Beyond the Veil

Beyond the Veil

This card is a perfect example of how a treachery can shape the entire campaign. Dunwich has many cards that force you to discard undrawn cards, and although this can normally be bad enough (especially if it pushes cards you need into the discard pile) this card makes it a punishing, deadly mechanic if not built for.

Anyone playing Dunwich needs to build their deck with this card specifically in mind. There are several counter options for it, though some investigators really have no counter and should not be picked for Dunwich because of that.

For All -Consider resigning if running low and this is up. It is better to fail the scenario than take trauma, most times. This card gives you plenty of warning that it is going to kill you.

Survivor (can deal with this card) -Devil's luck: Straight out cancels the card if you can't counter it by other means. -Alter Fate: Get rid of the card from yours/an investigator's play area.

Rogue (will probably die from it) -No easy counter. Either tank it, run versatile with Deny Existence (keep in mind the extra cards you pick for versatile should have draw on them or you're going to run into deck dilution easily), or dump points into Cheat Death.

Guardian (will probably eat this but be fine) -No easy counter, but can stack a ton of mitigation to take the hit (I've had worse, just straight out tanking it, etc). Also guardians tend to have slower draw and even with the forced discards the event probably won't trigger.

Seeker (no direct counter but can probably cancel this) -usually very squishy and can't survive the hit once it goes off and also cycle their deck fairly rapidly. They are definitely at a higher risk from this card. However with abilities like Forewarning they can cancel it. Many of them also have access to the mystic card pool, in which case Deny existence or Quantum Flux can help tremendously.

Mystic (makes this card their bitch) -Having a high amount of cancels, deny existence (especially level 5), slow draw and quantum flux, this class is not in the least bit concerned by this card.

TLDR If your character can pull from the level 1 survivor pool or any cards from the mystic pool, they will likely be just fine. If they cannot, consider versatile for deny existence.

drjones87 · 199
Guardians actually have Delay the Inevitable, which is also very useful to help others who tend to draw more — Nenananas · 267
Patrice, while "can pull from the level 1 survivor pool or any cards from the mystic pool" will likely be one of the gators having a harder time to mitigate BtV. Yet, I think with Dr. Francis Morgan and Charisma pretty much everybody can handle that treachery quite at ease. It looks more scary, than it actually is. — Susumu · 381

Prepared for the Worst

Prepared for the Worst

Seems like a pretty decent upgrade in certain contexts. Reduces cost to zero and if you attach this to SttP it prevents the card from sitting dead if you already drew the weapons you needed in your opening hand by helping your other fighting investigator friends find what they need.

For 2 XP I do wish instead of the cost being reduced it was either fast or searched 12, then I think it'd feel like more of an across the board upgrade and would see play outside of larger multiplayer campaigns or traditional 1 cluever 1 fighter investigator groups.

greenmantis55 · 99
It's kinda Fast, since you can immediately play the weapon if you've got the resources, so you're still saving an action... but you don't get the other benefits like ignoring AoOs. — Hylianpuffball · 29
With the math of how STTP+prep works out, searching 12 cards instead of 9 would only help you 1 in 100 games on a 4 weapon pull. Reducing the cost and playing the weapon fast however, is something that saves you a resource and an action every game, which is far more valuable. It also helps to contextualize this as a '1 XP card' if ran with Stick to the plan, as I think the value of the upgrade only really makes sense on STTP. The main cost to this is that you can't combo your new weapon with ever vigilant, which is a big deal for decks that spam a lot of assets (most guardians), but if you aren't sure you will have 3 cards to play I do think that starting with 1 more action actions is kinda nice. The main issue is that your paying 2 XP for an effect that will only matter 1 in 10 games roughly, but if you want to combo your weapons (survival knife maybe), you are likely to play this regardless. — dezzmont · 222
The big bonus is that you can target another investigator, who might avoid an AoO. But since you are a guardian and designed to handle enemies there are few situation where this upgrade might worth 2 xp. Probably if you play yorick and have a good chance to recycle this card or your friend play an investigator with a weapon as his signature card like Joe, Monterey or Diana — Tharzax · 1
This big bonus is kind of meh, I think. Yes, there are weapons in Survivor and Rogue, too. And evena few in Mystic or Neutral. But this doesn't mean, that getting a weapon or not is equally key for the deck to work in these classes. To make it good in these, it would need additional traits. Maybe in a way, that still makes it restricted to search for only one trait. Like: "Choose an investigator at your location. That investigator chooses a trait (Weapon, Tome, Tool or Spell), search the top 9 cards of their deck for a asset with this trait, adds it to their hand or plays it (paying its resource cost), and shuffles their deck." One additional bonus of this card, I can see is: PftW (0) is imho not that great in a level 0 deck. You can't put it on SttP, and it's value further improves, once it improves the odds of getting a high level weapon with it. So instead of either getting a sub-optimal card in your level 0 deck, or paying 1 XP for a level 0 card later in the campaign, you can choose this card for just 1 XP more. — Susumu · 381

21 or Bust

21 or Bust

Sometimes in Arkham Horror we tend to get obsessed with Min-Maxing. 21 or Bust is a card whose greatest strength is that it is just fun. It's enough of a gamble that the team feels tense when you are at 17 and want to pull another token, it's not game-ruining when you fail, and it's an incredible experience for the group when you actually manage to hit 21.

