Wini's flashlight beam shakily passed over the walls, its pale light creeping over the bones. The grim labyrinth extended as far as her eyes could see, nothing but stone and bone and death filling her gaze.

And then her beam fell on one particular skull, and glowing eyes within it stared back.

Wini bit back a scream, then frowned. "Wait a second," she muttered, staring intently at the glaring red orbs. "This isn't right."

What isn't? sibilant voices hissed in her mind. You make yourself the foe of one who can rewrite the stars; why are you surprised that the dead rise at his command?

"What?" Wini blinked. "Wait, you think that's what I'm confused about? No, the ghosts and all make sense, it's you that's the problem."

What problem do I pose? the voices hissed back. Is it so strange that the dead who walk should also speak?

"No," Wini shook her head. "What's strange is that you don't synergize with the rest of the scenario. Like, at all."

The voices paused. Then echoed her confusion. What?

"I mean, The Pit Below works with the whole "map" thing the scenario's got going on," Wini continued, "and The Shadow Behind You... look, I don't care how little it synergizes with the rest, ": You look behind you" will never not be funny. But you? You're Rotting Remains with extra steps, and there's nothing else in the entire scenario that touches those steps. If the designers wanted a horror dealing treachery, why didn't they just replace you with Striking Fear? It would fit really well with the whole Catacombs theme."

The glaring red eyes of the unquiet dead blinked slowly. You say that we do not fit, their voices slowly replied, and that you would rather see us replaced with Rotting Remains, Dissonant Voices, and Frozen in Fear?

Wini easily nodded, casually taking a swig from her not-water bottle.

And you call us mad, the voices grumbled.

Very interesting design, evoking a similar feeling to that of The Last King. Corpse Dweller basically turns Humanoid enemies (like Ghoul Minion) into time bombs, requiring you to clear them from the board before they explode into this 3/5/4 2D/1H behemoth. However, doing so will require you to use actions and potentially other resources, such as charges, ammo, or skills, things which you will be sorely needing later on, and Corpse Dweller, unlike the guests in The Last King, isn't guaranteed to detonate. All of this forces you to consider whether you should kill that Ghoul Minion now and (assuming your source of 2 damage isn't renewable) definitely have fewer resources available to deal with the other big bosses or simply evade it and potentially have to spend more resources later to deal with the Dweller.

Alternatively, Player 1 could draw Catacombs Docent, promptly followed by Player 2 drawing the Corpse Dweller, at which point there aren't any mind games to play, but even then, at arguably its lowest point, Corpse Dweller still isn't a bad card; yes, it is a 3/5/4 2D/1H enemy, but that was all that was revealed that turn, giving you more breathing room to take care of it.

All in all, very well-done card. Add in the Return To's fix of making it unable to discard The Man in the Pallid Mask, and it's almost perfect. 10/10, would blow up Tommy Malloy again.

Very interesting. A Phantom of Truth actually feels like it has a fairly low enemy count (basically just the 7 Byakhee), so this helps pull them out, preventing the encounter deck from turning into just a constant stream of treacheries. At the same time, there's a test to avoid it, so if you need to, you can try to pass the test to avoid dealing with the enemy. I don't like this as much as Hunted by Byakhee (which isn't blocked as easily by ), but it's still a creative way to mitigate the quest's low enemy count.

There are some great campaign allies to get with Charlie. Usually they all have a and an extra incon.

In my opinion, one should consider the campaign allies when building a Charlie deck, so let's review what's available.

Spoilers incoming !

• NoZ : sadly Lita Chantler has no icons. Same for the Wayfarer allies from Edge of the Earth (only Anyu may be considered, but she has already a nice exhausting ability and won't get extra value from Charlie's ).

• Carcosa is the only campaign where you never get an ally. No, The Man in the Pallid Mask doesn't count.

