So, the caveat - I've only used Yaotl once, in a Desperate Skills deck with "Ashcan" Pete, and he was the cornerstone of that deck. I found him pretty awesome.

Recurring 4 icons? Yes please! I found that between committing the card, then using Yaotl, and then using Yaotl again at the start of the next turn, I was using the same card 3 times - and it was pretty easy to do so! That is pretty incredible.

The second free triggered action "Discard the top card of your deck" - this is useful if you end up with a non-iconned card, like a weakness, on top of your discard pile. You could pull the next card from your deck and hope it has icons you can use. However, I didn't actually use this - I didn't want to risk discarding those Desperate skills.

So, it can work nicely in the right deck ... but generally, I suspect Yaotl is a bit "meh". You want a deck with lots of icons, and that probably means a skills-heavy built - and there aren't so many of those. Also, most cards don't have more than 2 icons. It's quite a limited user-space.

• Calvin Wright - You don't want lots of icons, so Yaotl doesn't seem to work well with Calvin, the other obvious candidate for a Desperate skills deck, given that Rise to the Occasion seems made for Calvin. Yaotl might work here.

• Minh Thi Phan - Seems good for a skills heavy deck, so Yaotl might be useful here. With a little creativity about who you help out, you might be able to make sure you've got the 'right' card at the top of your discard pile for the start of your turn. Yaotl might work here, but is up against great Seeker allies. If you're using Dark Horse in Minh then you're probably not using Dr. Milan Christopher, so in that case I'd give Yoatl a look.

• Wendy Adams - Might have some interesting synergies between her abililty and then being able to use the icons on the card discarded. However, I imagine our little evade-tank will want Peter Sylvestre more.

• William Yorick - Probably has more combat-focused allies to put in play.

Otherwise, it's hard to see how Yoatl can displace other allies for other investigators.

I guess this could also work nicely with True Survivor, to haul skills back out of your discard to reuse again.

In short - a really useful tool in the right deck, but possibly rather specialised for general use.

(Though I might have that wrong and people have lots of unusual builds that work with him...)

TL;DR: You will routinely play this for 3 or 4 icons and be happy for it.

Don't underestimate this beute. Depending on your investigator, having just 2-3 cards in your hand isn't an unlikely scenario. If this is one of three cards in your hand when played, that means you're getting 3 icons. One of two cards, 4 icons. Last card, 5 icons.

3 icons is by no means bad for a skill card, if a 3 icon "Play only if you have 2 or less other cards in your hand" existed, people would play it. This is that card, and then some.

4 Icons for one card is terrific, and definitely and achievable play once or twice in a scenario.

5 Icons is the golden-egg-laying goose that you think you're picking this card for, but believe me, this is not going to happen a lot.

Wendy and Ashcan, with their card discard mechanics are the obvious optimal character to use this card with, thanks to their innate discard abilities, on the other hand if Last Chance doesn't look playable they can discard it for their abilities.

So... this card reminds me very much of Preposterous Sketches, a card that is honestly pretty mediocre. The simple reality is that paying 2 resources and an action to draw three cards isn't economically viable in a game that is essentially about action management.

However, this card has one two major upsides over Sketches. The first one is that it cannot find weaknesses. This is actually a bigger deal than it seems at first glance since weaknesses are a major reason not to aggressively draw cards.

The second reason is the selection. You don't play backpack in any deck, you play it in a deck that has multiple Item or Supply cards that you really need. Here is a list of all Item and Supply cards.

While it could hit Emergency Cache (and is probably nice if it does hit at least one), you are really looking for decks that run a large number of qualifying cards. Mathematically, you want half your deck to be Item/Supply cards (probably more so you don't miss). Because that's the problem with this card: if you don't get three cards under it, it's really quite mediocre.

That being said, if you ever get Lightning Gun, Extra Ammunition and Emergency Cache on this thing... that's pretty good.

However, because it also takes up a body slot (not the most contested, but not trivial either), I don't see this card getting a ton of play. So, better than Sketches in a few decks, but probably still not the Diesel we need.

Innate cards, which are those? It's: Unexpected Courage, Guts, Manual Dexterity, Rise to the Occasion, "Not without a fight!", Resourceful and Survival Instinct. Out of faction there's Eureka!, Inquiring Mind, Opportunist, Quick Thinking, Fearless, Defiance and Inspiring Presence.

Some pretty good cards there, Resourceful in particular has big combo potential, you can recurse True Survivor with it and basicly play infinite skill cards.

To routinely hit 2+ cards with True Survivor you need 6+ of them in your deck, preferably as many as 8, that means that you're using Unexpected Courage, the most flexible of the bunch, Resourceful since it further enhances your recursion and its also flexible. The other 2-4 cards would depend on the exact survivor but generally all of them can put "Not without a fight!" to use. I wouldnt take "Not without a fight!" in a deck if you dont intend to get True Survivor.

This is a big nope In Wendy, perhaps the character where it would be the best. If you can stomach the risk of removing all your hard-earned skill cards when you draw her weakness then by all means try it. Mind you that it's not QUITE as bad as it might seem but just keep it in mind when you plan the deck.

Silas Bishop is going to love this card, it's probably going to be very good complement to his skill-heavy ability.

Dog and "Ashcan" Pete can do lots of stuff with True Survivor but perhaps most notably is the fact that he can recurse Inspiring Presence, a very nice combo interaction.

William Yorick can do a similar combo with Inspiring Presence, reloading upgraded Beat Cops for example.

UPDATE: After trying this card a bunch in Silas Marsh I can say that it's a terrific way to reload your hand, but the tempo is so terrible that having enough time and money to pay for just the one True Survivor is difficult enough. You want to draw and play this thing late in a game, when most of your cards are in the discard pile. If you really want this effect more then once then recurse it with Resourceful.

While this card benefits from having the ability to cancel any encounter card YOU draw, it loses out on utility to its level 2 younger brother by not being able to protect your fellow investigators. I'd rather have the ability to help out an investigator or even the whole party on a particularly treacherous drawn encounter than being able to discard an enemy. (which most Mystics shouldn't have a problem dealing with anyway with the right spells)