Butterfly Swords

Butterfly Swords

What is the secret of Lily’s Discipline was in front of our eyes the whole time?

Not through the main attack that does only 1 damage, but the empowered attack that does 3 damage in one attack (same as for the Butterfly Swords (5)).

So if you use Bandolier (2) to get 2 copies down, you can Enchant both Weapons and the beauty of it is that if you exhaust one pair and then the other, that would count as 2 attacks for your Discipline.

Use your Enchant Weapon boost on your first attack to give it all the chances to land and trigger the second one.

This requires a bit of set-up and at least 5 cards, but this way you will be able to deal 8 damages reliably in 2 actions, without any lvl 5 weapon.

Keep Galvanize in hand for an extra burst, or your Fight Events like Spectral Razor, Toe to Toe or Sweeping Kick.

A nice deck for this version of Lily could look like this: arkhamdb.com and evolve with the Side Deck for a lot of stat boosts making her compatible with Hard/Expert

Valentin1331 · 81159
But... That's five cards, five play actions, 14 resources and 12 Xp. That's not "a bit of setup" in my book. Why not just upgrade the Butterfly swords to the less sucky level 5 version? (or something better) — olahren · 3594
While I agree with you that it is substantial, compared to a lot of Dragon Pole Lily Decks, or most guardians, that is still reasonable. And the lvl 5 are not necessary as the idea is to skip the normal attack — Valentin1331 · 81159
But why avoid level 5 weapons? Enchant Weapon is a level 3 card, so your combo is only accessable to the more dedicated guardians anyhow. A single Flamethrower can deal 8 damage in 2 attacks. Cyclopean Hammer can do at least 6 damage, often more, in three attacks. It just seems excessive and cumbersome to dual wield two pairs of enchanted Butterfly swords. — olahren · 3594
What I am trying to do here is to leverage the Agility Discipline for Lily, and the Flamethrower or the Cyclopean Hammer do not synergise with it, when that combo does help you with 2 attacks out of 3 with a good amount of damage. Also the flamethrower can do the same, but has a very limited amount of Ammo, and you need to work around that aspect with a good amount of cards in your deck, the hammer is good but you will often also attach an Enchant Weapon on it. I’m not saying it’s the best weapon in the game, but it might be the best way to use Lily’s agility discipline! — Valentin1331 · 81159
This is an, at minimum, 12 XP, 14 resources, and 5 card combo to... achieve 8 damage in 2 attacks. This is, suffice to say, not a good combo. While I understand you are trying to work around Balance of Body, this isn't actually doing much with balance of body, and this intended combo I would say is a good example of everything a combo shouldn’t be, and a good collection of classic mistakes one might make when trying to invent combos. For example, you picked non-synergistic elements (enchant weapon and butterfly swords don’t work well together because enchant weapon gets much less value on a two attack weapon), elements that don’t synergize with the core concept (enchant weapon is not useful for a ‘spam attacks’ strategy, it is there for one punch strategies), and combined elements that reference each other’s mechanics but don’t actually synergize (while balance of body adds speed and butterfly sword uses speed, the speed does not meaningfully help the combo because you are already going to hit with enchant weapon basically every time). While I think balance of body has potential, and butterfly sword 2 has more utility than 5 just because of the XP cost and card access, this its really bad way to use them even in your intended circumstances (Ex: no ammo, lilly chen and thus no guns anyway, balance of body). — dezzmont · 222
Any combo to work essentially needs to take the output, subtract the input, and see if it is actually doing anything better than ignoring combos and doing things normally (in this case, equipping the hammer and going wild). In this case, this combo wildly underpreforms to the hammer striking even with just one action for most of the game (as the level of resources, cards, and XP mean this combo probably never fully goes off in any given campaign you play! Guardians aren’t known for being able to draw 5 specific cards or pour out a pile of resources turn 4). A good balance of body combo should focus on the strengths of what balance of body offers (mainly, emergency damage as long as you have lots of cheap ways to attack you otherwise can get utility out of, such as Survival knife 2, rather than anything to do with speed) rather than trying to arbitrarily use every element of balance of body. — dezzmont · 222
I don't think you can use the Balance of Body Discipline to trigger two different copies of Butterfly Swords anyway. See the rules for "different": They specify that the same ability on two instances of the same card (by title) do not qualify as "different actions". — Granfalegion · 1

Old Shotgun

Old Shotgun

Updated to include The Scarlet Keys Player Expansion cards:

Directly:

Indirectly:

There, someone should have catalogued Old Shotgun's enablers ages ago. Thank you to Until the End of Time for finding all of them.