Outside those campaigns, the other present you some nice options :

• In Dunwich, you have a lot of allies, notably Dr. Henry Armitage and his (he also generate ressources, which is great for Charlie who has to pay for all his allies), or Naomi O'Bannion (you like or ?) if you manage to earn her. Even with two Charisma you will not be able to take every available ally (Dr. Francis Morgan, Professor Warren Rice, Earl Sawyer and Zebulon Whateley) !

• Forgotten Age : even if you don't side with Alejandro Vela or Ichtaca, you can take Veda Whitsley, probably one of the best possible ally for Charlie : 1 cost, 3 health/horror, and a fantastic icons !!

• Circle Undone : a few possible allies but late in the cycle. Interesting part is you can focus on Penny, Valentino, Gavriella or Jerome depending of your role. Erynn MacAoidh is probably better for a real mystic.

• Dream Eaters : Randolph Carter (or Randolph Carter) is a solid ally. You will also encounter some allies without icons but they also don't take an ally slot (Virgil Gray and Richard Upton Pickman).

• In Insmouth you can have Elina Harper or Thomas Dawson depending of the scenarios. Elina's ability doesn't require to exhaust so it's full benefit.

• The Scarlet Keys can give you Inspector Flint, Agent Ari Quinn and Dr. Dewi Irawan, but one could prefer keeping the exhausting for their abilities. Siding with the Coterie during the finale can also grant you a ton of slotless (and iconless) allies for free.

• The Feast at Hemlock Vale's Residents are not Allies. You could get Helen Peters and Dr. Rosa Marquez, who bothe have nice icons and a flat bonus.

You can also play independant scenarios, consider playing those :

• The Blob that ate everything : Pet Oozeling doesn't take an ally slot. Pick it and forget Lt. Wilson Stewart.

• Machinations through time : Ezra Graves and Nikola Tesla are both great, especially if you are the cluer.

• The Midwinter Gala looks like perfectly tailored for Charlie. Full of 4-icons allies to talk with, and you can keep the best suited for your deck after.

Abbess Allegria Di Biase (Carneval eof Horrors), John & Jessie Burke (Guardians of the Abyss) ,Lady Esprit (Rougarou), Sergeant Monroe (Excelsior) cost a bit too much imo. Keep your money and your slots for better allies (see the other review)

Reviews here talk about 1 enemy engaged and 2+ enemies engaged a lot, mentioning how easy it is to just kill one before the 2nd one arrives. But also easy to miss for beginners that you can fight with 0 enemy engaged (which won't get +1 damage), often a solution get the tempo back on track. I agree that 2+ engages are rare, even in high player count. But 0 engage situation isn't rare at all. For example :

• Fight enemy that just spawned on the other investigator and you want to go first.
• Fight exhausted enemy when the clue finder wants to go first and start with Evade.
• Wants to Evade first to turn off Retaliate before fighting, now it also turn off the +1 damage.
• Fighting enemy while you are at critical health / sanity. You don't want to have engagement after your 3rd action.
  • Quite often your friends still have usable health / sanity to take the Enemy Phase hit. Guns do let you continue dealing high damage at critical condition longer as long as you have your friends grabbing the enemy, even if they can't fight.
  • If you bet on your final action to kill the enemy but it didn't, your friend lose turn flexibility as they have to go later and Engage the enemy from you to save your life.
  • You want to ensure exhausted enemy to survive 2 dmg/horror hits in Enemy Phase, so normally you start with Evade 1-3 times until it succeeds, use the remaining action if any to Fight. Now, you are incentivised to Fight as much as possible to get the +1 damages then Evade on the last one, which maybe risky if that test fails.

I played only 2P from the start for a whole year and the disadvantage was negligible, Machete was a staple. 3P and above however I realized how useful and exciting the kill-stealing Fight without Engage could be. So many things can occur in just one Mythos Phase on 3P+, and I need more flexibility to resolve it. My group pretty much shoot bullets left and right as soon as Investigation Phase begins without engaging first by default, unless friendly fire would defeat the investigator then we start playing safer. We found something like .45 Automatic to be a better fit for the group's playstyle despite limited ammo.