I asked about handcuffs and other effects. The reply:

Rules Question: I am a bit confused as to how "Handcuffs" interact with some encounter cards. The Truth is Hidden says "flip" clues to doom, not "place" doom. Would it still flip the doom on Seekers of Carcosa? Mysterious Chanting and Dance of the Yellow King look for a cultist in play. If a cultist or lunatic is handcuffed they cannot ready, but they might be the only cultist or lunatic in play. Are those cards effectively negated?

Greetings,

1) Flipping clues to their doom side is not the same as placing them. In this instance, the token has already been placed on the card, so Handcuffs will not prevent the tokens from then being flipped over to their doom side. Note that the agendas in Echoes of the Past each read “After 1 or more clues are placed on an enemy in play: Flip those clues to their doom side,” meaning the flipping occurs after the tokens are already placed. 2) As for Mysterious Chanting and Dance of the Yellow King, the answer is… sort of. Mysterious Chanting simply adds doom to the nearest Cultist, so if the nearest Cultist is handcuffed, then yes, it will do nothing. Dance of the Yellow King is trickier. It reads: “… If you fail, the nearest Lunatic enemy readies, moves (one location at a time) until it reaches your location, engages you, and makes an immediately attack.” Technically, the movement, engagement and attack aspects of this effect are not dependent on the enemy readying. While typically only ready enemies can move, engage, or attack, there is no rule stopping them from doing so while exhausted if an effect explicitly instructs them to. So strange as it may seem, if the nearest Lunatic enemy is handcuffed, it won’t ready, but it will still move to you, engage you, and attack. (Note that this would be different if the effect used the word “then” somewhere in it, for example “readies, then moves…”)

I understand that both of these answers are tricky distinctions, so I apologize for any confusion.

Cheers, ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Matthew Newman Senior Card Game Developer Fantasy Flight Games

Good card.

characters generally struggle with combat, mostly because of deckbuilding restrictions and class-wide scores of 2 or less. Any of them can mount respectable defense via toolbox cards like Knife but overall a will not be able to kill any sort of major enemy, ranging from Ravenous Ghoul and Hunting Nightgaunt to Umôrdhoth itself.

Typically you leave these enemies to someone else to kill or try to avoid them, but this kind of defenselessness isn't always viable even with a friendly face like Mark Harrigan in the party, there is an upper limit to how much damage a character can do in a round and sometimes you'll find yourself engaged with a big threat at a time where the other guy has something more important to do or is just outright busy with a danger of his own (such as having this carcosa dude and that other carcosa dude spawning simultaneously).

This is where "I've got a plan!" comes in. Hitting routine attacks is an issue for decks, even Shrivelling is only so accurate without something like Higher Education to boost it, but mounting one big attack by chucking all of those unused little icon cards that typically gather in your hand is a very reasonable bet. Boom, one hit and you've killed the 4-hp threat you just drew or contributed 4 points of damage to the boss.

"I've got a plan!" has it's weaknesses, your sustained combat ability is still not great, you need to draw it and you need the clues, but its a high-yield attack in a class thats otherwise bereft of good combat options. This is pretty much an autotake in every deck whose Investigator isn't the upcoming Joe Diamond.

This card allows you to replay the cards under Diana, at the expense of her willpower. There is also a trick with Olive McBride. When you play her, unlike events and skills, she goes back into play, from where she can be used to soak 2 horror, then through her power ignore a chaos token and go back under Diana for a card, a resource and +1 willpower! The net effect is unlimited recurrences of paying 2 resources and an action for 1 card, a resource, 2 horror and one or more uses of Olive McBride's power.

This. Card. Is. WILD. Like, legit actually for real wild. It's very very hard to see if it's good, but I think it's likely to be the card that takes Diana from good to killer. Why?

That third block of text? It seems to be a constant effect, rather than a contingent effect that turns on during fight actions.

Bandolier can be used by:

• All 5 guardians : Roland Banks, Zoey Samaras, Mark Harrigan, Leo Anderson and Carolyn Fern
• All Dunwich investigators: Rex Murphy, Jenny Barnes, Jim Culver, "Ashcan" Pete
• Joe Diamond
• "Skids" O'Toole
• William Yorick
• Diana Stanley
• Lola Hayes

I think this card has received inappropriate disdain and mostly overlooked, wrongly in my opinion. In fact, Bandolier (0) is a quite solid card.

When looking at this card, one would probably think "why would I want an additional hand slot? I already have my guns!". Well, guardians love spending their experience points in two-handed weapons such as the Lightning Gun, the Shotgun, or the M1918 BAR. The problem becomes quickly apparent when playing regularly with these weapons: you will either have to use your precious ammo on trash mobs (and be empty when the nasty guys spawn), or you will need to refrain from playing your big weapon as much as possible, meaning that the turn you will need it, you will:

• Need to spend 1 action to play it, reducing your number of attacks
• Face an attack of opportunity if the baddy has spawned on you
• Not be able to improve it right away (e.g. with Extra Ammunition)
• Have to discard your current cards in your hand slots

The more the player count, the more enemies will spawn, and the more you will need to use backup weapons to be able to keep up with the killing. Even if you keep your Shotgun for when the big baddy spawns, several scenarios throw so many hard enemies at you that you'd wish you didn't discard your Machete. On a side note for solo, though there are much less enemies, you probably want to keep running a Flashlight during the scenario, and Bandolier once again helps you for this.

In other words, Bandolier (0) will maybe not shine in your 0XP deck, but it is an investment that will pay off as soon as you upgrade a two handed weapon. Conversely, I don't think Bandolier (2) is that much of a good card because 2 additional hand slots is just overkill, though the +1 is nice.

One real issue is the severe indirect nerfed it received recently due to the introduction of the Flamethrower, arguably the best weapon in game. Though the body slot necessary for Bandolier (0) used to be mostly irrelevant due to the thin competition for that slot, Flamethrower changed this. Obviously, you may still prefer the Lightning Gun, with which Bandolier stays relevant.

As for non guardians as well as Carolyn Fern, Bandolier (0) is a more dubious card. Except "Skids" O'Toole, who may really like having an additionnal hand slot if he plays Chicago Typewriter or Ornate Bow, other investigators should probably skip this card.