drawing that weakness again any time soon. — Sassenach · 180
The point being it's as much a bonus as it is a penalty since it is a statistical wash. That is, when you do see a weakness it is a nice bonus, but when you don't see a weakness it equally a penalty. So it's probably best not to consider it at all, since it's a considerably neutral aspect of the card. — pneuma08 · 26
Yeah I wouldn't consider the ability to shuffle a weakness away as a boon. Most of the time you don't draw the weakness in those top 3, so you go from a 0% chance of seeing it in 3 turns to a 3/N chance of seeing it in the next 3 turns. When you see it of course you improve your chances of not seeing it by shuffling the deck, but mathematically it all evens out. That wouldn't be the case if you had the CHOICE to shuffle your deck, but because it's forced the math evens out. — StyxTBeuford · 13051
However, if you consider that the alternative to a tutoring draw might be a blind draw it does better your chances of avoiding a weakness! — gustafusus · 1
Jim Culver

I've just recently started a 2 gator playthrough of Cirle Undone with Jim. I'll have a deck list to come soon but at the moment it has gone well using the sealing cards as well as Defiance to mitigate the bag in Jim's favor. Most every test so far as long as I can at least match the test value has gone my way. I feel like sealing mechanic may have jumped up Jim's power level by quite a bit.

How'd it go? — MrGoldbee · 1493
Grisly Totem

The question being: Is Grisly Totem, the missing link with Take Heart and Drawing Thin to the Survivor economy engine? Looks like so, and that's great for Survivors! All you need is now a survivor who's not afraid to fail a check once in a while. The safest checks to fail being investigate check (barring the BS tokens), this combo is very potent for investigators with low like William Yorick, "Ashcan" Pete or Calvin Wright for exemple and reaching the 200 characters threashold.

mogwen · 254
Well. Stella is here now and this is bonkers with her. — Mufasa · 1