Eyes of Valusia
The Mother's Cunning

Здобуток. Hand. Arcane

Item. Relic. Spell.

Cost: 3. XP: 4.

Вартовий

: Parley. Choose an enemy at your location. Until the end of the round, each investigator gets +1 skill value while fighting, evading, or parleying with the chosen enemy. Place 1 resource on Eyes of Valusia, as a charge.

: Search your bonded cards for Blade of Yoth and swap it with Eyes of Valusia, moving all charges from Eyes of Valusia to Blade of Yoth.

Drazenka Kimpel
The Feast of Hemlock Vale Investigator Expansion #35.
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FAQs

(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)
  • Q: When swapping Eyes of Valusia with Blade of Yoth, does it briefly take up 2 arcane and 2 hand slots? A: Eyes of Valusia is swapped simultaneously with Blade of Yoth. Throughout this process, they fill the same arcane and hand slots. (Feast of Hemlock Vale FAQ, February 2024)
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Reviews

So, this is a card that Alessandra may find useful, since she is the one who will spend Parley actions to feed this.

The thing is... this is underwhelming. Alessandra will always prefer to use her Parley actions in other powerful Parley cards as long as there are enemies in the map, and this is not hard to force in the vast majority of scenarios. You can even look for them with Kicking the Hornet's Nest or ask your Guardian to play On the Hunt.

Let's say you waste your precious Parley extra action and you add three charges. Then you activate the effect and play Blade of Yoth. You can attack 3 times for 6 damage, 2 times for 3 and 2 damage or 1 time for 4 damage. You have to basically wasted 3 extra Parley actions (probably along 3 rounds) that could have been used to win the scenario with cards like Vamp, Fake Credentials's , Grift, Power Word or Beguile's to feed this in order to get this numbers.

This is just so much trouble when you can simply play British Bull Dog and shoot 3 times for 6 damage ignoring Aloof or even not paying because of its . Do you need bigger numbers? Use Dirty Fighting since it also synergizes with Parley tests or the new Fox Mask.

Is this a boss killer? Not by any stretch, you will just perform worse during the whole scenario with Alessandra just for get this thing fed.

Marie Lambeau suffers from the same. Her extra for activating Spell assets' is way better spent in assets like Shrivelling, Rite of Seeking or any spell you want to play.

So, Alessandra and Marie Lambeau have way better options and ways to spend their extra actions, but, this card has another cool effect. When you load this thing using the Parley action, every investigator gets +1 to deal with the parleyed enemy during this round. I find this such a cool support tool for non other than Carson Sinclair. He can use this to ease hard Parley actions (There are some of this in The Forgotten Age if I remember correctly), or to buff any investigator while dealing with an enemy. He can get next to a big boss (or big enemy), use this card's three times and suddenly all investigators will consistently trigger cool effects with card like Switchblade, Mauser C96, Beretta M1918, .41 Derringer, Cheap Shot, Opportunist, Lucky Cigarette Case, etc. Kymani would love to get their numbers bigger by this in order to have an easier time discarding enemies. You can even join the fun if you've added enough charges and swing with a +6 bonus for 4 damage! Not live changing, but good enough for a exclusively support character, allowing Carson to have autonomy against enemies he draws from the Mythos deck as a consequence of perfoming good at his role

Sure, not all the campaigns have such dangerous enemies to get this rolling, but there are some other campaigns with a lot of bosses and beefy enemies (specially in bigger player counts) where other players will gladly take the bonuses and the help.

Is Eyes of Valusia the best option for Carson? I don't know, but it looks fun enough for me. Maybe this card needs to get mutated to be playable. Realisticaly, no Guardian (or Marie Lambeau) will pay 4 exp when you can get Brand of Cthugha for the same slots and bigger damage for less actions and ghost killing if they are a thing in the campaign you are playing. Maybe there is something I'm not seeing. I don't know.

rodro · 195
It’s a weird card to evaluate, because it’s hard to see the cards value… but it’s there. And this IS a boss killer for sure, but it performs worse with less players. It is descent support tech. Carson definitely comes to mind. — Therealestize · 69
A personally think it's great utility for Alessandra: — bernieschlotfeldt · 1
It helps buff all party interactions with one enemy / For Vamp •••, applies to each check / Helps burst skill checks on critical story parleys / Saves up for big damage output for Victory enemies. And, as you mentioned, it helps the entire party in a tough fight. True, there are other options with higher DPR, but the broad utility is pretty great IMHO. — bernieschlotfeldt · 1
While this is less good for Alessandra solo or in 2 player, than say 3 or 4, the value of essentially charging up a weapon overtime while also getting a boost on every interaction with that enemy for the round is very nice. In 2p, you can expect to need to deal between 12-20 damage on a boss, and we can talk about using the bulldog, but this can have more bullets, and ultimately compress the fights into fewer actions as well. If you want to do 8 damage for example, ignoring the play action, you need to have triggered the parley 6 times. And then you get to make 2 four damage attacks. So 8 actions. For 8 damage. Put that way, it sounds not too efficient. But Alessandra not only wants to find an additional use for her parley every round, but she can also take Haste, and any other rogue cards for more actions. The true value of this is being able to bank the actions for when you need them. A support or flex Alessandra could dump so many actions into this that she could deal 20 damage in 5 attacks very easily. The math is pretty static at 4 actions for 4 damage. So it feels low, but also, its a high value attack, where she can attack at skill value 11, almost guaranteeing a hit. — Rolandironfist · 33
Also notably for Alessandra, this can be a reliable way to kill her own weakness later in a campaign. — Rolandironfist · 33
If you had The Raven Quill attached to it, would you lose it as part of the swap? — Norrin · 1

An interesting card for Alessandra. She can use otherwise wasted free parley actions to charge this up before swapping to the Blade of Yoth to kill the big-bad at the end of the scenario. In that way it's action shifting (like Borrowed Time and Bide Your Time) from early turns to end game turns. Outside of Alessandra, and maybe Carson Sinclair, ... seems not good.

krish · 50
Marie might also be interested, since it's also a spell she can use her extra action without spending a charge — Tharzax · 1
Marie also has access to all the charge manipulation shenanigans which is where this card really shines in my view. — Spamamdorf · 4

How does this interact with cards it’s attached to or has attached to it?

If I have it attached to Dr Horowitz or attach the Raven Quill to it and swap it back and forth, would the raven quill stay on? Would it still stay attached to Dr Horowitz? What if I had both. Would the Blade of Yoth simply slide in over the raven’s quill and beneath Dr Horowitz? To that end, would the Raven Quill need to name both “The Eyes of Valusia” and “The Blade of Yoth” or does it only need to have “The Eyes of Valusia” named?

aleanjir · 157