This card is a bit hard to quantify. The obvious comparison to it is against the Knife that is available to every other role in a neutral form. At the same cost and strength, there are only 2 factors to consider when deciding which one is better over the other.

Perhaps you don't consider blackjack or Knife, because you prefer to carry .45 and machete as your includes in your deck. For those types of decks, then this isn't even a consideration. But in several cases I have considered machete and Knife/blackjack as it is a considerable cost savings over the .45 and 80% of the time the machete does the job of the .45 anyway.

Also, if you are solo, blackjack isn't for you. In large groups, you may be required to peel monstrosities off of people and help them out. In these situations, with the blackjack you expect to get some action efficiency.

1 health enemy (blackjack) - Action 1 swing 1 health enemy (Knife) - Action 1 swing or Action 1 Engage, Action 2 swing

2 health enemy (blackjack) - Action 1 swing, Action 2 swing 2 health enemy (Knife) - Action 1 sacrifice swing or Action 1 swing, Action 2 swing or Engage, Action 2 swing, Action 3 swing (sacrificing if needed on the second swing if the first missed.

There might be a scenario or two there missed, but that covers the majority of what you are looking for in comparison. The main situation where blackjack is best is obvious in the 1 health enemy category because the blackjack can save you an action and it doesn't make sense to sacrifice the Knife when it is on someone (in most circumstances).

If you don't care what happens to your allies, "swing away" and choose the Knife so you have an option for a burst damage opportunity.

If you do care about your friends (how nice of you), then the majority of the time you are using this weapon you are saving an action for fighting enemies for your allies. That was my thought pattern with using this for a four player campaign. On average over three scenarios so far, this has saved me perhaps 1 action per game. Also, if you wiff on your strong attack with the Knife you are left without a weapon anymore and the blackjack doesn't tempt you with that.

What I do like about the Knife though is that you could save an action with a single attack doing 2 damage when you need. So, this can also save you 1 action per game. Also, when you have that machete out in a situation such as this, the Knife can possibly be useful still for taking out 1 of 2 enemies engaged with you to turn that machete back online.

Is that worth having over the Knife? I tend to think that it is not in practice. The Knife just seems to be a better choice from my perspective. Just in case someone was going through these considerations as well, I thought I would share the experience I have had with the card here.

Note that this card does not require that you are performing the skill test, or even that it's at your location. As a result, in a multiplayer game it can trigger almost every turn, keeping you sane even while playing mystic cards and occasionally helping out your fellow investigators.

Don't forget that it works with Jim's elder sign ability. Usually there's no real difference between +1 and 0, so as long as skulls don't have some terrible extra effect, it's safe to turn your elder sign into a skull and enjoy the healing.

Initially this card seems kind of useless. Honestly I can't really comment on its applicability to your typical investigator but I do know of two investigators who can benefit a lot from it.

Zoey and Jenny can both get really screwed by their weaknesses if they drop in the last few rounds of the game. Zoey can get caught traveling all the way across the map in order to kill some jerk monsters and Jenny searching for Izzie in far off lands. This can be especially problematic in large maps or ones flush with monsters. If you only have a couple turns left in the campaign before the final Agenda procs you may not have that many actions to spare, and especially for these weaknesses they are on-par with being defeated anyway (which is significantly worse than any other investigators weakness penalty). In this method you can almost halve the number of actions required to fulfill these without screwing over your win condition.

It's not a perfect fix, but I'd consider a 1-of for these investigators to help them out alongside action-investments like Police badge or action-compression items like Cat Burgler.

Three is fantastic. I love the restriction, it feels thematic and inline with other cards like Lucky!, Oops! and "Look what I found!". When it works it is incredibly helpful however I have found it a bit of a dead card often sacrificed to Wendy Adams ability. It's probably better including Unexpected Courage and other skill cards with more versatility rather than risk having a dead card in your deck.

What is action compression, what is action investment? Why is this card so damn good?

For 1 resource (something you almost always start your turn with one of) you get at least one engage action with this card. This is the lowest value you get for this card and honestly even at that level it is deceptively good.

Here's the thing: not all actions are made the same. Say you have an enemy engaged with your fragile Daisy flower one stop over from you, if the enemy has 2 health and you have a .45 then it takes you three actions to move, engage and kill that enemy no problem. However if the enemy has 3-4 health you're now in trouble. If there are two enemies at 1-2 health you are similarly guaranteed someone has to take damage (unless your daisy has a plan)

With Taunt you now have that action you need to cut through the chaff and save everyone. Wonderful! For 1 banked resource you saved someone 1 damage and 1 horror probably.

Where Taunt breaks the game is if you're a certain nutty chef. As Zoey you can:

• run into the room
• wave your cross at a horde of rats
• cap one 2 health enemy with your .45
• hack another 2 health enemy with your machete

And make 2 damn resources for your slaughter.

Does it usually get that efficient? No, but since it's minimal efficiency is trading one resource into an action (which is a good trade) it's never a bad card. As soon as there's two enemies in a location fire away and reap the rewards of action economy!