Blood of Thoth

Blood of Thoth

This card is an absolute powerhouse thanks to the Taboo list. The synergy it has with Blood Pact and Sin-Eater is downright absurd.

You can boost yourself with Blood Pact, place the first offering on Blood of Thoth, then activate Sin-Eater to capture the doom, which immediately triggers Blood of Thoth again.

The result is that you can consistently gain an additional action every single turn, and that action can be used either by yourself or even given to a teammate.

SikoSC · 1061
Amina can even play Blood of Thoth with doom on it, letting Sin-Eater give you 2 extra actions once. — AlderSign · 451

Doppelgänger

Doppelgänger

Might be kind of niche but I am building a Kymani Jones deck with this, Chuck Fergus and Bum's Rush. With the starting 5 xp you can take 2x Chuck and 3x Doppelgänger. For 4 resources and no action (or 2 resources and an action) you can discard any non-elite enemy by playing this in your room then Bum's Rush to push them out and trigger the second evade (you have to succeed 2 evades at 7 skill, but that's not too difficult and the 1 damage from Bum's Rush reduces the difficulty of Kymani's discard evade test). If you fail the first evade you still move them and get a second chance to evade from Doppelgänger.

Can also work nicely with "Where's the party?" to discard non-elites from the encounter deck. Drop a doppel in room, spawn an exhausted enemy and then evade them instantly to discard. 2 resources and an action, with Chuck able to reduce either the resources or actions needed to 0.

It's not overpowered by any means, but it is pretty neat that both of the crucial cards (Chuck is luxury here really) come from the same set, which matters as I have moved on to playing limited environment for extra challenge.

aasimar_autonomy · 3

Word of Woe

Word of Woe
  • This card can prevent Knife from being discarded.
  • This card can let you use all Sled Dogs twice during your turn.
  • This card makes The Council's Coffer's daunting test actionless.
  • This card can let you use Timeworn Brand's string attack without exhausting or ignore the weaker attack's condition.
  • This card can let you use Blur/Blur without charges.
  • This card can gain you 1 resource without adding curses via Scrimshaw Charm.
  • This card can let you use Flute of the Outer Gods without curses.
  • This card is rather disappointing.
AlderSign · 451
For sled dogs, word of Woaaah! — MrGoldbee · 1524
Heh. — AlderSign · 451
Re-using Knife made me chuckle. — DrOGM · 25
On a more serious note, this card has 2 main uses that I found. 1) Trigger the doom-cleaning action on Sin-Eater when you absolutely need it, without spending an action nor triggering AoO's. Word of Woe places 1 doom on Sin-Eater just before removing it all. 2) During the witching hour (when doom would advance anyway), to get an extra action from an asset and abuse Blood Pact. — DrOGM · 25
Yes, you are of course right about those two. It's not a trash card by any means, I just wish we could abuse more cards like Sledgehammer (4) with it :') — AlderSign · 451
And actually, using this on Knife isn't as absurd since you can use the discard action afterwards to get rid of the doom. — AlderSign · 451

Mortar and Pestle

Mortar and Pestle

I am going to attempt to put a positive spin on this card by trying to identify its most apparent niche.

Spell events are great. I love spell events. They are typically really impactful, but they're also really expensive. So lets say Luke Robinson wants to run Dayana Esperence with Read the Signs, but that's some pricy tech, you gotta muster up 2 resources every time you wanna do that. But by spending 4 resources and 2 actions, you can make this combo pay for itself. That's something, sort of.

And you can apply Fine Tuning to these cards, so you can trigger them twice per turn. That means that for 8 resources and 2 actions you can generate 4 resources per turn dedicated to playing spells. Not the worst engine, and it only costs 2 XP and 4 card slots. Getting the startup money is hard but not insurmountable, and if you're gonna be playing a lot of spells and getting a lot of clues then it will pay off.

Consider Prophetic. For 3 XP and 3 Resources you can get 2 resources per turn that can be spent on Spells, Fortune, and Spirit Cards, and can alternatively be spent on boosting tests on those same cards. Two copies of Mortar and Pestle is 1 more resource and 1 more action to play and requires you get clues to acquire those resources. Is Prophetic Clearly better? Yes, absolutely, but it also costs 3 XP and is restricted to Level 3 Guardian/Mystic/Survivor access. Mortar and Pestle can be taken by anyone with level 0 Seeker access, has synergies with other Seeker cards, and can bank its resources for later turns, something you can't do with Prophetic.

Is this an auto-take for 99% of builds? Absolutely not. But it's a card that I think you can extract a lot more value from than it first seems, especially if you're running Dayana Esperence and can reliably get clues.

ClassyD · 4
You point out, Prophetic is restricted to Level 3 Guardian/Mystic/Survivor access. But Dayana is restricted to Level 3 Mystic, so this seems kind of moot? — Susumu · 386

Bolas

Bolas

I thought about this card a lot. Eventually, I have my doubts but find it got way more dirt here than deserved.

My main problem is that you have to use for the evade. Because to play this card effectively you need a high skill value, but if you have high you usually just fight the enemy. I think for this card to be less niche using should be optional (which would also be more flavorful IMO).

That said, now for the good part - the forced effect: "After attached enemy moves: Exhaust it." You know when enemies move? When they hunt! But okay, we already got that covered here and that's probably the main selling point of this card. But after they hunt you and exhaust you are engaged with them, so you still have a problem to deal with next round. Meh.

Or do you... ?

See, whenever you move enemies engaged with you also move. That changes a whole lot regarding the utility of this card, since it opens up synergies with cards that let you move without spending an action! Say hello to:

As you can see, some playstyles also incentivize having an enemy with you.

Let me think what you know ;)

AlderSign · 451