I want to like it, but it's just not good enough. The resource, deck slot and action cost is not trivial. Getting it out early enough for strong value will likely delay playing other more critical assets like weapons or allies.

The Good:

• The effect lasts the whole round, so you can support your allies with it.
• It's a free, fast engage on aloof enemies, which are often non-Elite and fragile.
• You can wail on troublesome elusive enemies like Zamacona.

The Bad:

• Alert and retaliate are most worth cancelling on big scary bosses, but this has the all-too-common non-Elite clause.
• The bless has to be revealed at your location, so your bless engine better be really humming.
• Playing it in the heat of battle is almost never worthwhile unless you're absolutely drowning in aloof/elusive enemies.

Like Grievous Wound, this is a very narrow tool that tries to help with elusive enemies, but is still weaker than brainlessly hitting hard. Like Absolution, it's not a strong enough payoff to motivate a bless build unless you were already doing it.

If it were free, fast, or effective on elites it might edge into being usable.

A terrifying adversary! The 3-4-3 alone makes this difficult to beat. But the effect is also debilitating to the Blessed Papa. The advanced version really needs to be dealt with before playing most of the bless seal cards and abilities that Father Mateo has. Otherwise Serpents of Yig truly makes it scary to play any bless cards, let alont he advanced The Codex of Ages. My way of dealing is to try to mulligan and even hard search for this enemy, letting my fellow investigators help me in defeating this monster :D Is nicely countered by Father Mateo's statline being boosted by whopping +1 on all skills.

Don't you disrespect me Little Man!

Don't you derogate or deride.

You're in my world now, not your world.

And I got friends on the other side.

(She's got friends on the other side.)

That's a weakness gentlemen, Just a little something we have here in Arkham. A little player card, don't worry...

Sit down at my table.

Put your minds at ease.

If you relax, it will enable me

To do anything I please.

I can read your future.

I can change it 'round some too.

I'll look deep into your heart and soul.

(you do have a soul, don't you Preston?)

Make your wildest dreams come true!

I got voodoo I got hoodoo

I got things I ain't even tried!

And I got friends on the other side.

(long story short, classic Marie Lambeau loves this card because it lets you pay Baron Samedi $20 to go away, and you even get 2 shiny clues out of it).

Just finished this scenario again and I got a question. If a level 0 ally of mine (let's say... Dr. Milan Christopher) is sacrificed because of this card my deck limit will fall below the minimum deck size, so I must include another lvl 0 card. The question is: may I include the sacrificed card again?

That's right kids, its "the ultimate wizard in terms of attack and defense."

But really, this is Wizard of the Order that gained hunter, 2HP and while is an immediate threat, still dispenses a doom that may haunt you next mythos phase. It gaining Victory 1 also means he's not just going to get shuffled in all the time, something that Chapter 1's core loved doing.

Overall, combined with Zealot's Aloof and the Treachery, makes an encounter set that you cannot ignore and, takes extra actions / resources to deal with and giving more incentive for the party to stick together.. Comparatively, original cultists made you go to them as action economy, and prioritising Fighters (who had less movement tools to work with back then) to stick to more central locations or head off threats.

If the original cultist set was Arkham Horror the board game's fires that you must go around and put out in Arkham Town, these are the guys starting them.

(I'm mainly here to make the YGO joke, but I also wanted to give my 2 cents.)