The flavor is pretty cool, but I think the mechanics are quite weak here. Intrepid is in close contention with Expose Weakness for worst card in the Heart of the Elders pack. The benefit is pretty weak and you have very little control over it. At best, Intrepid is going to work out to around +4 scattered over a bunch of skill tests. Even in this optimal situation, that's still a fairly weak card. I would actually rather take Take the Initiative or even Unexpected Courage just to get a more substantial boost to a single test, which is going to be much more consistently useful and much easier to plan around.

Why do people think Streetwise is better than Keen Eye? Part of the reason is just that Rogues have more resources to spare than Guardians, but another part of the reason is that +3 to one test is superior to +1 scattered over 3 tests. It's just much easier to benefit from the former.

Of course, then there's the problem that you only get that full bonus in a small minority of situations. A lot of the time, you'll actually get way less than that. After all, more often that not, you're not spending every action of a turn taking skill tests. And even if you do plan to spend every action taking skill tests, you're not always going to get the Will test you need. And even if you get a Will test, passing Will treacheries is really hard, and Intrepid's +1 is certainly not going to make you likely to succeed on its own. On Expert you would have to add an enormous amount of additional boosting or face a very strong chance of a wasted card.

I think this card is significantly better if there's a Mystic in the party. Mystics proactively test Will all the time and usually build their decks so they have a pretty easy time passing those tests. So you can have the Mystic go first, chuck this onto one of their spells, and then take your turn knowing you'll have the Intrepid bonus. This is much better. Even then, though, I wouldn't take this card. The payoff simply isn't big enough.

Yes, you could combine this with Leo De Luca or Police Badge or whatever, or "Let me handle this!" to try to hunt for a Will test when you want one, but honestly the payoff of this card is just way too low to make these combos interesting for me. I just don't see much here.

Fortunately, the other Guardian card in the pack, Custom Ammunition, is a huge hit, so Guardian players needn't feel too much regret about this one.

Lily Chen with a pair of Butterfly Swords, particularly the level 5 version, should probably give this a look. Intrepid is quite strong if it can be leveraged for an extended period of time. That's normally a problem in guardian, because they don't have much action generation outside of Galvanize unless you're someone like Leo Anderson, and even then this is a niche card. But the problem isn't the lack of actions in a turn; it's the limited number of skill tests you can take. Enter Lily, master of the thousand palms, who can unleash a flurry of strikes, compressing an enormous number of tests into just three actions. And it's in the eye of that tempest of blows that this card finally begins to sing.

Let's break it down: Opting to go with Lily's agility signature, Balance of Body, grants her three fight or evade actions for the price of one, which translates to up to five tests in a single turn. Already this card has the potential to do work. If you add in Butterfly Swords (5), you can take two tests per fight action, effectively doubling the utility of this card even without action generation. Swords and Balance together combine to grant upwards of eight tests. That's suddenly a lot of value. Toss in Galvanize for an additional two tests from Swords. You get the picture.

As a bonus, the second test on Butterfly Swords adds your agility to your combat, effectively netting you +2 from Intrepid. The doubled bonus also applies to a number of other Lily-tailored combat tricks like Sweeping Kick and Fang of Tyr'thrha meaning you can really go beast mode during your turn. And you're Lily, so you should be going beast mode.

These synergies justify giving Intrepid a long, hard look.

The other obvious weakness of the card--that it requires a successful willpower test to trigger--is largely mitigated by Lily's deckbuilding and (at least this) playstyle. While most guardians, even those with high willpower, are dependent upon the whims of the encounter deck to utilize Intrepid, Lily, as a quasi-mystic, can run a number of useful cards that can prompt a willpower test on command. And while normally cutting into your turn by "wasting" an action on a willpower test to trigger this would hurt, Lily's enormous test-compression potential offsets this downside.

Long story short: Take this card in flurry of strikes Lily and play it during a mega turn to help you crush tests. Also, pro-tip: use Balance early to maximize the number of tests you take with it Broken side up. You never know when you might get lucky and draw an elder sign, meaning you can use Balance twice in a single turn. The only thing better than eights tests in a turn is ten.

I think it is extremely specialized, because rarely would you want this instead of guts. Because you can't rely on drawing a willpower treachery, you need to find ways to make tests more frequently. Obviously, you then look to mystics for that.

Checking some deck building restrictions leads us eventually to Zoey and Rite of Seeking or Mists of R'lyeh. That definitely seems like a functional idea to me, depending on campaign and party make up. I particularly like Forgotten Age Zoey using mists (with Intrepid) to escape a vengeance enemy, moving to a new location, popping a Police Badge and then having 4 actions to use these increased stats (the badge gives you a +1 for mists as well, and if you had Xavier in play as well? Mmm-mmm!)

That's probably best case scenario, so depending on how hard it is to pull off that kind of combo probably determines if this card is playable at all. Would really like the power level of skill cards to be pushed in general.

This and Keen Eye lead me to believe that there could be a "power-turn guardian" deck that sets up to do massively effectual turns. Cards like Police Badge, Leo De Luca, and Double or Nothing all seem to fit that mold, so obviously someone like Zoey or Leo Anderson could pull this off. Intrepid becomes the least dependable part of that combo, however, because it has to lead off with a Willpower test, and on-demand willpower tests are hard to come by in-faction.

This is a purely speculative review.

This looks like a terrible card, but i'dd like to give it a shout-out in:

• A. Leo Anderson decks. With minimal support he can expect to beat a standard (3) difficulty test (I.E, Rotting Remains. Chaining a successful defense in the mythos phase into a massive buff for the round throughout is terrific returns for a single skill card. And bear in mind, against exactly this kind of test, even an unsuccessful play of Intrepid will still probably save you a point of horror.

• B. The easier the difficulty the easier the test is to make, this means that Intrepid is exponentially more likely to trigger and help you stay on top of the challenges Standard and Easy difficulty throw at you.

Of course the greatest argument against Intrepid is still the fact that it's not guaranteed to be playable when the benefit would be useful. You're not always going to draw Rotting Remains the round right before you do 3 fight or investigate actions (although there is a decent chance you'll manage to do at least 2 of those total). Don't forget the combo potential for investigators with access to extra actions, for example Leo De Luca and/or Quick Thinking (The latter is incidentally easier to trigger via the Intrepid bonus, so there's an easy combo right there! Intrepid seems more and more taylored towards Leo Anderson).