This card really pulls its weight in Innsmouth. With so many hunter monsters in most scenarios, and damage or horror hits on engagement with a lot of them, this can shepherd those suckers away from players with good regularity.

Didn't get to try it in "Horror in High Gear" yet; sending pursuing cars the Long Way Around while you're scooting directly to the Lighthouse is a pretty hilarious image.

Don't write many reviews, but wanted to chime in on this one. IMO, Tommy Muldoon is a powerful investigator who isn't very fun to play, and I don't recommend him. The combination of Guardian and Survivor cards is pretty good (Yorick thinks so too), but he has a few problems that I think make him unenjoyable, specifically because I think he fails to fulfill his "power fantasy" (the thing you pick him and picture yourself doing/having fun with).

1. The gun - You might think you want to build around Becky, but I don't think you do. It takes both hands so you're always using ammo for even the simplest enemies, and you don't REALLY want to reload her with your ability too much because you'll need that money to pay for your Allies. Which presumably is what you're playing Tommy for. It's also simply not worth the work for the just okay payoff, and cards you include to buff the weapon may not have enough other attractive targets. I'll get to that later.

2. Rookie Mistake - in my opinion, this weakness is both punishing, and more importantly too directly interferes with Tommy being "fun". It is possible to play in such a way that the weakness doesn't affect you much, maybe discarding a Cherished Keepsake rather than your entire board, but until you can trigger your weakness you have to play sort of weird to prevent it from blowing up 13 resources worth of allies (which simultaneously makes your Charisma useless until you refill those slots). I'll probably get hate that it's "not that hard to avoid", and I actually agree if you play a certain way. But that's not the way you wanted to play when you picked Tommy. You might play an entire scenario without having your expensive assets tank for you - but then why Tommy? Special note that Rookie Mistake is particularly punishing for Beat Cop (2), Jessica Hyde, Agency Backup, and The Black Cat, because they take damage and/or horror to do their thing. All in all, I think this is a Weakness that you play around until you draw, and the way you play around is directly disruptive to the thing you want to have fun doing. If you don't play around it, it might undo 20 XP and 14 actions at once between resources lost and card plays. I think it was justified as being needed because Tommy can be very strong, but it kinda ruined it for me.

3. The experience problem - There isn't enough experience in the world for Tommy to get what he wants. This is true for all investigators, but it's true to the point of dissatisfaction with Tommy. Stick to the Plan is as good on Tommy as any Guardian, and possibly better as he leverages that first turn Ever Vigilant very well. Unless you plan to only discard Mr. Pawterson, you probably want a couple copies of Charisma. The most exciting Allies you can fit in are things like Agency Backup, The Black Cat, and The Red-Gloved Man, but they're five each, and that doesn't include the Beat Cop (2) that you probably want. Even with all those things, you still don't have a weapon that costs experience (as I mentioned before), or other general utility cards that your classes can play. Trying to improve Becky is more experience. This gets worse if you try to add Drawing Thin in a post Taboo list world.

Tommy is a powerful investigator, and if you lean in to his Guardian and Survivor roots, you'll do fine to great for yourself. I expect comments on my review to say as much. But he didn't really deliver what I was hoping for, and I suspect others feel the same.

Pros

• Becomes flexible in the later game when you have a choice of skill to pick from your teammates discards
• Becomes more powerful as your teammates gain XP and upgrade their skills
• Provides some pseudo recursion to your teammates
• Triggers Winifred Habbamock's draw ability

Cons

• XP expensive in a class with lots of card competition for XP
• Not great in the early turns as there won't be much in your teammates discard pile
• Only usable in multiplayer (otherwise Unexpected Courage is a strict upgrade)

Obviously it's only good in mulltiplayer and you'll want at least one of your teammates to be running some good skills. Generally though I haven't found that to be a problem, there are plenty of good skills out there and even pulling out an Unexpected Courage nets you a boost.

Ideal targets are in Seeker with:

• Deduction (2)
• The Eye of Truth

and Guardian with:

• Vicious Blow (2)
• Leadership (2)

And not only do you get the benefit but goes back in their deck to redraw so between you and your teammate it's perfectly possible to play a single Deduction (2) 3 times per deck rotation.

The main downside is the XP cost which is prohibitive in Rogue with so many powerful cards to spend their XP on.

Conclusion

If you're Winifred Habbamock and one or more of your teammates has relevant skills I highly recommend including this card, it's both powerful and great fun to play!

If you're a different Rogue investigator it will still be good if your teammates have high impact skills but you'll have to carefully consider the XP cost vs other potential upgrades.

Hatchet Man synergizes with:

• .25 Automatic (0)
• Delilah O'Rourke (3)
• Sneak Attack (0)
• Sneak Attack (2)
• Cheap Shot (2)

If you build around some of these cards Hatchet Man can be worthwhile.

However, unless you build quite hard around it most of the time I don't think this card is worth the slot in your deck. Situations in which you want to evade first and then do damage just aren't common enough and you'll often have this card sitting in your hand for a while before you can get a chance to play it.

