I did the entire Dunwich cycle with Minh Thi Phan. In eight scenarios, I drew this weakness nine times.

This is my favorite weakness in the game to date, as an amazing combination of theme and mechanics. It interacts beautifully with Minh Thi Phan's flow.

Minh Thi Phan is practically powered by card-draws. Literally any competitive deck of hers will have two copies of Guts and Perception, and probably Manual Dexterity and Overpower as well - to say nothing Resourceful, upgraded Lucky! and Cryptic Research once she's powered up a bit, and of course her very own Analytical Mind.

Two consequences ensue:

• drawing lots of cards is what makes her pick up The King in Yellow; and
• drawing lots of cards is what allows her to discard The King in Yellow.

Which is beautiful, because it means the King in Yellow is the reason Minh Thi Phan needs a lot of card-draw, but the high card-draw also means she's nearly guaranteed to draw it every scenario.

This means that The King has similar impact to other high-octane unique weaknesses like Rex's Curse, but where the Curse places a lot of tedious small roadblocks in your way, The King places one interesting giant roadblock. Really, it's like getting your own private miniboss to fight.

The other interesting thing about this is that you're obviously better off dispatching the King while also tackling a skill-test that somehow warrants six points of commitment. Upgraded Deduction is the most obvious candidate, but whatever you do you just know it's going to be impressive. Get ready to shout "ZHU LI! DO THE THING!"

(My alternative theory is that Min Thi Phan is secretly Batman and she's doing paranormal investigation to relax.)

That's assuming you don't autofail, of course, which can be so disastrous that it's practically a drinking story waiting to happen.

Obviously, this weakness is why Minh Thi Phan must have two copies of Unexpected Courage and Inquiring Mind, because how else is she supposed to reliably have six symbols to commit to a single skill-test? Rise to the Occasion is a dodgier proposition, because 6-difficulty Willpower and Intelligence tests are rare, and 4-difficulty Combat and Agility tests tend to involve doing things she should generally avoid, Batman-ness notwithstanding.

(For extra-fun thematically-appropriate headaches, get Drawing the Sign as your basic weakness, like I did! Hastur-obsessed much, Thi?)

This is a very tailored signature weakness, and it's a thing of beauty. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: This is a very unusual signature weakness, and it's a little hard to get your head around. Minh likes committing cards. It's pretty much her whole deal, and this card messes that up seriously. She gets to either not commit anything, or commit 3+ cards, which taxes even Minh's prodigious draw. If your luck is bad, you can end up spinning your wheels for a couple of turns, trying to amass enough icons to clear this. Fortunately, as farmstrong points out elsewhere on this page, the card draw that helps Minh draw this weakness also helps her get the cards to clear it. Sadly, as one of the investigators most likely to deck herself, Minh is at somewhat greater than normal risk to draw her signature weakness more than once in a scenario.

The discard condition: One of the most difficult (well, at the very least, finicky) in the game so far. Minh has to commit 6 matching skill icons to a successful test while committing at least 3 cards. First, you need to succeed, so and tests are best. If you are lucky (and prepared), you draw this in upkeep and clear it with a treachery in the Mythos Phase, otherwise, try and Investigate a low-shroud location. Obviously, cards with multiple icons are great, and cards with multiple icons are even better. Minh's ability and Grisly Totem can help boost the total icons, but, since you need 3 cards, they are more insurance than necessity. Other obvious cards are Inquiring Mind, Unexpected Courage, Guts, Perception (2), and, really, anything with at least 2 , , or icons. There are about 30 in alone. The good news is that you will usually be testing 10 vs 3-4, so the chance of clearing this on the first try are good at any difficulty. The bad news is that the exists.

All in all, this is an average signature weakness, a serious speed bump but unlikely to end a scenario.