You ALWAYS take this card

IF you have the following allies in your deck

• Beat Cop, so you can swap your damaged Beat Cop with a fresh and free Beat Cop. And you get the old patched up Beat Cop in your hand. Unbeatable.

• Guard Dog: same reason as above. You can mix Cops and Dogs for major mayhem. Woofwoof.

• Brother Xavier: More meatshield. Just trade him for himself. You just saved 4 coins. Prayer answered.

• David Renfield, so you play him, you ll take some damage on him, take some doom on him. Take some coins off him. And then when doom becomes a probem, you swap him. You can even ditch Moonlight Ritual or Forbidden Knowledge from your deck. Amazing!

• Aquinnah. Is it true? Can you recycle her just like the old and true Beat Cop? YES! But that's insane. INSANE!

But Fellow Investigator what happens when you got this idea about a deck, with one Ally card, that you need to get in play asap or else it's GG? No probem. Here is Calling in Favors the true Hero of your deck.

• Dr. Milan Christopher Yeah. You want him early. Swap a Charles Ross, Esq. or an Art Student or a Research Librarian or even an Laboratory Assistant and get a near-guaranteed early Milan. MONEYPROBLEMSSOLVED.

• Charles Ross, Esq.. So you want Charles, not Milan? The brand new early game money booster. Yeah why not. Swap him for students, assistants or librarians. Or wait... you got both Charles and Milan??? Works like a charm. You find one. You get the other. You play both. Its a DREAM!

• Leo De Luca, so you have this idea of Action heaven, but you need Leo early. Give him a ring. I am sure he'll pick up the phone. Cause he owes you a favor!

• Madame Labranche, a combination of Forbidden Knowledge and Peter Sylvestre combo'd into one old nice lady with an obvious walking cane weapon? Tea please!

Other strong contenders:

• Cat Burglar You usually want this guy before you see the first Monster popping up right next to you. Meow. Meow.

• Dario El-Amin Two coins for one action? Yes please. He can even do work with Leo de Luca who is also on this list. Kashing.

• The Red-Gloved Man Some people have crazy ideas about this card in combination with William Yorick. With calling in favors, you can make sure that Red Glove Dude is ready and waiting in your discard pile. Hello Mystery Man!

Did you just list every single Ally? More or less. Yes. I didn't list Stray Cat. Cats dont do favors. Everybody knows this.

A small excerpt from the interview I did with Doyle Jefferies from the local newspaper about this new appartus: The phone.

But why? Why is this phone such a spectacular invention? My readers deserve to know.

Well Doyle, it offers so much. Lets list it up:

• Card search for what many consider to be the strongest cards: Allies. 9 Cards! Thats better then No Stone Unturned
• You can use an Ally with a come into play effect and upgrade him or her to a more permanent Ally or use the come into play effect twice or up to three times.
• You can heal up old Allies and play them again.
• You get a discount on the fresh Ally. So you dont need insane economy to play all these allies.

Does this phone and ring apparatus work better when you have many friends? Yes. It starts working when you get 4+ allies in your deck. It gets slightly more reliable when you have more.

Should our friends here in Arkham consider picking up Charisma, the extremely popular parfume everyone keeps raving about.. The phone works even without Charisma, Doyle. But yes. It's delicious. Hell. You can even fit in two copies of Charisma now, for the ultimate well scented experience.

TLDR

THIS CARD IS BONKERS, CULTISTS HATE IT, ALLIES LOVE IT, PUT IT IN YOUR DECK, TWO COPIES, ALWAYS, NO REGRETS.

Inexpensive and accessible, Hired muscle seems like a bad card due to it's drip expense.

The funny thing is that hired muscle IS a bad card. Other cards exist that grant +1 to their respective ability and no other benefit except tanking capacity, the best comparison would be the Holy Rosary. So, a comparison of the two:

Hired muscle has 2 extra total hitpoints.

Holy rosary occupies a less competitive slot.

Holy rosary does not cost XP.

Hired muscle costs 1 less to play.

Holy rosary does not drain 1 resource every round.

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So, the ultimate difference is that hired muscle has 1 disadvantage, the cost drip, and this disadvantage eliminates the cost advantage immediately at the end of a round and then keeps scaling negatively. The cool thing about slotted upgrades is that they stick around to give you their benefit for a long time, and are at the ready to provide the benefit even though it wont be needed for a few rounds. Hired muscle doesn't have this benefit, you by no means want it around round after round.

Hired muscle is the one slotted ability bonus that keeps costing you after you play it, Thus acting more like a resource pumping Talent like Hard Knocks then a lasting item bonus, and frankly speaking Hard knocks is much more likely to net you successes in the long run than Hired muscle. This means that Hired muscle´s only remaining ability is to soak damage, and even then the rampaging cost hardly justifies that either.

To mitigate Hired muscles cost you really want to get use out of it quickly. Play the card, knock some heads, then get it killed, but to get it killed you need to stick around and get hit by an enemy, an enemy that cards like Hired muscle would ideally help you get rid off (also, if you're TRYING to get the card killed then the health isn't much of a benefit.

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At this point you've probably got the idea. Hired muscle is weak and counter-intuitive, ALSO you have to pay precious XP to slot it.

Don't ever bother with this card.

Ever.

Fast, 0 resource, Cancel a treachery card, costs only 1 xp.

Wow what a great card for seekers. The drawback is small(let's say it cost you 1 action to investigate).Even Roland can make a great use of it since he can add clues while slaying some monsters.

Like ward of protection and test of Will this card is an auto-include to avoid the terrible things that Mythos offers you and most of times punishes you.

Situational card just like Barricade. Can be used when you are preparing for a boss fight but other than that i can't see any play. Bad card for Solo since you need to move fast from location to another most of times. Can be utilized in O'toole decks with sneak attack combo for a total 4 dmg without even fight (let's add a dynamite blast there going up to 7). Other than that Harrigan and Yorick have better options for 1xp than this one.

Investigators who have problem with resources can make a use of it in a multiplayer game. Roland or Harrigan can put it in a 0 xp deck when they start a campaign. Τhe thing is that you dont want to be overwhelmed by enemies so usually the maximum will be +1+2 for the attack. Don't get me wrong but you want to deal with the enemy as fast as you so the Knife from core is better option than this one with the discard option.