There is one investigator for whom this is particularly horrid. If Jacqueline Fine is sitting down at your table, don’t even shuffle this one in. It makes her weakness, Dark Future, unable to be resolved.

SGPrometheus already wrote a definitive guide to Carolyn, but with the Innsmouth conspiracy, she's playable in a fourth archetype, blendable with the other ones. Holy Roller.

It's entirely due to the Book of Psalms. A card that’s decent for others is a godsend* for Dr. Fern, paying for itself +1, healing potentially eight horror from your teammates with hypnotic therapy in play (more with knowledge is power).

Add Rite of Sanctification, and spiritual therapy is very possible. Your super expensive assets are now much cheaper, adding 10 bucks to the party with an action and a card. You can pair this with more support or clue hunting, because a better bag makes you more capable of anything. Get out your appointment book, there’s a new way to play Carolyn.

*Ha ha?

This card is for Tony Morgan, at least until Michael McGlenn comes out. And he’s going to have to sacrifice for it: it means putting away high to-hit, low ammo/damage pistols for a street sweeper. Which means restoring bounty contracts is going to be more difficult, but at the point where you’re taking this into your deck, you should have ways to get supplemental cash and actions. And it works with taboo Sleight of Hand.

The .45 rewards you for thinking indirectly. You want to aim it at the easiest to kill enemy, and use the difference to slay something else. (Better to hit an easy enemy and not succeed by x than miss a powerful enemy.)

In the best case scenario, you’re killing rats to hit the boss, or using marksmanship to snipe aloof will’o’wisps to damage an annoying enemy on a teammate. You are saving yourself an engage action and doing two fights at once.

It’s also supremely good against swarms.

The trade-off is it’s going to be expensive, and without supplementary ammo cards, you’re dropping a lot of XP on the floor.

Remember, you do the initial damage to the secondary target; if people give you vicious blow, blessed ammo, enchantment, or other bonuses, that damage transfers. You could theoretically use Lita Chantler's monster damage bonus on unique Cultists.

And you can shoot it out of a moving model-T while cackling madly in “Horror in High Gear”.

“I think it started when I burnt down my house. But a woman with a torch told me to. You see, the rooms were all changing places...”

Carolyn looked down at her yellow legal pad, where her notes were simply “cult psycho“ and a doodle of a cat.

——

I don’t think there’s a signature weakness in this LCG that goes from “game threatening” to “not a big deal” between scenarios one and three. It’s amazing.

In your first scenario, you’re likely clearing one horror per action. That’s four actions this card eats up, four bucks you don’t get, and four horror teammates whine at you about. When you get ancient stones: minds in harmony, you can heal horror passively. You’ll delete this weakness automatically after a while, or by actively drawing cards. By scenario 3, your draw engine should be better, which means hypnotic therapy may be in your tableau... Someone could play deep knowledge on you and automatically get rid of your weakness.

——

“The dreams are getting stranger, and I can’t focus on finals at all. It’s an undersea kingdom...”

Carolyn handed over a flier. “You’re distressed because you’re a horrific mermaid. I need you to see this magician tonight and head over to a city that’s even worse than Arkham. You’ll also want a shirtless pirate and a spy. Before you go, there should be a bible right over by your lounger...”

Silas’s net is tricky. You’re not likely to be engaged to more than one enemy unless you’re doing that on purpose or facing a boss. But the secondary ability, to recover your skills after successful test, is extremely useful. Nimble, manual dexterity(2), quick thinking... Evades can now give you tons and tons of supplemental actions, far and above what it would take to play the net again.

Playing resourceful multiple times a game means not having to invest in cards that get it back, like scrounge for supplies or true survivor. But the net, like the harpoon, needs to be built around. If you don’t have many agility or wild icons in your deck, then the net is meh.

UPDATE: Taking another look at Silas’s net, it can evade massive enemies, especially ones that have alert. That makes fighting bosses as a team much much easier, as the catch of the day becomes “elder gods“. It also lets you tank enemies in larger teams, and the Innsmouth conspiracy definitely doles out more than one enemy per player in many circumstances. Plus, you can take the net back into your hand with quick thinking, and put down your chainsaw.