Question (minor SPOILERS): The rules say that after an enemy is defeated, it is "placed in the encounter discard pile (or in its owner’s discard pile if it is a weakness." However, in the first scenario, The Man in the Pallid Mask has no owner, so where does it go the second time it's defeated?

I'm pretty sure this spell has the best "charges-to-price" ratio at 10-2 for Akachi which makes it sort of a Swiss Army Knife for her:

Better than Hot Streak with Spirit-Speaker: For the same 4 xp, Akachi nets 8 resources for 2 cost up front.

Cheapest way to pay off Angered Spirits: Each charge paid is "worth" only 1 damage, compared to 3 damage for Shrivelling (5), plus you still have 6 charges left afterwards.

For the same reason, you don't feel as bad sacrificing charges for Torrent of Power.

Of course you can still attack with it. Finish off whatever health remains after a Shrivelling attack (especially with Sign Magick (3)). Or if you've loaded up with Shrivelling (5), use this to pick off 1-2 health enemies.

Mix-and-match the above. Pay off Angered Spirits, pick off an annoying 2 health enemy, then convert the rest for a 2 resource gain. Or better yet, use up all the charges, then recall to your hand with Spirit Speaker and play it again to reload 10 more charges.

This probably shouldn't be Akachi's main combat spell as the extra charge from her innate is worth less than Shrivelling (not to mention the action loss risk). But it's a great "side arm" to Shrivelling or its equivalents, and is more efficient to use for the other purposes above. In this way, there's a natural upgrade pathway from Obfuscation to Brand of Cthugha (1) to Brand of Cthugha (4) for her "jank spell" slot.

Tried this out a few times and the results were quite underwhelming.

A few things you don't think about...

1.) This magnifies the intensity of a weakness. Per the rules, you can never willingly discard a weakness. So, when you draw your weakness, it basically has an additional revelation effect: discard the other card you just drew. This messes with just about everything in your deck.

2.) You would think the double draw during upkeep makes up for the +15 cards, but nope. It essentially just dilutes out your deck, and makes any draw action half as effective when it comes to milling.

I've tried just about every scenario I can think of. Using the boosted deck number to avoid Beyond the Veil, trying it out in gators that can take level 0 seeker cards, etc. The result is the same...

The +15 is just simply too punishing to make this worth it. Even if it was just draw 2, the extra discard with each weakness can really bone you. Skip.

Stella Clark is on the card, so it must be good for her, right? True - at least until she becomes a Quick Learner, which she probably wants and with 2 copies, +3 instead of +2 for 1 turn is not that impressive. Aside of early-campaign Stella, Gritting Your Teeth seems mostly useful for and pseudo-.

If you want to get value out of Gritting Your Teeth, you want to take multiple tests after playing this card. In the ideal scenario, you fail a mythos test (that is a thing) and get as many +1 actions as you can (also happens to be thing).

More value comes if you also use cards that care about testing two skills. Accidentally, most of such cards happen to be .

So we're looking at investigators who can get the most value of Gritting Their Teeth. Rita Young likes Tricks that add her to a skill test (and can hide an Ace in the Hole). Similarly Bob Jenkins has the right cardpool and stats. Certain Dark Horse Preston Fairmont builds can appreciate this, getting to a reasonable skill value and having ways to generate actions. Patrice Hathaway can reasonably run this card as a with potential extra use (see the synergy with Grisly Totem?). Possibly helpful also for Jenny Barnes and Finn Edwards, but they probably find more impactful cards as their 5 off-class pieces.

Well there are reasons why this card doesn't see much play - but at least there are investigators who can make it do some work. And maybe it's the that makes the real difference between a garbage card and not that good, but never wasted and situationally quite helpful card.

This card is so overpowered, that you basically take it in any mystic or guardian deck and that's it, all-mighty monsters are no longer any threat to a team.

No charges, no ammo, no special mechanics to balance such a power, just a +2 damage weapon with on average +3 to your main skill, meaning that you do not even need to boost your weapon with a Beat Cop or Holy Rosary to make it effective.

Why would now Akachi use any battle magic, if she never runs out of charges with this card and in terms of the damage it is comparable to the latest version of Shrivelling but without any magical drawbacks? Why would you collect 5-10 cards to make a Shotgun work on Leo when you can just take this endless hammer?

Even old granny Gloria Goldberg will easily become your ultimate monster hunter, smashing monsters with this giant hammer in her hands, because any card that increases your willpower strengthens this weapon too.

In other words, this card is so good that it simply makes a lot of other interesting cards and mechanics completely useless.

My friends and I have already played 3 campaigns with this card, and compared to previous playthroughs, this card actually feels like cheating.