Increasing your decksize hurts your mulligans, but being able to pick your cards in the draw phase negates the issue of diluting your deck pool with extra cards. Essentially, this card allows you to pick a lot more of those niche, great-in-one-situation cards, and then toss them aside for your normal good cards if that situation doesn't seem likely. Enjoy the power of Fine Clothes in Carcosa and when the Parleys aren't in the scenario you can shunt em. Have Roland bring Handcuffs to the dance and toss them right back in the trash where they belong when the tentacle monsters come out to play.

Notably you will draw your weaknesses faster since the rate of draw is higher than the rate of deck dilution, and in that highly improbable and inevitably Arkham fashion you can draw two of them at a time (which then leads to a choose and discard situation, which assumably means you keep them both).

Also notably, your upkeep phase will take longer than everybody else's and you'll have to make a higher amount of choices each round, a situation that is all fun for some players and sheer decision paralysis for others. But if you're up for that enhanced complexity, this is a permanent that gives you a higher quality draw at the expense of a slightly lower quality deck with a more inconsistent start. If you're taking the rounded approach, this card is perfect, and discard synergy and interaction make it more so. If you need a particular start: Tarot, key assets and signatures, weapons of choice - this is more likely to be a pass.

One of the more interesting things about this card is that it opens up the idea of a support seeker, someone who can donate actions and other tools to a member of the party that they are already helping in some way ex: Bob Jenkins with his item donations or Daisy Walker running Encyclopedias. Spend a book action as a secret, bump your Guardians fight up to 7, and then donate two of these and let them go running around the map cleaning up elites and bosses without having to commit cards. Maybe you're a secondary seeker like Minh or Roland and you want a higher book value character to do the dirty work at a big shroud location. Pair it with a Stella Clark to take maximum advantage of her Grit Your Teeth or, better yet, Quick Learner. You can even start copying it later with Eidetic Memory or play it fast off Cryptic GrimoireCryptic Grimoire, leading to massive turnstreaks stacked on top of allied cards like Police Badge and The Gold Pocket Watch. Obviously it's not as fun when you're not doing the cool things, but if it's your second time around on a character this is a fun way to switch it up and let your Spikes terrorize the encounter deck.

Beyond that, this is a card you want to take when you're teaching a game of Arkham to a friend and want them to have a bomb time. It's action neutral, costs nothing, commits for wild and probably makes you a hero to a friend, which is really what you're going for in Standard and below. It's niche, but Arkhams best decks and games all lie in niche ideas and going down a card is the lowest possible price to pay for having a worst case situation where it doesn't work that well.

This is a good card.

That's my opinion to begin with. It's good. Not exceptional, not great, not an auto-include. And yet, I've seen this card on a list of worst cards in the game, and I've seen people argue it isn't even worth running with Practice Makes Perfect despite the synergy. Naturally, I disagree.

Obviously, the reason people are so down on it is that it compares poorly to Eureka!, to Perception, to several other excellent Seeker skills, and even to Unexpected Courage. The problem is, while Plan of Action is good, those are great, excellent, or auto-includes. It can be a Perception, with one less icon, with a limited window to be committed. It can be an Unexpected Courage, but not in the mythos phase, and not if you want to test certain skills first or last. Eureka is almost a wild icon, and does better than draw you a card.

However, while you could simply see it as a worse Perception, Eureka, or Unexpected Courage - something I generally agree with - it is important to note that it is all those things simultaneously. If you need a worse Unexpected Courage, it's there. If you need a worse Perception, it's there. Is that versatility worth a deck slot? Maybe. Is the versatility worth anything if you're only planning to use it as a deck-filling cantrip? I think so.

Talking theoretically, we can imagine a practiced skill with a single that draws you a card if you succeed. This card would be objectively a worse Perception, and yet I think it would still see some play in a number of Seeker decks. I would certainly run it on occasion. Expand this out to be a icon instead, and it this theoretical card would be a much more likely include. It would still mostly get thrown onto investigates to be a +1 in most of the decks it ended up in, but it would be a skill that competed with Eureka - a worse draw effect, but its ability to be committed to , and its traits would see it out. And there's no reason you couldn't run both. This theoretical card is still not objectively better than Plan of Action. It does have less versatility, and it isn't hard to engineer a second action investigate in Seeker. Any deck that would run this theoretical card - at least at level 0 - has a reason to consider Plan of Action. Any deck that wants to go skill and draw heavy for whatever reason should at least consider it.

And if you need to fill a 45 card deck with as many cards that replace themselves as possible, you can do a lot worse.

Amazing card for investigators with weakness in hand, such as Agnes or anyone with dark pact 200characters200characters200characters200characters 200characters200characters200characters200characters 200characters200characters200characters200characters

Fixing Decks with Exile cards is something I rather like doing, the few times it comes up it feels like cheating the system, spending 1xp to swap in a level 0 card you forgot sucks, but spending 1xp on flare and getting the swap for free is a good time all round.

Burn after reading removes two cards from your deck for 1xp and gives you testless clue gathering, it also allows something more interesting, the removal of high level cards, i don't think I have ever even considered swapping an XP card out for another one, I generally just ride it out even if the card seems to be close to worthless, but now you get to remove an XP card in your deck in exchange for the most powerful effect in the game, doom removal.

I think in a Deja Vu deck this card in a no brainer for easy clues and effectively adaptable (more than what Deja Vu already allows), if you have two Deja Vu's you could even run two of these and use them every game for 2 extra rounds and free clues, which may be worth the steep asking price. (12xp for the combo and another 4xp forany two level 2 cards)

As someone who adores gold pocket watch at its extreme cost I see myself having a lot of weird experimental fun with this.