Defiance seems a low value card but it shows its strength in two independent conditions:

• Defiance is obviously useful when the issue of a chaos token may be dramatic. For instance if you’re playing The Miskatonic Museum and Harold Walsted is your one and only asset, you really don’t want to endure an effect (which would add a token for the remainder of the campaign). It is very situational, but you may encounter many of those specific situations during the campaign.
• In Easy mode, we can demonstrate (see below) that Defiance is equivalent to Unexpected Courage in most scenarios when you play to maximize the odd of success of skill tests so, if you play this way, you can safely put it in your deck instead of Unexpected Courage and benefit from its situational value when it appears. Or include both to have the best of both worlds!

Demonstration (for readably purpose, I ignore token):

Say you’re playing The Midnight Masks and you’re about to make a skill test with a skill value of 4 for a difficulty of 3. If you play Unexpected Courage, you will pass the test in all cases. If you play Defiance and choose , you will also pass the test in all cases. It’s the same for The Miskatonic Museum (if you have in Chaos bag OR there is an Hunting Horror at your location), Essex County Express (before agenda #3), Blood on the Altar and Carnevale of Horrors.

With The Devourer Below, Defiance is even better than Unexpected Courage as you need a skill value of 2 above difficulty before playing Defiance (then you play Defiance on and you pass the test in all cases), where you need a skill value of 3 above difficulty before playing Unexpected Courage (then you play Unexpected Courage and pass the test in all cases… if there isn't any Ancient One in play!). Curse of the Rougarou offers a similar analysis (unless you’re in Bayou location).

With Extracurricular Activity with , Defiance is better on all difficulties, as it’s really complicated to ensure success without it. Without , Defiance is equivalent to Unexpected Courage as soon as you have 10 cards in your discard pile.

With Undimensioned and Unseen, Defiance is slightly better, as Unexpected Courage can’t protect you from the additional effect.

On the contrary, Defiance is worse or slightly worse than Unexpected Courage for The Gathering and The House Always Wins (because of the positive effect of that you won’t want to cancel). Only 2 scenarios in a total of 13 published scenarios.

For Where Doom Awaits and Lost in Time and Space, it depends on the exact situation.

In conclusion, not a terrific card, but it can make sense including it in a deck, especially if you play in easy mode. You also may want to include it in hard or expert mode because the situational effect can become very strong.

Note that if you use player cards that take advantage of success margin as .41 Derringer, Unexpected Courage will be preferred.

I found it a little strange that the only review of Burglary was positive, because I consider this one of the worst cards in the Core Set. In the abstract, spending an action for three resources is sometimes good, because three resources are (very slightly) more valuable than an action. But Burglary brings along with it a host of problems and complications.

Most significantly, there's the up-front 1-action, 1-resource, 1-card cost of playing Burglary. This means the card takes forever to generate a profit. If you successfully Burglarize once, you've swapped 2 actions, 1 card, and 1 resource for 3 resources. Terrible. If you do it twice, you've swapped 3 actions, 1 card, and 1 resource for 6 resources. Still terrible. If you do it three times, you're getting close to breaking even. At 4+ times, you start generating a small profit. For this to really generate enough upside to justify the deck slot, you'd probably need to successfully activate it 5+ times. That is a lot of time to spend Burglarizing--a lot of time in which you're not advancing the Act deck and actually winning the game.

Burglary is even worse than that, of course, when you consider that you might fail the test. The three investigators with in-faction access to Burglary have a base Intellect of 3. That means that unless they're hanging out at a 1-shroud location (which may or may not be there) on Easy, they'll likely fail the test a good chunk of the time. That makes Burglary take even longer to pay for itself, if it ever does. Voluntarily inflicting a ton of skill tests on yourself, by the way, also will expose you to a host of bad special token effects.

Arkham Horror is a rush game. You have limited actions in which to get your objectives done, and you've got to get moving quickly. You simply do not have time to sit around at a low-shroud location for multiple turns doing nothing but amassing resources. And if you play Burglary and only use it a little bit, then you've gotten a terrible deal.

I will grant that Burglary is better for Rex Murphy than it is for other investigators. However, I think it is still not worthwhile even for him. In my opinion, even for Higher Education Rex, picking up 2 clues is slightly better than picking up 1 clue and 3 resources. That means the only real use for Burglary is to clear out locations with 1 clue more efficiently. But Rex has a huge number of ways to get that last clue without sacrificing efficiency (Working a Hunch, Deduction, Seeking Answers, having a teammate do it, etc.) When you consider the up-front cost of Burglary, and the fact that Rex probably has to invest cards and/or resources to succeed by 2+ to get the resources and the clue, I think Burglary is still not paying for itself.

Moreover, Burglary takes up a splash card slot for Rex. That means that instead of a dubious efficiency gain when investigating 1-clue locations, Rex could have had one of the strongest cards in the game: Ward of Protection, Fire Axe, Dynamite Blast, Elusive, etc.