Outside of gambling, this card does have some utility through the reveal token text. If you're running Favor of the Moon for curse mitigation, this is a really good card to release a sealed curse on. The curse token itself has no downside, and you gain a resource as part of the effect.

Side Note: If anyone tries to give you crap for running this instead of Emergency Cache, remind them that there are dedicated fighters out there running .35 Winchester.

SorryLaurie · 608
Winch is great for Mary! — MrGoldbee · 1484

Custom Modifications

Custom Modifications

After creating a killer intricate synergy deck for Daisy, where I upgraded for 36xp (factoring in Raven Quill, Refine and Delve Too Deep) imagine my disappointment when my promising bare bones Roland Banks deck ran up against the Xp limitations inherent in Custom Modifications and its associated synergy cards. What a disappointment; what a buzz kill.

Guardians really are the phlegmatic sick men (and women) of Arkham right now. Some serious xp boosting and extra synergies are desperately needed if they're to keep pace with the other classes, particularly Seeker. It wouldn't take much imagination to boldly redefine this class with a new suite of cards that injected more dynamism and excitement into the stogy cast of characters which are supposedly the intended action men (and women) of the game. More than any other class Guardians just don't have any headline shticks that the other classes do (though Mystics arguably suffer somewhat in this regard too), they just don't tick.

Blitheharrow · 44
After you fail a skill test on the attached asset place a resource on Custom Modifications it as a recalibration, if there are three recalibrations on this attachment when it leaves play reduce the cost of your next upgrade by 1 (limit once per game.)- Fixed — Blitheharrow · 44
It might just be me, but I actually think Mystics are one of the stronger classes, mainly due to their ability to, when they get set up, deal with the two main aspects of the game (enemy management and clue gathering) with their greatest strength, which simultaneously affords them some pretty good protection from the encounter deck. However, I will concede that that "when they get set up" qualifier is a huge weakness, especially since one of Mystic's weaknesses is lack of resource acceleration (and, at least with a limited card pool, it feels like card draw). Guardians suffer from a similar problem, where it feels like they have great toys but they lack the capabilities to reliably get them into play. I would personally argue that the main problem with Guardians is one of design philosophy; having a class specifically designated as "the combat class" severely limits that class' design space due to the fear that it'll become both great at combat and good enough at the rest of the game, to the point where it becomes the strongest class (this can happen, and I would argue has happened, with "the exploration class;" between the likes of 'I've got a plan!", Blood-Rite, and Occult Invocation, Seeker really doesn't look to have any problem with combat, at least to my eyes). Guardian is forced into an artificially weakened state because the developers are, understandably, afraid of making it too good at things other than its core competency of fighting and turning it into the new Seeker. — NightgauntTaxiService · 450
What I believe could serve as a fix is changing the design philosophy of the classes; instead of being "the combat class," make Guardian the class that turns the encounter deck against itself, growing stronger in the face of enemies and treacheries. Also, potentially expanding on the "asset-focused" theme of Well-Prepared (2) could give Guardians the identity of The Weapons Expert, the person in horror movies who always has the right tool for the job. Don't focus on what the classes do, focus on how they do it; Guardians are Prepared for the Worst, Seekers possess Deep Knowledge, Rogues know that Money Talks, Mystics Uncage their Soul, and Survivors Live and Learn. — NightgauntTaxiService · 450
@NightguantTaxiService Great observation, I completely agree. — Quantallar · 8

Shortcut

Shortcut

"Play only during your turn" (Investigation Phase) exists on both Shortcut and Shortcut (2). But this Shortcut (2) plays to attach, not to move. It then provide Move that is usable in any phase. I think the ability to fast Move outside of Investigation Phase is quite rare. (e.g. Pathfinder / Eon Chart has "during your turn".)

So you may find some niche use in Mythos Phase that you can suddenly move to change its difficulty. (e.g. Go to where your friends are to get commits, attempting to get Fieldwork boost, changing shroud that affects the test, alter skill card's value like Inquiring Mind / "Not without a fight!", etc.) Or some creative use in Enemy Phase by using the fast window after Hunter enemy moves but before it attacks (e.g. Get the engage and drag the enemy where your Guardian is, so they can respond with Dodge / Heroic Rescue / "Get behind me!" / True Grit, etc.) There is one window in Upkeep before readying the cards so you can still Move late if it turns out no one used it yet back in Investigation Phase.

5argon · 11123