While spending 3 XP on Try and Try Again was a solid plan only on higher dificulties, this slightly weaker version of a card begs for more attention. Every investigator supports himself with skill cards and there's never anything as bad as investing a skill card with additional effect, that just fizzles. Especially when that effect was about to bury an enemy, that right now all of a sudden has a survival license and will kick your butt badly in the enemy phase. So any Vicious Blows, Resourcefuls or Survival Instincts are more welcome to proove it's worth.

The stakes are even higher when you've just threw your last Last Chance out of your pocket (as your final card of course) and found out that Cthulhu did not found that impressive enough, pulling you a .

My favourite investment though is an inclusion of Double or Nothing in either Wendy or Pete deck, which enables a more reliable time compression, when protected by this humble card. This idea is already on the table with Will to Survive, but for a bigger XP investment.

The donwsides then?:

• 2 resources and action invested
• into something that might just not be needed

It may be just a personal preference. If you're a cautious player that likes to be sure and overinvests just a tiny bit into every test, you're decks probably reflect that and you prioritize cards that just deliver. If you're more on the crazy side of things, that asset enables you to be yourself.

I'd rate this card as 3 out of 5.

It's not as bad as it looks, really.

Let me explain!

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class characters usually rely on maximized hit chances with lots of cash-money and cards committed to ensure success and high-profile results. You don't take a .41 Derringer or any of the other (Non Chicago Typewriter) weapons into a fight check without doing everything to ensure a successful check. If you want to do careless fight checks just 2 above the target then play a instead! attacks are all about doubling up and dealing big and powerful hits where only the fails your attack. On these attacks it really, really doesn't matter if the enemy gets buffed with Retaliate or not, it really doesn't.

Also, Retaliate gets shut off if the enemy is exhausted, in these circumstances Knuckleduster suddenly becomes a cheap shot weapon, Finn Edwards evades all the foes anyway, even if he doesn't immediately need to, quite often you'll find yourself Evading a foe, punching him once, then clearing out, then once that foe gets in your way again down the line he'll have some damage on him and be easier to kill.

Suffice to say that I've really changed my mind about this card after actually trying it. Don't be delusional though, Switchblade is still a far-superior "infinite" weapon.

This card looks terrible, but after playing with it I'd say it's okay in its faction. It's a card that has a few possibilities.

1) You're fighting rats and this is in hand. You kill them without risk and set it up for a 2-damage attack later!

2) You have no weapon, you have this in hand, and you're fighting a 3-hp enemy. You can kill them in 2 hits!

3) You have a baseball bat, you have this in hand, and you're fighting an odd-hp enemy. Use this for that last hitpoint, getting it into the discard and not endangering your bat!

4) You have a baseball bat and you're fighting almost anything and this is in the discard. If your bat breaks, you have a 2-damage backup!

I never had a game where this just sat in hand in my baseball bat survivor. Somehow I always ended up in a situation where it was good. I think that this card may be like Taunt, in that it looks terrible but in practice is actually pretty good a couple times a game.

For its XP cost, i can consider this a very good card...but not great. And the only reason I downgraded it to very good is because it has no icons. For a 4xp card, i think it should have had two icons in there. I base this on several playthroughs with Rex where in the mid-late game, i am usually swimming with cards.

This is a hard card to review because it's power fluctuates madly from scenario to scenario.

"Text printed on a scenario card" basically means treachery tests, unique location tests, parlay tests and anything printed on an act/agenda. This specifically means you cant use True Understanding while investigating, attacking or evading.

The limitation and the essential nature of the game basically causes this card to most often trigger during defensive tests during treachery draws and thus, the card is drastically more likely to trigger if your ability to pass tests is good to begin with. This, most common, way to get True Understanding to trigger means that you need to be located where clues are when you attempt the test, this by itself can be tough.

Another consideration when evaluating this card: 1 Clue might not actually be useful to you to begin with, Rex Murphy, Mystics and Seekers with Archaic Glyphs tend to pick clues up in bulks of 2 so the single clue wont always be useful to begin with. Thus it's better to use this card in a deck where picking up clues singly is a common occurrence (For example when Daisy Walker or Norman Withers are around).

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Now the flip-side. True Understanding might at this point seem like it needs a pile of things to compile to be worth taking, but when they do the incredibly strong result is most definitely worth the wait, a free, action-less, resource-less, clue tacked onto a successful treachery test or something more scenario unique. You can always try to plan for using True Understanding by ending rounds on clue locations (like many characters do for Evidence! or Scene of the Crime) or by bringing the test to the location via common treacheries like Frozen in Fear.

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TL:Dr. Hard to trigger, extremely useful when it does.