I think if you're running this you're basically required to pair it with Favor of the Moon to force the trigger after you draw the first curse. If you're playing Jim that means the first curse you draw in a round becomes a flat -2 plus a pity dollar, which is pretty good. Moreso in a multiplayer game where Favor lets you reduce the impact of your curses on the other investigators.

It further synergizes with Song of the Dead to force a cheap +2 damage off any or , making the combo a more reliable Armageddon. And if you want to go all in, adding Nkosi Mabati lets you also hit on any symbol short of the .

Is that worth 4 cards totaling $9 and 9xp, three of which aren't spells and so can't easily be tutored, and none of which can benefit from Arcane Research or Down the Rabbit Hole? Probably not, but it's more interesting than Shrivelling.

Every investigator who can take Lockpicks (0) can take Lockpicks (1), right? So, sure, these kind of stink, but you'll get to upgrade to the Level 1 one soon enough. Well, not so fast, it's level 0, so there's Versatile and those crazy Dunwich investigators, so let's talk at length about those. Ah, who am I kidding, this review is about Monterey Jack, our lovable Rogue who can take only level 0 Rogue cards, so it's this card or no Lockpicks for you unless you're friends with a traveling salesman.

The effect is strong, as with the level 1 version. You're adding your two highest skills together, for a base 9, always. It'll only get you one clue per turn, which is okay, but you're really adding this to your deck to trigger the succeed-by-two effects, since indeed you must succeed by two. So, trigger your Lucky Cigarette Case to draw some cards, make some money with Gregory Gry, or throw a Quick Thinking at the test to get another action. Or once you get some XP, Deduction (2) solves the "only one clue" problem too, and Perception (2) will run you through your deck to get all of those cool skills back again.

OK, the downside. First, the auto-fail. You don't get your clue, you don't get whatever bonuses you were hoping for, you get nothing and your Lockpicks end up in your discard pile. This is bad, but is that really much different from playing an expensive event that auto-fails on you? You probably got SOME use out of this card, unless you pull the auto-fail on your very first activation, and you're out two actions and 3 resources for nothing. That's Arkham! But remember, the red token only shows up 6% or less of the time!

Now the non-autofail cases where you'll discard the asset: you can fail the test and get nothing or pass the test and get a clue, but in either case you didn't do math properly or are taking a big risk. When deciding whether or not to take Lockpicks (0) , you need to heavily consider the chaos bag and your campaign. The highest regular shroud is 4, and these usually only have 1 clues. 2 and 3 shrouds are far more common. At base 9, being up by 5 means that you're fine if you draw the -3 even on the 4 shroud locations. That's the usual situation for Easy. For Standard, you're likely to have a -4 or -5 in the bag. It's simple enough to commit one of the above skills (don't forget, or icons only) or two to cover the worst tokens. Opportunist lets you cover the spread every single turn. Keep an eye on those tokens, too, which can get nasty in some scenarios. The unpredictability of tokens probably makes them a bad choice if you're worried about losing the Lockpicks. Frost tokens are a problem, too -- the -1 for the first one is probably not a big deal, but the second is an auto-fail, so.

You have two more options to get your stats high enough to succeed which are easily accessible to Monterey Jack. First, add a static boost! Either or work, so we're talking about Hiking Boots or Death • XIII or Gené Beauregard. Or pay some money: Streetwise (0), Higher Education (3), or Hyperawareness (4) are fine choices -- or even Crafty, which pays for the price of Lockpicks, too.

For Monterey Jack, this should not be the only way to get clues in your deck, but it can be an ideal way to make the rest of the deck work well. At base 9, losing the asset is rare, even rarer when you can easily boost your stats. And when it does happen, with Seeker draw you are well on your way to finding your second copy, or reshuffling your deck and getting it back.

Hunch: Eon Chart is better in solo than multi-player.

I ran this in a 3-player EotE campaign with Monterey Jack. Often it didn't really fire up because locations had multiple clues. In order to really fly, you'd want to clear a location and move on. If you can do that, good, but it's not a guarantee.

In a solo Dream Eaters run with Monterey, it's been bonkers. Since most locations only have one clue, Eon Chart can clear the location and get you out of there without a single of your three actions.

Conclusion: Amazing in solo, a little more hit and miss in multi-player.

Thoughts?

Tommy Muldoon straps on his Flamethrower. Then he bolts on the Telescopic Sight.

As he is engaged with no enemies, Tommy uses the replacement targeting restriction to take aim at an enemy at an adjacent location. He commits a card. During the player window before success is determined, he taunts a different enemy two locations away. That enemy runs in to engage and Tommy tries to kick it in the face. The kick misses, but the enemy trips. The attack on the first enemy is successful and deals no damage; instead the flames from the thrower incinerate the second, now engaged enemy. The original enemy is stunned by the stupidity of it all.

I highly recommend Winging It in a Norman Withers deck.

Winging It has 1 cost, so can be played for free from the top of your Deck with Norman's ability. Norman would often be doing basic Investigate actions anyway, so seeing this on top of your deck essentially gives him card draw, much like fast 0-1 cost events.

His Signature Weakness, The Harbinger disables your Deck, allowing you to infinitely replay Improvised events from your Discard pile, without shuffling them back into your Deck afterwards. With your Weakness out and Winging It discarded, you've an got an endless 1 cost source of -1 Difficulty, +1 Clue Investigate actions. Use Sleuth or Dr. Milan Christopher to mitigate the cost.

In order to setup this combo, you must find Winging It before revealing The Harbinger. Norman has access to recurring searches to help ensure this happens:

• Use Written in the Stars or Astronomical Atlas to get multiple uses out of Eureka!.
• Include a Mr. "Rook" for deep searches and finding your Signature on demand. Any basic weaknesses can be Forewarned, so his has little downside, provided you haven't found his Signature before finding Winging It.

You will have to take Versatile to include it, which decreases your deck's consistency with its +5 Deck Size, but there are a few benefits to that as well:

• Norman can only have up to 5 level 0 cards. If you upgrade them out, you can save up to 5exp repurchasing new level 0 cards, as increasing your deck limit requires you to fill in the missing cards with appropriate level 0s from your collection.

• Cards that are Tabooed to cost additional experience remain at their original level. Level 0 Taboos can thus be included via Versatile at no additional cost. This counteracts the spirit of following Taboo in the first place, but can save you a lot of experience should you want to include cards like Knowledge is Power or Mr. "Rook" (Who can help setup this deckless Norman playstyle). | Edit: The chained modifier applies afterwards. The fact that level 0 chains don't consume your upgraded experience when added via Versatile seems to be an oversight on ArkhamDB.