The Stygian Eye is super cool thematically (I'm really liking all the Greek mythology stuff Seekers are rocking lately), so I'm eager to make it work. But this card asks a lot of you, and I'm not sure it gives all that much in return.

You really have to be all-in on Curses to make this worth 3 XP. To be honest, I think that even if you are all-in on Curses, this effect is not necessarily a hugely rewarding payoff. If you'll indulge me in a cross-faction comparison, look at Trial by Fire and Will to Survive. I think you have to try to get The Stygian Eye down to 3 resources or lower for it to even start seeming playable at its XP cost. That's an awful lot of Curses! At 0 resources it's getting strong, but even then it doesn't strike me as crazily strong, not for 3 XP.

If this were a more permanent bonus, it could really be the centerpiece of a deck. As is, I think that one really strong turn is not enough of a payoff to justify throwing a lot of Curse generation into your deck. (The recursion options like De Vermis Mysteriis and Eidetic Memory are worth keeping an eye on, but each only offers one additional use.) So, I think you are probably going to want other, stronger payoffs for your Curses, and put this in additionally.

I suppose that a hypothetical Seeker/Rogue might be the best home for this, as Rogues have additional ways to get Curses into the bag, and also have a lot of ways to generate extra actions which obviously works well with this round-long buff. Even outside of Rogue, there are various ways to take an extra skill test or two on your turn (Ursula + Pathfinder, Summoned Hound, Cryptographic Cipher, and so on). None of these proposed synergies are all that exciting to me, but they're worth keeping in mind if you decide to go for this.

My guess is that, despite the cool artwork and the sweet Greek mythology reference, this card will ultimately be too underpowered to see much play outside of theme decks. But we'll see. Maybe the extra-action and/or recursion synergies eventually get there.

I disagree that Ruth Westmacott is unimpressive. I think she's pretty darn good, and well worth the 3XP for Charisma to run both her and Alyssa Graham. (Of course you want Alyssa - she's the single most important card for Gloria). Yes there is the risk in Charisma-for-Ruth that you don't draw her, but Charisma for an optional signature ally tends to open up campaign-specific allies too, and then you play out which one you draw. Let's assume for now that you get Ruth out alongside Alyssa - is Ruth worth that 3XP and 3 resources? Wholeheartedly, yes.

The trick with Ruth is to be using her a lot. With Gloria, you don't just want to lock down a few Ancient Evils or whatever into your basement and then leave it at that. With Ruth out, you want to be cycling cards into and out of the basement every turn, possibly even multiple times / turn if you can.

There are no limits to how often you can use Gloria's ability. With Alyssa out, you've got one every turn. With Scrying(3), Scroll of Secrets, maybe even Parallel Fates or First Watch , or even her Elder Sign / Seal of the Elder Sign, getting two cards into the basement in a given turn isn't hard. It doesn't even have to be every turn, you just want a steady flow of cards in. Then Ruth allows you to flow the cards out again, claiming her bonus.

Ruth's bonus is actually pretty good. It can reduce skill tests to 0, it can make "fail by X" cards (like Rotting Remains) completely blunted, it can be used anywhere on the map, and it doesn't exhaust. If you've seen Liber Omnium Finium, then you can safely be flowing monsters through Ruth for auto-evades or fights as well. Just getting the bonus, say, 3 or 4 times and burning her for Health/Sanity would have been worth the play. But you can do it far more often than that. In my most 4-player recent game, I dropped Ruth first turn alongside Scrying (3), getting Alyssa online later. By the end of the game, I'd used Ruth 14 times. Even if you say it's half as good as Ward of Protection, that means Ruth deployed 7 Ward of Protections for 3XP, 1 card, 3 resources - that's insane value!

Yes, she's better the more players you have. But that's OK, as Gloria's main abilities are better the fewer players you have. So Ruth can help across the board on 3/4 player, but is still good on 1-2 player. We'll see how Gloria's "real" signatures turn out, but for now, I'm very happy with Ruth.

EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention, is that Ruth Westmacott's name refers to Agatha Christie, who also published under the pen name of Mary Westmacott. Gloria Goldberg is of course an Agatha Christie type character.

I am not going to go into specific cards or strategies. What I want to communicate here is why you would want to play William Yorick, and what you can expect when you decide to send him against all the horrors of Arkham and beyond.

