Lantern

Given the arrival of crafty there is something neat about the humble lantern that allows it to shine above all other investigate tools.

Lantern is the only tool which investigates your location without having uses or exhausting, this means that along with crafty you always have a reliable, repeatable source of tool based investigate actions that also has the benefit of reducing the difficulty by 1. I tried a crafty Bob Jenkins with Scavenging and boy howdy, does having a never ending supply of free key rings, flash lights and lock picks while still be able to boost yourself by an effective 3/5 in an investigate (if you have two copies of crafty) make a pretty reliable investigator.

So lets all give it up for the humble lantern, which can be a zero cost, bonus action to play asset that even allows you to deal with the occasional annoying odd health enemy.

Zerogrim · 295
Totally agree - and Lantern (2) even better - been having a great time playing with Lantern, Crafty, and Rita Young. — Krysmopompas · 366
Archive of Conduits

Does the additional cost of 4 leylines have to be paid from the investigator's resource pool (making this effectively cost 6)? Or is the reference to 'cost' because it cannot be played if there are less than 4 locations in play?

Hydra · 6
No. You're not moving resources from your resource pool to place them (this is often specified explicitly). It just costs 2. — toastsushi · 74
Yes, it has to be paid by the investigator, because it's an "additional cost". Any cost must be paid by the investigator and not by other game elements. Please note that the identified versions of this asset use charges, which is different from putting resources on an asset as a cost. The section "cost" of the rules establishes that "Only the controller of a card or ability may pay its costs" and that "If a cost requires a game element that is not in play, the player paying the cost may only use game elements that are in his or her game areas (such as his or her hand or deck) to pay the cost". So, yeah, it costs 6, but you get 4 back after you identify the gateway. Regarding your second question, you can only play it if there are 4 locations, because it requires 4 locations. In any case, even if you could play it with less locations, it wouldn't make any sense, because it would be impossible to identify the gateway. — plabrito · 1
No, you're not paying cash. You're placing resource tokens from the pool. If they wanted you to pay 4 additional resources, it would say "as an additional cost to play this card, you must /pay/ 4 additional resources, placing them as..." The additional cost is just to make sure that you play the card fair and square, rather than putting it into play via any of a number of cheats. — Lailah · 1
Prophetic

This is new boost + resource asset type. It seems that this serise is similar to PT4 serise. However, the purpose of both are quite different. 1) PT4 doesn't give any cost, but this do. 2) PT4 can boost your skill at encounter card, but this cannot. 3) PT4 can boost your skill with your resource, but this cannot. Therefore, if you're plan to boost your skill value, it may be better to use PT4.

Guardian(): Most guardians don't consider this. If you check the available list in guardian pool, there is only 1 asset to boost and most cards are event. It means that it's hard to spend resources on Prophetic for each round. However, if you're plan to use Boxing Gloves such as Nathaniel, Prophetic is good candidate. Also, Prophetic is the only asset working with Gang Up. Prophetic + Gang Up is 1 resource cost with +3 with 4 damages.

Survivor(): Like guardian, there are very few asset; available list. However, there are many good Fortune events: "Look what I found!", Lucky!, Will to Survive, True Survivor, Eucatastrophe, Trial by Fire... Thus, you can use Prophetic as an economy card. If you want to play True Survivor repeatedly without On Your Own, Prophetic is good solution.

Mystic(): Prophetic works with Spell. That's all. However, if your deck has lots of resources like P-Agnes or Dexter and you want to use Propertic as an boosting source, Arcane Studies 4 is usually better.

Off-class cards: available list I don't know which cards are good, but some economy cards work: 21 or Bust, Hot Streak.

elkeinkrad · 500
One card that instantly adds a ton of power to prophetic in guardian is the Brand of Cthugha, it can be played for free off a single copy of prophetic and enjoys being boosted up even past the typical 4 up to avoid any nasty effects. — Zerogrim · 295
Beautiful with Close the Circle (add Winds of Power to taste) — Timlagor · 6
I'm thinking Prophetic would mate well with Dark Horse. After all, the resources on Prophetic aren't in your pool, thus bypassing the "no money for you" limit on Dark Horse. And Survivor is full of Fortune and Spirit events that cost 2 or less (3 or less if you gain a resource in your upkeep). — Staffan · 3
Bruiser

When you see this card, your mind probably immediately jumps to Guardians. After all, they love their guns and fight boosters. And they tend to have expensive guns, win-win right?

Well... not so fast really. Guardians already have fight pretty darn well covered, and this isn't going to be a better option than most tools they can take to serve as a fight booster, especially at 3 XP. Between your base stats, Tarot Cards, Friendly Local Officers, and Evidence on a stick a guardian can easily sit at a fight value of 6 before their +4 from their Flamethrower comes into play.

