Interesting note: Rift Seeker has Cultist, so once it's shuffled in you can use it as a target for Mysterious Chanting that doesn't speed up the doom clock the turn it enters play.

Aside from that neat little interaction, Rift Seeker is honestly pretty basic; no Hunter if you decide to evade it and leave it behind, no "Spawn:" instructions spawning it at a different location preventing you from dealing with it, not even Retaliate in case you fail the 3 (or 4 once The Entity Above, The Entity Above, or Swallowed Sky enters play) test to hit it. Yes, it does have the Parley option, but that's a trap, paying a high cost (2 horror and 2 doom) for something that's honestly not that difficult (defeating a slightly tougher Ravenous Ghoul). Assuming you don't draw the against it, you can fairly safely treat Rift Seeker's text box as blank, except for Traits: those actually make it interesting, allowing you to fish out a (moderately) tougher Cultist with Mysterious Chanting in exchange for no doom entering play.

Dumb question: Where does The Man in the Pallid Mask go after he's defeated? He's only earned as a weakness during scenario resolution, but he has a player card back; does he just get added to the defeating investigator's discard pile?

I ran this in a Tommy Muldoon deck focusing on Custom Modified Becky and it did not disappoint. Tommy often struggles with draw consistency because all those Assets shuffling back makes his deck that much thicker. Now you can just aggressively draw through most of your deck (including Resourceful for even more draw) in case Prepared for the Worst didn't find Becky. As a side benefit, Rookie Mistake is also likely to come up sooner with more draw, so you don't have to play around it all game long.

Carson Sinclair and Preston Fairmont will also appreciate this. Carson needs to draw his Skills to support his friends, while Preston is just a rich sack of meat before finding his loadout. Both of them don't really care about the lost action either. One's already giving his actions away while the other's likely running Leo De Luca.

Haven't played Vincent Lee yet, but if the synergy with Geared Up is legal, him being able to take Studious, Geared Up and this card without Versatile makes his 1st turn setup pretty consistent.

Not sure about the other investigators with off-class access to Survivor Level 1 events though. Tony may want this as Rogues don't have a lot of draw aside from Lucky Cigarette Case and some high-XP options, but Survivor seems like the least viable secondary class for him. Minh and Mandy already can draw and search very well, so their actions are better spent actually winning the game. Agnes' weakness is so simple yet brutal that adding more draw to her looks like a bad idea (unless you engage in liberal deck manipulation).

I personally think that a Norman deck should be running Eureka, Foresight, Parallel Wills, and Scrying because there's just so much synergy between those cards and his ability. That said, it won't always be possible but you would be able to get around Harbinger if you ever caught it in a scry or parallel wills - make sure to Eureka when you know it's in the top 3 cards and name it with Foresight ahead of time (per FFG it looks like for Foresight and "Search and Draw" effects they want the timing window to be prior to the search part). If it gets to the top of your deck normally you can't Foresight it since it prevents itself from being drawn, but if you can draw it from inside your deck that bypasses the limitation and Foresight cancels it before the Revelation effect would put it on top of your deck.

That said, if you know it's coming you can also just prepare for it and time the "draw" when you know you can spare the two actions, but that combination of cards does let you skip having to deal with that and is worth noting I think.

A very good upgrade in more ways than one to a card that's normally used for its high soak.

The first change we see is that you can now use this ability on ANY investigator rather than just yourself, which includes not having to be at their location. Just like Ward of Protection (2) this means you can always be ready to counter the Ancient Evils that the Guardian at the other side of the map drew.

Now for the real boost. The lv 0 version allowed you to draw a card, say "yikes!", shuffle it into the encounter deck, draw another card, and if you were unlucky say "even more yikes!" and wish you hadn't used the ability. And to make things worse you're simply postponing the danger as the first card is still in the encounter deck.

This card, however, gives you the choice between the two so you will ALWAYS negate the "even more yikes!" encounter card. Either you negate the first card that was bad enough for you to use this ability, or you negate the second card which would have been even worse. Dr. Billy T-M never misses! Additionally, the lv 2 card actually "cancels and discards" the card you choose. You don't shuffle the lit fuse into the encounter deck like before, it simply discards.

So not only does it supercharge the original ability, it also allows it to be used on the rest of the map. The downside compared to similar cards like Forewarned is of course that you (or your ally) must still resolve the lesser of the two evils. But this is a fair price to pay for an ability that can be triggered every mythos phase.

But why would you choose Billy over other cards that doesn't take a hotly contested ally slot like the previously mentioned Ward of Protection, Forewarned, and A Test of Will? The reason is that Billy doesn't care about your revelation effects. Billy doesn't care that there's a "Surge" written above "Revelation". Billy doesn't care that enemies aren't revelation effects. Billy sees a card he doesn't like and cancels it.

As for the cost, placing a clue down, it's not all downsides. Crack the Case, Hawk-Eye Folding Camera, and cards that only work while standing on clues like Inquiring Mind and Preposterous Sketches are easier to trigger. Not to mention Research Notes from the same expansion.

Incredible encounter deck manipulation. Billy has indeed been "Working on Something Bigger".