No investigator is perfect, and William Yorick is no exception. He's no great cluever, even though he has plenty of Survivor tricks to get by in a pinch. He doesn't have access to the big blue weapons either. Economy can be an issue, but that's par for the course for most investigators, especially fighters. He is not the fine-tuned precision instrument that Roland Banks can be, nor is he the awesome overpowering sledgehammer that Mark Harrigan is. But no investigator can give you the visceral (almost sadomasochistic) satisfaction of enduring what the game throws at you, spitting in its face, and shoving it right back down its throat like Billy can.

Control is the name of the game here. Read that little under his stat-line again, and maybe a few more times if you really need to. It is exactly as amazing as it reads. Once he has an asset, it's never really lost to him, in hand, play, or discard. A card in the discard might even be best place for him, providing for some of the best action compression this side of a federal agent. This control is what separates him from his color counterpart Tommy Muldoon, who is so much more at the mercy of his draw, and does not gain tempo putting them into play.

The Gravedigger seems at times less a man and more some stitched-together Leather and Cotton golem come to make war on the monsters of the Mythos. Where so many combat investigators are one bad treachery test or token draw away from the edge of insanity, this failed actor can grind through the worst the game has, dealing damage and protecting his teammates all the while. Yorick is the rare investigator who can simply outlast the game.

Assault the mythos with your preferred assortment of cops, cats, and curiously resilient old ladies. Have a whirlwind romance with a witch hunter if that's what the script calls for. Pick your weapon. Any weapon. You have the strength to use it well, and the durability to make sure you'll be around to as long as your team needs. Your weakness is just another chance to fire your ability. Your signature benefits the entire team during and after every scenario.

Whether you want to comically fling your kitties at ghastly ghouls or dramatically wade into battle with nought but a friendly teddy bear in hand and righteous fury in your heart, William Yorick can play the part. Against all monsters, terrors, and horrors, he'll fight, till from his bones his flesh be hacked.

Pairs well with the curse suite of spells (Shroud of Shadows, Eye of Chaos, Armageddon). You still do need to pass those tests when you draw those curses and Mystics lack an in-faction way mitigating them (since Curse of Aeons is basically unplayable on anyone not named Jim) so naming turns this into a worse Blasphemous Covenant that doesn't need curses to work. They also stack if you happen to draw multiple curses.

It's definitely not cheap to run though, but hopefully you're Dexter and are also running Faustian Bargain. If not, ask your Rogue to share.

The fourth set of "will replacement" assets, Armageddon, Eye of Chaos and Shroud of Shadows.

The other sets are:

Shrivelling, Rite of Seeking and Mists of R'lyeh.

Wither and Sixth Sense.

Azure Flame, Clairvoyance and Ineffable Truth.

The similarities between the spells above and this new "cursed" spell set should be plain to see. however, ironically, the "cursed" spells dont have penalties for finding tokens, they are in fact a little bit more expensive, but in-turn they're safer and have bonuses on there!

Well. Safer is perhaps a wrong way to describe it, because playing with is plenty risky in of itself.

In order not to overcomplicate these reviews, I'm assuming you already know how good it is for characters to replace their into tests, pretty much every deck packs in several of these cards, sometimes doubling up for the sake of consistency (a clue focused taking both Rite of Seeking and Clairvoyance for example). This is the way to go for most mystics, with some rare and specific exceptions.

So why would you go for the cursed set?

The cards come hardwired with a higher cost, and a risk -> gains mechanic for tokens, so obviously you'll be plying the risky waters of in a bid for more power. Try to pack in some of the obvious combos to get running on that archetype, Favor of the Moon, generators wherever you can get them (a bit of a rarity in the card lineup, so look to your off-class cards or friends to do that with you).

The unique bit of Shroud of Shadows to move enemies around is arguably the -most- unique in the trio, enemy moving is rather rare and you can use it to dump non-hunters into places where they'll never bother you again, if it's a hunter then given the bursts of movement happening in the final stretch of a scenario means that you might be able to leave a nasty hunter in the dust behind you, especially if you trigger a free move as well. Because of the sheer usefulness of the enemy movement, this spell is perfectly usable outside of a build.

Dont forget, you need to actually beat the penalties so an even higher baseline of than usual, with Relic Hunter and multiple copies of Holy Rosary and/or Crystal Pendulum to launch your starting point into the stratosphere.

Lastly, remember to pack a bit more resources than usual, you dont want to be too impoverished to play or run your assets!

Is this way ot playing better than the older variants? I dont think so, especially on hard where penalties can be straight up untenable, but if you're able to consistently flex tokens and overcome the penalties you'll certainly be a bit more powerful, but those are big IF's.