Nature of the Beast

Подія

Dilemma. Insight.

Cost: –. XP: 1.

Вцілілий

Max 2 Dilemma per round.

Revelation - Reveal the top 3 cards of the encounter deck. Choose an investigator to draw 1 of the revealed cards and discard the rest. Then, choose an investigator to discover 1 clue at any revealed location.

David Hovey
The Scarlet Keys Investigator Expansion #111.
Nature of the Beast

FAQs

(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)
  • Q: I have a question regarding weaknesses and Dilemma cards with Revelation abilities: If due to card effects (e.g. Deep Knowledge), both Amnesia card and At a Crossroads are drawn, is it possible to freely choose their resolution order? If so, and I choose to resolve Amnesia first, can I choose to discard the At a Crossroads I just drew? If I choose to resolve At a Crossroads first, choose myself to immediately get an action and then randomly discard 1 card from my hand, could Amnesia be randomly discarded due to this effect? The reason I'm having a problem with this is because I don't understand where At a Crossroads is when I'm resolving Amnesia? Is it in my hand or in "Limbo"? A: Good questions. We are ruling that the Revelation ability on a Weakness (or encounter) card must be resolved before the Revelation ability on a Dilemma card. We don’t believe this is explicitly stated, but we would like to include that in the next FAQ update. And yes, if you resolved the ability on Amnesia first, it would be possible to discard At a Crossroads, since it’s a card that’s in your hand at the time. At a Crossroads isn’t in limbo until you’re resolving its ability.
Last updated

Reviews

For large group, Nature of the Beast is good card. This card is compared to Drawn to the Flame in that it make the investigator a encounter card. Only 1 clue is discovered, but at any location by any investigator. This card provides remote discover tool. This card gives the fighter a clue to avoid clue spending encounter like Hunting Shadow. In addition, 3 encounter cards are given and 1 is resolved and the others are discarded. It means that discarded encounters are not drawn in this encounter cycle. In addition, chosen card is drawn by any investigator. For 3 or 4 player game, commonly 1 of 3 is easy to handle by one of the player.

When I used, I confront two annoying situations. The first is when the number of the encounter deck is less than 3. I had to choose two of one, or choose one of one. The other is when no clue exists at any revealed location. Then, I had to draw encounter card without advantage.

For small (1/2) group, this card is good with another meaning. Many users comments in this review, so check those if you're interested :)

elkeinkrad · 485
"For large group, Nature of the Beast is good card." You mean, for solo and small group, Nature of the Beast is great card? I see no particular advantage in big groups. Sure, you can pick and choose even from a wider selection, which card would wiff or be near impactless. But 1 clue is worth more, the less investigators are in the game. And the chance, you mentioned, that the encounter deck gets depleated is near impossible in solo, much more likely, the more players there are. — Susumu · 366
I suppose he means that it's in lager groups easier to find someone who can easily handle one of the cards. Nevertheless with 3 cards the chance is good that even a solo player find a card he can handle. — Tharzax · 1
Certainly, but that's the issue, imho. 1 clue is so much more worth in solo, and you should nearly always be able to deal with one of the three cards easily even in solo. Besides, you discard the other two, which in itself can be a huge boon in solo, if at least one of them is something really bad for your investigator. — Susumu · 366
In solo / small group, I see this card more as "encounter deck protection", with the clue being an added (but welcome) bonus. You get to discard two encounter cards of your choosing (a dangerous treachery targeting a skill that nobody can face, a tough monster, an Ancient Evil-analog when no mystic is around) for the "cost" of facing an encounter card now, but that you can direct to the investigator most likely to face it successfully. — DrOGM · 25
@Susumu // My intend is that "for 3/4 player party, the cost of NotB could be negligible." As I saw the comments, NotB will be good for small group. In fact, I always play AHLCG with 3 or 4 players, so I sometimes miss the case of solo/duo. — elkeinkrad · 485
I think if you bring a pair of these in solo or two player, you're going to have to be pretty cagey about card draw and possibly make some bad short-term plays in order to have a clue ready for the upleep phase. Whiffing on one of these is pretty rough. Could be fun but it's more flexible and reliable in larger groups. — housh · 176