If you've got a weapon out or damage card available you're usually just going to use it to attempt kill the enemy off. If you don't have a weapon or damage card that can deal with an enemy you're more likely going to want to move away or seek alternative solutions after evading.

I think this card deserved another symbol so it was more playable even if you weren't going to get value from the text and you'd more easily consider it over a Manual Dexterity. As it stands you need to be playing the combo cards to make this worthwhile

The basics

Who can use this

• All Rogues
• Dexter Drake
• Leo Anderson
• Wendy Adams
• Father Mateo
• Ursula Downs
• Lola Hayes

Pros

• 2 powerful effects
• Unlimited uses
• Cheap to play (2 resources)

Cons

• Uses a hand slot, which is highly contested in many investigators
• Exceptional so you can only play 1
• Can't be used for tests in the mythos phase
• 4xp when there's lots of competition for xp in Rogues

Should you take for the base skill value 5 effect alone?

Every turn for no cost you get a skill test on your turn at base 5! That will often amount to a minimum of an Unexpected Courage on a secondary stat, and even boosting a primary stat from 4 to 5 isn't terrible.

Even in a highly specialised investigator who already has a base 5 in their core stat regularly is required to take tests that they don't excel at, e.g.

• Treachery card tests in your threat area
• Tests on locations or when advancing acts
• Parlays
• Basic evade/investigate action (still generally useful even if your deck isn't built around them)
• Basic fight action (though usually less useful without support cards to deal extra damage)

If you start to build around the effect then it only becomes better. It's powerful, flexible, cheap and requires a little build around to be good.

So most investigators would want the effect but should they all take this? No, the biggest downside is that it takes up a hand slot, and for most investigators that can take this hand slots are in short supply, especially for primary fighters they're often taken up with weapons.

However for the investigators that can often spare a hand slot and have weak stats or weak secondary stats this card is already looking very appealing. The most obvious candidates that fulfill these critera are Dexter Drake, Jenny Barnes and of course Preston Fairmont.

OK for all investigators. Excellent For these investigators with poor stats and free hand slots.

Should you take for the bless / curse effect?

OK, so for some investigators the base 5 effect is great, for others it's merely OK. But we've not considered 2/3 of the text on the card yet... so let's do that!

If you're starting Dunwich on standard you'll have 15 tokens in the bag. Then if you've stuffed the bag full of blesses and curses you have:

• 10/35 or 28.5% chance of gaining another base 5 skill test
• 10/35 or 28.5% chance of gaining another action

That's over a 50% chance of getting another powerful effect, and sometimes you'll get both!

In class Rogues can either generate curse tokens with:

• Ríastrad
• Faustian Bargain

can generate bless token with

• Priest of Two Faiths

or can generate both simultaneously with the neutral:

• Tempt Fate (neutral)

If you are considering taking these cards anyway then great, but they are unlikely to be worth taking to solely to trigger the bonus effect on Djinn alone. If you or your teammates are already planning to fill up the bag with with bless and/or curse tokens anyway then the effect from the Djinn is a strong bonus.

OK if you're only taking / generation for this effect. Excellent if you already have / generation.

What if we get full value out of it?

Lets put this card in Preston Fairmont where:

1. Hand slots are not highly contested
2. For Preston a base 5 is +4 boost in any skill
3. Survivor secondary gives incredible cards

Now combo alongside Favor of the Sun and some bless generation and now we get:

• 1 test each turn at base 7
• 1 subsequent test each turn at base 5

that's 5 unexpected courages every turn!

Now add in Ancient Covenant and we get:

• 1 testless action at base 7
• 1 subsequent test each turn at base 5

that's 1 will to survive + 5 unexpected courages every turn!!

Even if your Preston Fairmont deck is completely built around buying your way through the game and skipping the chaos bag all together you're still regularly going to be able to find uses for this effect. As well as all the basic actions and encounter card tests mentioned earliey you can start using your base 5 on tests on impactful event cards such as Pilfer or Backstab even though otherwise you wouldn't have the base stats to support them.

Combos with Favor of the Moon are also possible to reliably trigger extra actions which is also strong, but ensuring a testless action is the most powerful. This is because in Rogue you also have a vast array of sucess and over success mechanics. As you've got a testless action each turn at base 7 you can commit all your over success cards with completely certainty of the result. You can trigger Quick Thinking, "Watch this!", Lucky Cigarette Case etc. for huge (and 100% safe) combo plays. See my Preston decklist for an example of what's possible from just 8xp.

The combo in Preston Fairmont of Eye of the Djinn + Favor of the Sun + Ancient Covenant is absolutely broken and triviliazes the game even on expert.

Summary

• OK in all investigators but unlikely to make the cut for a hand slot in most
• Excellent in low stat investigators with low hand slot competition - notably Dexter Drake, Jenny Barnes
• Incredible if also you or your team already has / generation
• Broken in Preston Fairmont if you build around it