This card is a little weird, and it is best compared to another similar card, Mind over Matter.

For 1 resource you drop a foe's combat and evade rating by 2, this is a much stronger effect than increasing your own chances by the same value because: When you attempt a skill test, the result cannot go under 0. I.E, if you encounter foes that have 2 or less evade and fight values, evading or fighting them becomes pretty trivial once you drop those number's to 0. Swarm of Rats become autokill's for example, and so do Ghoul Minion if you just got the two actions.

So why isn't this autotake? I'll tell you, it's not just because of the severe drawback listed in it's play conditions. Against a foe that is harder to hit or Evade than just 2, you Immediately need to start backing up your tests with some actual stats, dropping a foe to 1 fight for example so that you can throw your Str of 2 at isn't that much better on, say, Hard difficulty. You'll need some other way to boost the attempt.

There is another upside to this card. Playing it to buff an actual combat character is a huuuuge play, especially if you're trying to kill some kind of boss, a -2 difficulty on every attack for 2 or 3 attacks is going to stack up a lot of extra hits

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So, the comparison. Mind over Matter does a similar thing, but it's not limited by Sanity, and it's not team friendly, a fair trade-off because for character's the net benefit is mostly the same, usually a gain of +2 or more or , with Dr. Milan Christopher the gain can be enhanced. Dont forget that a isnt likely to have perennial support cards like Overpower, meanwhile Mind over Matter enables the use of Perception and the like to pump your fight value.

So, IF you do intend to take your brainiac out to punch some fools, this card is probably a bit better than Mind over Matter because of it's team utility and it's enhanced efficiency against low difficulty threats (Which can be an issue for pacifist characters to deal with), but if you actually intend to crunch some heads with your superb intellect then Mind over Matter is more reliably going to help you score hits on harder foes.

Edit: I'm a huge fan of equipping Norman Withers with Knife / Enchanted Blade, this card and Mind over Matter. One of the problems with combo cards like this one is actually finding it early enough to be in your hand when the circumstance arises. Norman speeds through a deck and can assemble all of those pieces faster than anybody else, also Anatomical Diagrams lets him autokill his weakness (barring autofail tokens).

This card feels really underpowered, bordering on unplayable. and is a lot of icons in any given bag. Relics you want to recharge like Grotesque Statue are nearly as likely to vanish on you as they are to come back.

I guess for the moment its an auxiliary purchase once you've splurged on Shrivelling (5) and Rite of Seeking (4) since you can just risk refilling them once they're empty. Still the lack of reliability means I'd probably just rather play around that eventuality than include cards which are just as likely to waste my time. Emergency Cache and even Contraband are better imo for the comparable supply and ammo items.

I think the thing that ticks me off the most is that if Jim Culver's ability was written slightly differently: you may choose to treat as , it would be exactly the buff this under-powered character could use to be both middling strength and really fun to play.

I'm not a fan of this card, but in it's defense there's a few kicker's I just want to make you aware off.

This is a attack so Skidd's can buff it with Vicious Blow and Vicious Blow for an 8 strength attack with 2 damage and 9 strength attack with 3 damage respectively (And Jenny might do the same for 1 less attack strength and 2 precious off-faction slots spent).

Additionally, the auto-evade part is less useful than you might think for a rouge character, usually you can dislodge opponents from yourself without issues, the second kicker is that this card is perfect for pulling an ally out of trouble. The mechanics let you bypass engaging the enemy and go straight for a reliable (for Skidd's) attack.

A relatively rare pairing of + icons on a card (The other 2 cards are Hard Knocks and Backstab). Mixed icons aren't a reason to include a card but it still lends a form of stability to it's usefulness.

Is it a good card? MEH. But it does a specialized job that may impress you from time to time.

Edit, Circle unbound: A new character just showed up that really blows up the usefulness of this card. Rita Young can smack enemies with this thing for 2 damage + evasion, for her the Agility conversion is outright fantastic as a means to actually land the attack, the free evade earns her time to do her thing, with weapons that tend to be action intensive,it's a good pairing.

Compared to the other XP permanents, particularly Higher Education and Streetwise, Keen Eye has a couple things working against it. First, except in an ideal situation its ability is a bit less efficient in terms of resources spent per bonus. Second, Guardians are heavily dependent on expensive assets, and all their in-class economy cards (Ever Vigilant, "I've had worse…", Stand Together) cost XP. So they probably don't have a ton of spare resources to devote to a card like this.

