Здобуток. Hand

Item. Instrument. Relic. Cursed.

Cost: X. XP: 4.

Містик

Exceptional. Seal (up to X ).

Exhaust Flute of the Outer Gods and release 1 token sealed on it: Choose a non-Elite enemy at your location. Either move the chosen enemy to a connecting location, or deal its damage to any enemy at its location. This action does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Carlos Palma Cruchaga
The Lair of Dagon #268.

Latest Taboo

This card loses the exceptional keyword and gains "Limit 1 per deck."

Flute of the Outer Gods

FAQs

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Reviews

This card is unfortunately severely overcosted in my view. An asset that allows me, for an action, to do 1-3 testless damage against a non-Elite only, is useful in some circumstances. Big beefy non-Elites like Mindless Dancer, Eater of the Depths, or Deep One Bull can be taken down more easily with this pickup. But is this honestly the best choice of tech for those situations?

Let's go through all the negatives. First, it's exceptional, meaning you're paying 8 XP for a one of in your deck. With enough draw, this isn't inherently too much of a problem. You need curses to Seal. This is more of a problem as Mystics don't have much in the way of either Bless or Curse gen. Tides of Fate paired with a Bless investigator might be the way to go here. Now it is worth noting that part of the benefit of this card, presumably, is that it can seal curses for you in the short term. Unfortunately, this is hampered by the additional resource cost, where if you want to seal lots of curses, you need to pay a heavy upfront fee, and that too is another major negative as Mystics are one of the most resource starved classes. I think worst of all is that this exhausts. I would love the opportunity to spend several actions trying to manipulate enemy placement to get the best damage numbers possible, but the exhaust clause severely hampers this, and I genuinely don't understand why it's even on the card. Flute's uses are already severely limited by three(!) other things: resources, curses, and actions.

I would love to be proven wrong by this card. I think the movement opportunity and the ability to have enemies hit one another, or themselves, can be useful. But honestly, this card is severely hampered by one other element, which is the hand-slot. Traditionally, not a big deal in Mystic. But we just got Sword Cane this cycle, which costs 2 resources, doesn't require any curses, and gives you an immediate use when you play it. It also exhausts, but it allows you to evade an enemy or ping an enemy for one damage using willpower (not testless, but still your highest stat in Mystic most of the time). If you like directing where enemies are on the board, evading one and then running will have the hunters enter in and group together with the evaded enemy. If you want to do damage, 1 is not far off from the amount Flute would normally do, and it's perfectly fine to follow that up with a few Shrivelling charges for 3/5 health enemies. They're not exactly the same, but in practice I do think Sword Cane is a much more flexible card that has similar functions with significantly less investment. Now you do have two hands, so there's no reason you couldn't run both, but hand slots are at a higher premium than they used to be thanks to the taboo'd version of Scroll of Secrets being pretty good draw.

It's a bit of a shame, as I think this was meant to be the big Curse payoff for Mystics this cycle, but it misses the mark pretty badly in my opinion. But again, I would love to be proven wrong. There may be way more situations than I'm able to realize where this card just overperforms anything else.

StyxTBeuford · 12985
Agreedo. Seems like 4-5xp would be fairer — MrGoldbee · 1443
I'd rather see them miss low than high, as when cards that testlessly deal with enemies get too good, it takes a lot of spice out of the game. The Ancient Stone and Pendant of the Queen can testify to that. Still, I agree that this seems awfully clunky for an 8 (!) XP card. Not even sure it would be that tempting at 4 XP without exceptional. — CaiusDrewart · 3125
I think it's maybe a recurring pattern that cards that move enemies around really suck (see: Bait and Switch.) The designers seem to put a really high value on this effect. — CaiusDrewart · 3125
Important clarification: You can deal the damage to any enemy, not just non-Elite. It's the enemy whose damage value you're using that needs to be non-Elite. — Thatwasademo · 57
... Which, come to think of it, might make an interesting boss-slaying combo with Handcuffs if there's an appropriately beefy Humanoid enemy in the scenario to cuff and drag around to fight for you. — Thatwasademo · 57
And that would be a pretty neat combo. I appreciate that idea. The problem there for me is that it’s a massive investment to do usually about 2 damage/action, which is something most combat spells already do. — StyxTBeuford · 12985
So you put Tommy Malloy in Handcuffs , then send him out like a Pokémon to fight Ancient Ones. Very thematic. — suika · 9389
If you want to take a swim in the jank tank, Dexter could use it to trigger Under Surveillance, fill the bag by breaking Geas, and probably has better resource-gen than most Mystics. — Zinjanthropus · 227
Why does it exhaust, lol — MrGoldbee · 1443
Yeah...either we're missing some combo or this is grossly over costed. I mean very grossly over costed. Not sure what they were thinking on this one. Imagine what It'd be if it was a Seeker asset! — LikeWise · 1

From the latest taboo list:

"Flute of the Outer Gods: I’ll be honest here, the reason this card is so xp-hungry is because we had a few wild playtests with this card and I got nervous. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell where a card’s true power level lies until it releases! This new version simply cuts its cost in half by removing the Exceptional keyword, making it a lot more playable, while still being a higher level card, where it should be.As of the latest list of taboos, this is no longer Exceptional!"

Our boy, FOTOG is finally free, ready to --

Oh, it is still terrible?

Cancel the party. That can be as fun if you don't like parties.

fiatluxia · 65
Overcosted at X and a hand slot — MrGoldbee · 1443
The true salt in the wound for FOTOG is that Scarlet Keys is bringing Word of Power for some actually very strong enemy control. — Death by Chocolate · 1440

Power Word is the final nail in the coffin for this card. Maybe if you wanted a fourth copy that was way more expensive to play, cost way more experience, was less versatile, took up a hand slot and required you to dedicate a solid portion of your deck to curse tokens. Perhaps you are simply Ursula Downs.

bug_man · 4

If this card was 0xp and had limit 1 per deck instead of being 4xp and exceptional, it would still not see any play, or maybe in some weird cases someone might play it for fun, but it would probably need another enemy or it would provoke AoO, but still it would suck. Is this the worst card in the game lol? What the hell were they thinking? Compare it to the The Necronomicon which for 5xp gives you so many options, is tutorable, and you can play with secrets and stuff to refill it otherwise abuse it. What a joke of a card

Blood&gore · 418
It's not a bad effect... sealing curses (which means they can't be added back) or testless damage/movement are both good options in multiplayer. You can make an enemy punch itself once per turn without an AoO. But 8xp is an absurd cost... maybe they were afraid of cheese with sealing all 10 curses, which isn't that hard to do? — Hylianpuffball · 27
I think this could have cost 2 and kept seal X Curses and even then it may not have seen play. False Covenant protects you from curses so well for a 2xp permanent. — Zerogrim · 292
The main problem of the flute is that there are plenty cheaper options for mystics to handle enemies. So the only remaining advantage is the option to seal curses and you either want them in a curse build or you can easily avoid them outside of the innsmouth campaign. — Tharzax · 1
Seal up to X curses for X cost is cute (and would be fun in Rogue) Unfortunately Mystics are a resource starved class. If this was a Rogue card... if only. Yes, as it is, it's terrible. — fiatluxia · 65
Yeah honestly at 0xp I don't know why anyone would still take this, especially now with Power Word, which is a cheaper, more versatile, and slotless way of doing the same thing. — StyxTBeuford · 12985