Edit: Added Joey as per Django and Yenreb's insights. And I'll elaborate on how Dexter and Joey's fast playing of items allows Old Shotgun to enter play with ammo:

Step 1.) Play an event with a skill test (Backstab, Ríastrad, Clean Them Out, etc...).

Step 2.) During the skill test while resolving this event, you get a window of opportunity. Use this window of opportunity to trigger a fast play action with either Dexter or Joey.

Step 3.) You have technically played Old Shotgun while playing an event. Thus, is comes into play with its uses value as 2. Voila.

Lucaxiom · 4555
Wait, how does Old Shotgun combo with Dexter Drake? — Thatwasademo · 58
Also, all the ammo adding events work (though Contraband needs another source of ammo first, and 2 ammo isn't a great uses value for Swift Reload) — Thatwasademo · 58
Looked it up elsewhere; for those curious, if you use Dexter Drake's ability while resolving a skill text initiated by an event, that counts — Thatwasademo · 58
s/text/test/ — Thatwasademo · 58
Does this also work with Joey? Using his ability to play this while an even resolves? Should be similar to Dexters ability. — Django · 5165
Yes. — Yenreb · 15
What about the event Black Market, if you reveal an Old Shotgun and put it set aside?... I find it very hard to unterstand when an Event is finishing played and/or resolving (until you've read all of its text and are ready to go? Or until any of its effects are happened)? — Miroque · 25
@miroque As soon as you have reached the end of the text print on an event card, the "while playing an event window" terminates. This gets confusing when event cards have effects that last past its discard. But this extended effect doesn't count towards duration of playing an event. — Lucaxiom · 4555
Folks, there is a great new card in Scarlet Keys which is working which Old Shotgun: our good old friend "Prepared for the Worst" (Level 2)! — Miroque · 25
Hello , does this do damage greater than 3 to enemies ? Thanks , because i'm french and the traduction is not very clear — Tersayde · 1
@Tersayde non. — Lucaxiom · 4555
Just for the Clarification, you can play it using the action from honed instincts? — Castorp · 1
Hold Up from Hemlock Vale can also directly enable it now too. — clarence · 1
Also "False Surrender". — Susumu · 383
Also "Pushed to the Limit" — Databased · 1

Umôrdhoth

Umôrdhoth

Easy to kill if you have Butch with a sledgehammer on your team. Best paired with Aquinnah. She redirects the damage and the exhausts Umôrdhoth and (just) has to take 3 horror. And she has plenty ways to mitigate that.

In addition let her wield some Survival Knifes so she can counterstab once or twice.

GrueneLupenAufheben · 142
If you are playing with only core set cards, about the only weapon which can damage him reliably is Roland's custom .38, so try to fight him on a location with clues. Other investigators are going to need talents to pump their skills, testless damage, or a lot of good cards to commit. — tessarji · 1
Roland's .38 is only going to chip away at him, though. You can't afford to stall, since he hits like a truck. Shotgun, in my opinion, is probably the best from the Core Set, just make sure you have 2 or Extra Ammunition. — Tinkorn · 1

Forced Learning

Forced Learning

Here's a trick: you totally can discard weaknesses with this card! This is legal as long as you're not lactose intolerant.

Of course, you can't choose to discard weaknesses from hand. That's illegal and heretic and the Arkham Police will bust down your door and confiscate your collection. But the trick is, you're not discarding weaknesses from hand. You're discarding them from play or from your discard. Forced Learning never specified that you can only discard the cards you drew from hand!

See, when you draw Paranoia as one of your two cards over upkeep, you immediately resolve its revelation effect. It's then discarded and goes into your discard pile. You then choose paranoia as your card to discard from Forced Learning. Good thing it's already in your discard pile, so you keep the other card you drew.

Alternatively, you draw Internal Injury. Even better. You resolve the revelation effect of internal Injury and put it into play. Then you choose Internal Injury as the card you discard from Forced Learning, and discard it from your threat area. Hurrah, you just cleared that weakness without spending an action! This also works for enemy weaknesses!

Don't actually try this at your table unless you enjoy rule arguments.