For these reasons, I think a lot of players underestimate Keen Eye. This is a mistake. It isn't as good as Higher Education or Streetwise, sure, but it's really, really strong. This is largely because of the amazing power of the Permanent keyword.

Don't think of Keen Eye as adding a card to your deck; think of it as adding an ability to your investigator sheet. Like your investigator ability, it's going to be there for you whenever you need it. And Keen Eye's ability is really useful. Combat and Intellect are the two game-winning skills, and the ability to substantially boost either one whenever you have extra resources is really nice. It's often the case that you'll want to spend your entire turn investigating or (more likely) fighting, and in these cases you can get some really nice efficiency out of Keen Eye.

But the true power of Keen Eye comes from the sheer consistency it offers a Guardian. The simple fact is that sometimes you really, really need to boost Combat, and you just don't have the right icons in your hand. In these situations, Keen Eye will always be there to see you through. As long as you have some resources (and that's something you can plan around), you will be able to boost yourself in an emergency. Your combat performance will therefore be much more consistent. I consider this incredibly important.

The fact that Keen Eye sometimes is genuinely efficient (if you can get +1 to 3 tests from 2 resources), in addition to offering consistency and security, is why I consider it one of the best cards in the game.

Obviously, Keen Eye is best for Zoey, who often does end up with excess resources. Keen Eye is a great way to spend them. In addition to the combat use of this card, discussed above, spending four resources and investigating like a Seeker for a turn is an awesome trick for her to have up her sleeve. In a multiplayer Zoey run I would very likely purchase this before any other upgrade, and in a solo Zoey run (where boosting her Intellect becomes very important) the decision is even more obvious. For the other Guardians, it's less urgent, but it's a good card to pick up before too long.

As a final note, Keen Eye has a nice interaction with Police Badge. It's an expensive combo, but five highly charged up attacks are a pretty cool way to take out a boss.

A popular pick for strongest card in the game. I would certainly agree with that.

Higher Education's ability is exceptionally consistent and powerful. Spending a resource for +2 to a test is a terrific deal. I mean, some people spend two resources and an action to play cards that grant an ability that's half as good as what Higher Education does. Once you have Higher Education in play, with a bit of planning you can get great odds on any Will test or Intellect test you want, even on Expert. That's awesome. And then there's the consistency of this card. Higher Education is transformative every time it's in play, and it will always be in play after you buy it. The rules literally do not allow it to leave play!

The two stats boosted are usually the two most useful for Seekers. Being able to turn every resource in your pool into a quasi-Guts offers excellent protection from the encounter deck's Will treacheries. That's not even the best use of this card, though, which is to use the Intellect boost to easily crack even the most difficult locations.

There is the hand size requirement. But this is not too hard to work around. After all, you start the game with the condition met, and it's not too onerous to average playing around one card a turn and keep your hand around five cards. It helps that once you have Higher Education you don't really need a whole lot of other assets to go with it. (Though Dr. Milan Christopher and the upgraded Magnifying Glass are nice bonuses if you draw them.) You can also find plenty of card draw in the rest of the Seeker card pool, if you feel it's needed. Even if you don't radically adjust your playing style to fit Higher Education and only find it active, say, half the time, it would still easily be worth 3 XP.

This card is at its most disgustingly broken with Rex, because it allows Rex to pretty easily trigger his investigator special ability even on Expert. Once Rex starts triggering that multiple times a turn, the investigators can advance through the Act deck way faster than the designers possibly could have intended.

It's also very good for Daisy. Lots of Daisy decks try to run Mystic spells like Shrivelling. This used to be pretty weak on high levels because of Daisy's low base Will, but Higher Education single-handedly makes these Daisy builds good. Daisy's free uses of Old Book of Lore are also nice, since they make the hand size requirement trivial for her.

Minh is a much more awkward fit with Higher Education. Her playing style typically involves committing lots and lots of cards, which quickly empties out her hand. And she doesn't have Rex's ability or Daisy's spells that make Higher Education all the more rewarding. Even so, she should still probably buy Higher Education sooner or later. She doesn't have to use it that many times per game for it to be a good use of 3 XP. (Minh could even run Dark Horse, which goes well with it.)

In all, I'd say no card is currently more powerful or game-warping than this one. It could cost 10 XP I would still recommend buying it, at least for Rex and Daisy. At 3 XP, it's a steal.