Guardians also have expensive weapons, but they tend to play a singular weapon due to both how powerful their 5 xp suite are, their ability to keep it topped off with reload cards they can ensure are sticky and the strength of their tutoring. Guardians with the right mulligan policy can force their big expensive 5 XP weapon on the first two turns. So you really can't view this as a discount card for them.

Charisma to run more of your +fight allies, Reliable, Ace of Swords, heck, even Physical training (4) all kinda low key do what this card does but better? If your looking at this as a chance to really boost one attack with one card (say... you are running Shotgun for some reason and you really want to make that initial hit slam someone), you even have stuff like Enchant Weapon which for most guardians is just better and blows this utterly out of the water for weapon usage.

I am sure a guardian deck is out there that may want to spam niche weapons with huge burst swings and plays lots of armor cards too (Old Shotgun decks with pocket fulls of grenades maybe?) but overall this is just questionable in the guardian pool. Some of the tri-class 'pick a tribe' cards are economy cards, but these 3 assets are not spammable in guardian, so it really comes down to being a booster card in guardian, and guardians just do this better, and while this can stack with them, are you really going to need more than 8 deckslots dedicated to passive boosting?

I would say the most compelling case for this card is in the rogue class, though some survivors may want it as well.

Rogues can get really good at fighting, but struggle for static boosts, especially with how almost every slot they have is highly contested. They are less likely to power upgrade their weapons because while they have good higher end weapons they are less able to force them into their hand than guardians, due to lacking Prep for the worst and Mr. "Someone deserves a raise for figuring out this pun name."

A lot of rogue weapons and strategies reward you for playing more than one weapon over the course of a game, due to their low ammo counts and come into play effects, and while this won't give you discounts with Sleight of Hand it will fit nicely into sleight of hand style decks. After all, if you are running sleight of hand you eventually plan to PLAY that gun you keep flashing. And you often want to 'over-succeed' on rogues, so having a boost can really matter.

And, of course, there is the base stat gap. Even if rogues COULD run as many slotted boosters as guardian, most rogues have fairly low fight values, despite being a fighty class. They make up for it a bit with a lot of fantastic skills and events and draw to fuel those skills, but between their lower weapon bonuses and lower stats it can take a rogue a bit more effort to get to where they are hitting as often as a Guardian, let alone succeeding by whatever.

Survivors can also get some value out of this too. One unexpected candidate for this card is everyone's favorite 1 fight orphan herself, Wendy Adams, is a strangely great candidate for Bruiser, because she can combo this with her famous fireaxe to get much more serious value out of those free resources, or use it to push her attack value up to 9 for a swing.

Every single one of these cards is going to feel different just because the flavors of these tags matters so much, but I think for bruiser the question isn't going to be 'do I like weapons and maybe armor?,' because this doesn't really help those in generic cases that much. Instead, the question is 'Do I need a fight boost but lack access to one in slots I can safely give up, or am I going to be playing 3+ weapons in a game?'

dezzmont · 222
Can this pay for abilities on cards, or just the cards themselves? paying for fire axe does make that distinction important. — Zerogrim · 295
You don't "pay" for abilities on cards, you "spend resources", so I would say no. Of course, you can use them on a "Fire Axe" fight test, but you would only get +1 per resource spent. On the other hand, it synergize well with "Dark Horse", because the resources are not in your resource pool, so you can leave them on the card for an additional test and still trigger "Dark Horse" on the first one. — Susumu · 381
I'm pretty sure, if you "pay" something in AH LCG, this always referes to a cost. Abilities on cards like "Fire Axe" are no cost, they are an optional way to sink resources into. — Susumu · 381
Triggered Abilities have "cost". RR in costs part states "Some triggered card abilities are presented in a "cost: effect" construct". I think the resource to boost skill value is cost, but I'm also not sure that it works with triggering cost. — elkeinkrad · 500
You're right, my bad. The colon literal defines everything left of it as a cost. — Susumu · 381
I will update the review if we get an FAQ. I still think that this particular card works better as a slotless +2/double +1 than a cost reducer for most characters and that survivors will in general consider it due to only really having Jessica as a fight booster, even before this card's synergy with Yorick or Bob. — dezzmont · 222
I don;t get the pun behind Tetsuo Mori, anyone care to explain? — Eruantalon · 104
Mori is the Latin word for death, which already is very applicable to Mr. Tetsuo Mori, who's main job is to die. However there is an additional, even more brilliant layer of the pun that links it into how Mori helps you when he dies: A Memento Mori is an object or symbol that reminds you death is inevitable, and I would certainly say the item Tetsuo gives you would certainly count to the investigator who watched him die! — dezzmont · 222
A year later, do we have clarification with whether this works with fire axe as +2 or +1? spend vs spend to pay is such weird wording, this question keeps me up at night — changyperson · 3
I'm pretty sure the pun in "Tetsuo Mori" is that said aloud id sounds like "That's amore" :) — ratnip · 68