Vicious Blow basically amounts to spending a card to get the equivalent of a successful fight action. As it turns out, a successful fight action is way more valuable than a card, so Vicious Blow is great.

Killing a monster in one fewer action than would otherwise be possible is terrific. It's always useful to save an action, but Vicious Blow is at its very strongest when its action compression allows you to kill a monster you otherwise would not have been able to kill until your next turn. For instance, Vicious Blow can save you a lot of damage if it kills a monster that would otherwise have survived into the enemy phase. It could even save you an entire turn if it deals that last point of damage to a boss.

Moreover, by killing a monster in one fewer action than you otherwise would have, you're also reducing the number of skill tests you have to take. This is great. If you need to pass 1 skill test instead of 2, or 2 instead of 3, that allows you to concentrate your boosts, giving you much higher odds of a successful kill. And each skill test you avoid reduces your risk of drawing the autofail or some other nasty special token.

Of course, assuming you have a 2-damage-per-action weapon like Machete out, Vicious Blow won't necessarily be an action saver if you're facing an even-health enemy. Fortunately, though, there are plenty of enemies thus far printed with 3 or 5 health. Plus, you only need to add in 1 additional damage from some other source--maybe Beat Cop, or Zoey's Cross, or even a second Vicious Blow--and then this card can also work against even-health enemies.

Of course, there's a chance that you fail the test, in which case Vicious Blow obviously amounts to spending a card for nothing. But a) Vicious Blow itself gives you +1 to the test, and b) you can and should combine it with other boosts so you are very likely to succeed and get the bonus damage.

If an investigator has in-faction access to Guardian cards and plans on fighting with Combat (in other words, 99% of Zoey, Roland, Mark, Leo, and Yorick decks, plus the majority of Skids decks), I would basically always run this. It is a fine choice as a splash card for the likes of Pete, as well.

This thing sucks.

A) You need to be firing at enemies that you've evaded, blue player's aren't very good at evading, basically requiring large resource expense or card dedication (and blue player's don't have many evade options). Besides, evading an opponent is an extra action, you'dd be far better off just throwing another attack at the intended target with a Machete or something.. B) You might also be firing at enemies engaged with your allies. A sub-optimal circumstance because now you risk friendly fire AND, as the blue player, it is your job to keep enemies occupied in the first place! If your clue specialist has to spend all his time babysitting your next intended kill then he wont have time to do his job! C) It costs 4 xp! For just 1 more you'dd have a Lightning Gun! Although it's 2 resources more expensive to play it pay's for the difference with 2 extra attack power on every attack (Hitting a rather nice sweet spot of 9 attack total on both current Blue characters.) Also it doesn't have the circumstantial clause.

This weapon sucks, plain and simple. It should cost 2 or 3 XP and be neutral, that way a non-fighter might consider taking it. Often the fighter will find himself stuck in a flood of enemies that he is tanking on behalf of the team, when the going gets tough however the clue specialist has to come running with a Shrivelling or Strange Solution to untangle the battle. A weapon exactly like Springfield M1903 would be perfect for that specific circumstance, sadly this is NOT that weapon.

A simple card, but a highly effective one for multiplayer Guardians. You spend one action, and the team essentially nets +3 cards and +4 resources in exchange (remembering here that Stand Together is itself a card you're giving up). That's pretty awesome. Compare Emergency Cache II, where you spend an action for essentially +0 cards and +3 resources. Or Cryptic Research, where you spend zero actions for +2 cards. Now, both those cards beat Stand Together in terms of flexibility (since you can play them when you're alone, or in the case of Cryptic Research even when you're engaged with an enemy), but in terms of efficiency, Stand Together just crushes both of them.

Stand Together shines the brightest when played Turn 1. Lots of investigators have multi-card setups that cost 6-7 resources, and Stand Together facilitates that. Zoey and Roland want to play Machete and Beat Cop (7 resources). Daisy wants Old Book of Lore and Dr. Milan Christopher (7 resources). Wendy wants Fire Axe and Leo De Luca (7 resources). Agnes wants Shrivelling and Peter Sylvestre (6 resources). Stand Together is just perfect here. It not only gives investigators higher odds of drawing these key assets, but it lets them get them all into play right away without having to use the inefficient "take a resource" action. This really gets things off to a roaring start.

Stand Together will of course still be good if drawn later in the game. It also offers double Will icons to be used in an emergency. Obviously, playing it for the event is better, but that's another nice little benefit over something like Emergency Cache.

Now, this doesn't mean two copies of Stand Together are an automatic choice for a Guardian's first 6 XP. There are plenty of other strong options. Beat Cop II is one of the best cards in the game. Keen Eye is underpriced and overpowered, like all the stat-boosting XP permanents. A super-weapon like Lightning Gun is not a bad idea, either. But Stand Together is definitely competitive with all of these, and a great thing to pick up before the campaign is done.