suika · 9521
Obvious incoming FAQ on this aside, under this interpretation one presumably this means that a weakness that takes effect in your hand would not be valid, meaning that the rules weirdness for this card in Patrice, who already is weird with this card, just got 5% weirder. — dezzmont · 222
Patrice does not work with this card at all, because it says "Instead of drawing 1 card durring upkeep phase. And she does not draw 1 card, she draws 5. "Internal Injury" looks like a good catch to me. But Paranoia should definitely not work. It does not change the game state to discard a card from the discard pile into the discard pile. — Susumu · 383
@dezzmont: for all you know this could be completely intended behavior to compensate for the mediocrity of the card! — suika · 9521
@Susumu: perfectly legal as long as you apply Forced Learning before Patrice's ability. — suika · 9521
@susumu: Changing the game state is only required if we need to determine something with "must" word, play or trigger some ability, or we need to select a target with "choose" word. It seems that this case isn't included all condition, so that it seems be legal to select Paranoia to discard. — elkeinkrad · 504
@Suika I did think about it. Forced Learning basically shutting down Seeker's search power in exchange for heavily limiting how bad weaknesses could get might be fair for seekers who tend to run strong draw engines, but allowing anyone with seeker access to totally shut down their signature weaknesses probably won't fly, as seeker already has some extreme power level issues even outside of draw power. @Susumu: As has been stated, it is an order of opperations issue. This entire thread just goes to show this card is gunna need an FAQ or five because of how many different ways it could in theory apply (And, again, it tickles me that Patrice rubs up against how it works in one way, while in another being the only unambiguous case on discarding weaknesses). — dezzmont · 222
I don't want and I can't read this (English is not my native language), so can you tell me: can I discard weaknesses like Internal injury by Forced Learning? — Pawiu14 · 202
We do not know, and need an FAQ. It is not likely. — dezzmont · 222
It's possible case that we should draw cards, discard cards, and then resolve revelation effect. I agree that we don't know about this. — elkeinkrad · 504
@ suika: "When a player draws two or more cards as the result of a single ability or game step, those cards are drawn simultaneously." So, no. You can't apply "Forced Learning" after drawing the first and before drawing the second card from Patrice' ability, because all 5 will be drawn simultainiously. — Susumu · 383
@Susumu: That's not what you replace, you replace the card draw that Patrice would have replaced (with, I should note, exactly the same "instead of ..." text). — Thatwasademo · 58
That said, the rules aren't entirely clear about what happens when multiple replacement effects *from static abilities* try to change the same event, especially when both those replacement effects began the game in play — Thatwasademo · 58
If they were both from Forced abilities or both from reaction triggered abilities, you'd obviously get to choose which one to apply — Thatwasademo · 58
If you read the rules carefully than you know how Patrice works. Instead tells you that only the latest effect applies (so Patrice or Forced learning, which entered play later) as these happen at the same time first player chooses, but has to stick with it for the whole game. So unless FAQ-d you choose one at game start and stick with it. — vidinufi · 69
Until we get an FAQ to confirm, I think with how things intertwine... A weakness's discardability depends on the specific weakness. Weaknesses tend to discard themselves from play, so we know it's a valid mechanism. In addition, based on Amanda/Grisly Totem's ruling, it is likely that 'hanging effects with indefinite timing points' linger until a card leaves play - and a card being played does not cause it to leave play, while a card that goes into the discard does. So if a Weakness is a "Revelation - Put <x> into play" Weakness, it is still 'in play' and therefore is valid to be discarded. However, if it is a Weakness with a Revelation effect that will do something (Amnesia/Paranoia), it will do that thing and then be out of play (in the discard) and therefore no longer be valid to be chosen. In addition, cards with a "cannot leave play" option (Daisy's Necronomicon, Minh's King in Yellow) cannot be discarded from play and therefore cannot be chosen since it will not cause a change in the game state, so they will also force the other card to be discarded. And, of course, cards that remain in hand (Dark Pact, The Tower) cannot be chosen as the discard unless you happened to have drawn two of them. So Forced Learning is likely capable of dodging SOME weaknesses, but not all of them. Of course, since you need to have Forced Learning before you know what your weaknesses are, that's more of a useful fact if it helps you dodge a particularly nasty personal weakness. — Ruduen · 1025
"When a player is instructed to draw one or more cards, those cards are drawn from the top of his or her investigator deck and added to his or her hand." — NIEDZIOWIEDZ · 1
"A player may not optionally choose to discard a weakness card from hand, unless a card explicitly specifies otherwise." — NIEDZIOWIEDZ · 1

Forced Learning

Forced Learning

One problem not covered by dezzmont's otherwise exhaustive analysis is the fact that you're forced to choose your Weaknesses. You're more likely to hit them from the get-go (~2/22.5 versus the normal ~2/30), and this relative drawback only gets magnified as the campaign progresses and more weaknesses get added to your deck.

This might be slightly better in Norman Withers than elsewhere, since he at least pops weaknesses off the top of his deck for free (i.e. he's only half as likely to get his upkeep draw nuked, compared to other investigators).

VinnyB · 178
How could I forget to mention that? It was literally on my mind as part of why I considered it fairly 'meh!' as I was doing all that math! — dezzmont · 222
Not only does this mean you hit your weaknesses more often, but on those turns you will be forced to discard the non-weakness card even if it's something you desperately need. — OrionJA · 1
Oddly, it's not FORCED. — MrGoldbee · 1496