Really great for Zoey Samaras:

• boosts her fight,
• boosts her fight with Wither / Spectral Razor / ... if there is a Creature / Monster at the location,
• you spare the action to engage the enemy (if it is engaged with an other investigator) and get an auto-damage with Zoey's Cross,
• gives your the last move you need to enter the location of the enemy Smite the Wicked is attached to.

At 2+ player you can also ask a seeker to play Existential Riddle on a Creature / Monster hunter enemy so that you have the double bonus all the time (as long as you move only one location perround).

Seems great with Trish Scarborough:

• enter a location with an enemy,
• use On Their Heels to get a clue,
• use Trish reaction to automatically evade the enemy,
• use Fake Credentials / Fake Credentials / Vamp / Vamp to parley with thix enemy with a +2 from Dirty Fighting.

And to enter the location, you can use copies of Doppelgänger you lay on your path.

It's insulting that this costs XP.

In the early game this card is worth one symbol. For the mid game it's worth 2, with the option to shuffle one back into your deck. You probably don't want to do that. Shuffling a single 2-symbol card somewhere into your deck is basically meaningless. Eventually, at the end of your deck, you'll get a 3-symbol card that's situationally better than a Perception or Manual Dexterity and you've now netted out against the 1-symbol you had to burn through at the start of the game. Just be sure to use it before you reshuffle or you're back to square one.

Yes, you can theoretically put off reshuffling your deck indefinitely by using it every round. Except if you've drawn to the end of your deck it means you're running a build that chews through cards. You will want to keep drawing. Not taking a single horror and shuffling your weaknesses back in is very rarely going to be worth only drawing quick-witteds for the rest of the game.

It gives you and , which is the most useful combo due to things like Lockpicks, Slip Away, Breaking and Entering etc. Except anyone running that suite is already going to be hitting an 8+ combined skill value and probably doesn't need a boost, let alone +4-6. And even if you do, Survey the Area is still better.

The only investigator that might make room in a deck for this is Minh running Short Supply. Dumping 10 cards at the start means there's a very good chance at lease one will start in the discard, so the others are 3+ symbols with Minh's ability. You probably won't be disappointed to draw them, at least. Even then survey is still way better, especially if she needs to use them to evade.

It also has minor synergy with Artistic Inspiration since the first card is worthless outside of your discard pile, so it's strictly an upgrade to pitch it for an inspiration. But if the nicest thing you can say about a card is that it doesn't hurt to throw it away, it probably isn't very good.

If I discard this card during Upkeep, resulting in my hand size not exceeding the limit, do I need to continue discarding or stop? I'm not native English speaker,have read the rule about upkeep phase and still not sure. For example, I have 8 cards in hand after drawing, including this card and reduce hand size to 5, I need to discard 3 cards. Then I discard this, hand size reset to 8 and I have 7 cards in hand, stop discarding now, or continue discard 2 cards?

The theme of this card feels great, especially for Hunter investigators like Zoey. I've split my thoughts into a few quick-read sections:

Pros:

• As it plays fast, can be considered action-less.
• When you deal a point of damage it can deal an extra point as a and it stays attached to an enemy. This makes it fairly invulnerable to poor chaos bag draws, unlike Vicious Blow, and you don't need to take a specific action to make it work (e.g. you need to fight to commit Vicious Blow for more damage).
• Provides a +1 boost on all actions fighting that enemy (so on high health enemies, you can get a +1 skill boost across all attacks, and then trigger the on the final hit).
• Has a icon, so you're always going to find a way to use this even if it's not for fighting.
• Is a Spell, so can be taken on the likes of Marie Lambeau or Agatha Crane (who may not benefit from the +1 , but can make use of the additional damage).

Cons:

• Costs a resource, unlike Vicious Blow.
• Only deals 1 additional damage, unlike Vicious Blow ••.
• Can only be played in your own turn, unlike Vicious Blow which could be committed to fight actions of other investigators (allowing them to take the first turn).
• As an event the additional damage is a one-off benefit, unlike cards such as Beat Cop •• which persist and can deal up to 3 points of damage (more if you heal them).

I guess you can see there are a lot of Pros and not many Cons - so why would you not always take Hunter's Mark? The answer is it's another card to fit into your deck and the competition (e.g. Vicious Blow, and off-class cards like Long Shot where applicable) costs no experience. For me a see a few possible use-cases…

It's best used on:

• Decks using +1 damage weapon assets (e.g. Blessed Blade ••••) where even more damage offers meaningful action compression. On these decks, it synergises well with Vicious Blow, Strong-Armed and Enchant Weapon.
• Decks making use of and/or testless damage, where an additional +1 damage can also offer action compression (e.g. Beat Cop ••, Toe to Toe, Quick Shot, Dynamite Blast, or in conjunction with off-class cards like Luger P08 or Blood-Rite).
• Fight event decks that lack a back-up extra damage weapon (e.g. Nathaniel or Marion).

It's not really needed on:

• Decks which deal +2 (or more) additional damage with an asset, such as Flamethrower or Lightning Gun. In cases such as these, 1 more damage is often a drop in the bucket, especially when you can use cards such as Vicious Blow for free (or purchase cards like Custom Modifications with Quicksilver Bullets, which provide persistent boosted damage for just a little more XP).

For me, it's a nice to have on flexy Guardians who want additional damage - but even in these cases it's unlikely to ever be an early XP purchase as that takes XP away from bigger and better purchases or upgrades. If you want to see it in action I've recently posted a Mark deck which makes use of it and Blessed Blade plus Crowbar, but even in that case I save the purchase of Hunter's Mark until I'm over 20 XP for the reasons stated. I like this card a lot, but it's just a little shy of an auto-include when faced with the many great options Guardians have these days.