Dumb question: Where does The Man in the Pallid Mask go after he's defeated? He's only earned as a weakness during scenario resolution, but he has a player card back; does he just get added to the defeating investigator's discard pile?

I ran this in a Tommy Muldoon deck focusing on Custom Modified Becky and it did not disappoint. Tommy often struggles with draw consistency because all those Assets shuffling back makes his deck that much thicker. Now you can just aggressively draw through most of your deck (including Resourceful for even more draw) in case Prepared for the Worst didn't find Becky. As a side benefit, Rookie Mistake is also likely to come up sooner with more draw, so you don't have to play around it all game long.

Carson Sinclair and Preston Fairmont will also appreciate this. Carson needs to draw his Skills to support his friends, while Preston is just a rich sack of meat before finding his loadout. Both of them don't really care about the lost action either. One's already giving his actions away while the other's likely running Leo De Luca.

Haven't played Vincent Lee yet, but if the synergy with Geared Up is legal, him being able to take Studious, Geared Up and this card without Versatile makes his 1st turn setup pretty consistent.

Not sure about the other investigators with off-class access to Survivor Level 1 events though. Tony may want this as Rogues don't have a lot of draw aside from Lucky Cigarette Case and some high-XP options, but Survivor seems like the least viable secondary class for him. Minh and Mandy already can draw and search very well, so their actions are better spent actually winning the game. Agnes' weakness is so simple yet brutal that adding more draw to her looks like a bad idea (unless you engage in liberal deck manipulation).

I personally think that a Norman deck should be running Eureka, Foresight, Parallel Wills, and Scrying because there's just so much synergy between those cards and his ability. That said, it won't always be possible but you would be able to get around Harbinger if you ever caught it in a scry or parallel wills - make sure to Eureka when you know it's in the top 3 cards and name it with Foresight ahead of time (per FFG it looks like for Foresight and "Search and Draw" effects they want the timing window to be prior to the search part). If it gets to the top of your deck normally you can't Foresight it since it prevents itself from being drawn, but if you can draw it from inside your deck that bypasses the limitation and Foresight cancels it before the Revelation effect would put it on top of your deck.

That said, if you know it's coming you can also just prepare for it and time the "draw" when you know you can spare the two actions, but that combination of cards does let you skip having to deal with that and is worth noting I think.

A very good upgrade in more ways than one to a card that's normally used for its high soak.

The first change we see is that you can now use this ability on ANY investigator rather than just yourself, which includes not having to be at their location. Just like Ward of Protection (2) this means you can always be ready to counter the Ancient Evils that the Guardian at the other side of the map drew.

Now for the real boost. The lv 0 version allowed you to draw a card, say "yikes!", shuffle it into the encounter deck, draw another card, and if you were unlucky say "even more yikes!" and wish you hadn't used the ability. And to make things worse you're simply postponing the danger as the first card is still in the encounter deck.

This card, however, gives you the choice between the two so you will ALWAYS negate the "even more yikes!" encounter card. Either you negate the first card that was bad enough for you to use this ability, or you negate the second card which would have been even worse. Dr. Billy T-M never misses! Additionally, the lv 2 card actually "cancels and discards" the card you choose. You don't shuffle the lit fuse into the encounter deck like before, it simply discards.

So not only does it supercharge the original ability, it also allows it to be used on the rest of the map. The downside compared to similar cards like Forewarned is of course that you (or your ally) must still resolve the lesser of the two evils. But this is a fair price to pay for an ability that can be triggered every mythos phase.

But why would you choose Billy over other cards that doesn't take a hotly contested ally slot like the previously mentioned Ward of Protection, Forewarned, and A Test of Will? The reason is that Billy doesn't care about your revelation effects. Billy doesn't care that there's a "Surge" written above "Revelation". Billy doesn't care that enemies aren't revelation effects. Billy sees a card he doesn't like and cancels it.

As for the cost, placing a clue down, it's not all downsides. Crack the Case, Hawk-Eye Folding Camera, and cards that only work while standing on clues like Inquiring Mind and Preposterous Sketches are easier to trigger. Not to mention Research Notes from the same expansion.

Incredible encounter deck manipulation. Billy has indeed been "Working on Something Bigger".

You can see Gumption as a somewhat reverse Unexpected Courage. While UC increases your value by 2, Gumption decreases your goal by 2. Either way, you're two number better than you were before comitting the skill card. They both also have the same limit of 1 per test and are both innate (Which matters for cards like True Survivor).

So the question becomes "Why do I spend two experience to upgrade my two UC into Gumptions?" I decided to list some of the pros and cons.

Cons: -The 2 experience price (While small, it does matter for small xp campaigns where your XP needs to go to your core cards, and gumption is probably not gonna be ur engine unless you're playing a Darrel 0 skill test archetype).

-Has no icons. Therefore does not work with cards like Grimsly Totem or interactions that need you to discard card with specific items/quantity of icons (Minh's The King in Yellow.)

-Does not interact with scrounge for supplies, I guess.

-Pros:

-If you're doing a 2 skill test, you can reduce the test to 0. It then becomes an auto-win unless you draw your auto-fail token. On the other hand, 2 skill tests are usually easy enough to pass with. Which brings us to...

-Old Key Ring (Lv 3). Together with Gumption means you can reduce a 4 shroud location to 0. This is much more interesting as a 4 shroud can be difficult for most non-seeker characters.

-Combos with Shed a Light and Exploit Weakness. Although it's not the only way to achieve a 0 skill test (Map the Area, Expose Weakness, Breach the Door, Makeshift Trap) it's probably the most versatile. When you buy gumption, this is probably the deck you're running. And it's not like you can only use ONE of these methods to reduce a test value. Use them all to get to that sweet 0 when you're running 2+ tests.

-Combos with Darrell Simmons for the above reason.

-Weirdly, Combos with Grizzled if it has the "Nemesis" upgrade.

-Combos with Resourceful, if that matters to you.

Of course, you CAN run both copies of UC and both copies of Gumption. You can even put one of each in a test for that sweet +4 in whatever ya need.