I'm not going to comment on the viability of the card too much, (other then to say that in 4 player especially 1 clue isn't really that significant because you're at best removing one of 4 clues from a location which isn't that high impact) but I've seen a couple comments saying that this card lets you filter the encounter deck. This isn't really true. Sure, if you draw a problematic encounter then you can bin it and not have to worry about one copy of it for the encounter shuffle. But you're also fairly likely to not find any particularly bad encounters and end up removing two of them that would have been relatively easy for your team to deal with and cause you to draw the harder ones sooner. You're not actually filtering your draws, because these are cards that you wouldn't have drawn anyway. It's similar to how discarding cards from your deck doesn't substantially effect your draws aside from having to take a horror from the reshuffle earlier as it means that cards you would have drawn in the middle of the scenario are drawn earlier, and later on in the scenario you'll be drawing cards you otherwise wouldn't have if you didn't discard the cards.

In the end, you're about as likely to discard difficult encounters as you are to cause your team to draw them earlier and more often. Not saying the card is bad or anything, just that "improving your encounter draws" isn't a thing this card really does as it is about as likely to make them worse.

Sylvee · 100
I think you're overgeneralizing the mill lesson, and this card does actually improve encounter draws like people say it does. I'd need to do substantial math to prove the general point, but if nothing else, in a three or four player game, going through the entire encounter deck is in many situations inevitable. There are only a few ways to avoid resolving, say, Ancient Evils: either you cancel it, you discard it (and this is the only player card that does that), or you get lucky and the scenario ends or shuffles the encounter discard pile into the encounter deck before you see it. Nature of the Beast doesn't make the third more likely, of course, but it does make the second possible at all. Meaning that if the scenario was in fact long enough to draw through the encounter deck anyway, you've turned a guaranteed draw of whatever card you're worried about into a possible draw of it, which is in fact less likely. — Thatwasademo · 58
Suppose you were going to draw through the encounter deck exactly once during a scenario; that's exactly 3 Ancient Evils (or whatever card you most want to avoid). Now suppose you resolve Nature of the Beast once during that scenario; you get to discard an Ancient Evils if you see it, but now you're 3 cards deeper into the encounter deck so, before the game ends, you will draw the top 3 cards of a reshuffled encounter deck — which are just as likely to contain an Ancient Evils as the 3 cards you revealed before. Nature of the Beast did not change the expected number of Ancient Evils you drew, it just increased the variance — which is probably a bad thing. — Spritz · 68
There are ways to target bad encounter cards: using Nature of the Beast with Katja Eastbank and Scrying, for example. And, like player-deck-discarding effects, Nature of the Beast gives you potentially useful *information* about future encounter draws. But I am fairly confident that Sylvee is right and Nature of the Beast on its own does not improve encounter draws. — Spritz · 68
But if you can avoid drawing ancient evil now, this get you enough time to finish before the next was drawn. In a thinned encounter deck the chance of drawing a specific card might also be higher then in a fresh encounter deck. Nature of the bead is not reliable without scying etc but it can change some odds — Tharzax · 1
@Tharzaz this card does impact the odds of drawing certain cards after you play it similar to how resolving the encounter part of the mythos phase impacts odds. And if you have tools that both let you see what the next 3 cards of the mythos phase are as well as a way to consistently trigger this when you got a batch you want to discard, (as Spritz mentions you could do this with Katja and Scrying) you could theoretically use this card to improve your draws. But absent those things, this card is on average about as likely to cause you to discard an Ancient Evils as it is to cause you to draw all of them a turn sooner and potentially draw one more. Without information of what's on the top of the encounter deck and the ability to trigger this card when it's something bad, it's random chance what you hit with it and over the course of enough games will end up improving your draws as much as it worsens it. — Sylvee · 100
It took me a little while to understand the argument but now I see it: we all focus on the chance it has to discard 1 (or 2) annoying encounter cards, without seeing that it can also have us discard 2 non-threatening cards, bringing us closer to the cards we actually want to avoid. — Valentin1331 · 68161
Yes on its own this card is not really good since you don't since it's effect resolves after drawing and you can't time it. Even the effect is mediocre. You need additional card to get good combos. Like Katja, scying or a ward of protection to fish and prevent a bad encounter like ancient evil. — Tharzax · 1