Leather Jacket

A bit of an odd card for Rogues. Fast is really nice, but most Rogues don’t struggle with health much due to having high health values and high agility. You might consider this for Sef if it weren’t for Robes of Endless Night, which gives her a really nice discount on spells. For off class Rogues, this doesn’t do much for anyone except Dexter. Leo is built to be tanky with lots of allies, and Wendy can take Leather Coat if she really needs the soak. Dex can at least use this to effectively make something else fast with his ability, and the soak is very nice for him. He might want Robes instead, or he might want both.

You could also play this alongside Lonnie for a decent horror and damage healing engine, though 6 resources and 2 cards for that seems like too much.

StyxTBeuford · 13028
Yeah, I'm not sure where this card fits, other than to fill the niche of giving every class their own body asset (except seekers...). The Lonnie combo is good, but if I'm a rogue I think I'd rather combo her with Trench Coat, which gives me a bonus I'd gladly pay one more resource and an action for. — MiskatonicFrosh · 344
Maybe its meant to be part of Wini's solution to Beyond the Veil. If you had this, Joey "the Rat" Vigil, and Delilah O'Rourke, you could soak 8 out of the 10 damage. — Zinjanthropus · 229
I bought this preconstituted deck in Italian and only one of the two leather jackets is written fast — Tony Morgan · 80
Regarding >Wendy can take Leather Coat<: sure, but 2 resources for an action seem like a fair trade. "Skids" has that as his special ability. Also it can stay in hand in case you don't need it, because you can install it safely engaged. Sue, survivors are normally not as rich as rogues, but I would give the Jacket a slight edge over the coat, if you can take both. — Susumu · 371
Unless of course, you go "Dark Horse", in which case, you don't want to keep 2 resources availble for emergency. — Susumu · 371
Nah I just straight up disagree with that assessment. 2 resources will almost always be more valuable than an action, and that’s a pretty big reason why OG Skids is not nearly as well liked as his parallel version. Leather Coat being 0 is particularly huge for recursion savings, as Survivors have the ability to replay things from their discard much more easily than other classes. Recursion at 0 resources is significantly stronger than recursion at 2 resources per opportunity. Saving an action is nice, and I wont discount the AoO dodging, but overall I find this considerably harder to include than Leather Coat. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
Ciao Tonio Morgana, fellow Italian. I personally disagree with the review of taking this over Robes of Endless night with Sefina: you take both because Sefina HP is so low you need every bit of soak you can get, and given she gets +3 to the normal 30 deck size and then 5 more cards base that do not count towards her deck size for a total of 38, putting two HP soak card help a lot. Sure you could get a second copy of Robes instead, but I think the fast makes +2 stamina on a character with 5 base very inviting — HeroesOfTomorrow · 55
Chainsaw

Chainsaw Take Heart Dreams of the Deep Fail (1) Oops! (4) Live and Learn Take Heart Dreams of the Deep Fail (5) Oops! (8) Live and Learn Resourceful Succeed (11, return first L&L) Live and Learn Resourceful Succeed (14, return second L&L) Live and Learn Succeed (17)

Each L&L is triggering at the same timing sequence of 'after the first failed test ends', but due to the rules for Nested sequences must wait until the previous L&L is fully resolved.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

? — MrGoldbee · 1471
He's saying you can do 17 damage in a single action with the Chainsaw as Silas, assuming the stars align and you have exactly the right cards in your hand, which isn't likely, but it is funny. — SGPrometheus · 821
can't you only play live and learn in response to a failed test, though? — Zinjanthropus · 229
Yes; in this example, he fails the first two test. Oh, I guess it's two actions. — SGPrometheus · 821
I guess where I'm confused is the part where it's Live and Learn + Resourceful succeed followed by Live and Learn + Resourceful succeed. You can't play Live and Learn to redo a successful test. — Zinjanthropus · 229
Those are the live and learns from before going off. — SGPrometheus · 821
While the first two tests fail, ALL four Live and Learns are in the timing window ‘after’ that first failed test. Per the rules, if a triggering opportunity occurs and an ability is played, after that ability is resolved you are STILL in that same timing window. It is like why Nethaniel can defeat an enemy, trigger Boxing Gloves which draws Glory, then play Glory which draws Evidence, and then play evidence - after each ability finishes resolving, you are still at the ‘after an enemy is defeated’ window. Likewise, each Live and Learn is played when you return to that ‘after a failed test ends’ window. — Death by Chocolate · 1485
Interesting. The Nathaniel Cho example actually makes perfect sense to me, but in the case of Live and Learn, you're doing 2 skill tests between failing the first test and playing the third L&L. I will take your word for it, though. Sometimes the rules are unintuitive. — Zinjanthropus · 229
Not that I didn't already think Live and Learn was a really good card, but it makes it much better that you could theoretically trigger it a second (or third or fourth) time even after one of them succeeds. — Zinjanthropus · 229
@Zinjanthropus There’s nothing particularly sacred about skill tests here. ‘Making a skill test’ as part of playing live and learn is just a game effect - same as ‘drawing a card’ as part of Glory. It’s a more involved game effect, for sure, but nothing that makes the timing rules function differently here. — Death by Chocolate · 1485
You could also choose to gain 2 supply in this sequence and only lose 2 damage for a total of -1 supply used to deal 15 damage. — Mataza · 19
Will to Survive

While I understand the logic behind this card as a down-leveled version of the popular classic. I believe printing this card was mostly a mistake. In most non-Preston decks, this card is just too expensive for what it does, and even in young moneybags, he has to boost on top of this to still succeed at something.

This card's natural home is in one main place: Jenny "Stop The Flow Of Time!" Barnes. It replaces the Premonition that tells you how much to commit/pay to hit your goal with... just flat out guaranteeing the (over)success in a very clean way.

Even outside the logical extreme, this thing goes best with big chonky Double or Nothing maneuvers, and its availability at level 0 means that even more rogues (or whomever) have access to it - and even more characters in general have access to it + Double or Nothing.

Maybe I'm wrong and there is a middle ground existence somewhere for this card, but I predict it will mostly be underwhelming or degenerate with little in between.

Agreed completely. For Preston even, without Donut, 4 resources is a lot, giving up the ability to do almost anything else that round. You might Intel Report for 2 clues with that money, which is usually much better than one clue. — StyxTBeuford · 13028
The All In you linked to is the All In agenda from House Always Wins. — Soloclue · 2604
@Soloclue OOPS! I’ll fix that, thanks. — Death by Chocolate · 1485
I’m still confused what this card is used for? In my mind, not revealing a chaos token means you cannot proceed with the skill test? Is this to “mute” other (negative) outcome from treacheries or events that are dependent on the chaos tokens being revealed? — HeathrowT5 · 1
@HeathrowT5 Not revealing chaos tokens means that you are just comparing your skill vs. the test. This is useful if you are at or above the test and don't want to pull negative tokens, or if you want to fail and don't want to pull positive tokens. — Time4Tiddy · 246
Stand Together

With the release of the Nathaniel Cho deck, guardians now have an incredible array of resource generation in-faction at level 0. In the past, I would slot two Emergency Cache into practically every guardian deck I made, but these days that feels greedy. I say greedy because cards like this one give your team more resources, even though you get slightly less (I mean, mathematically you get 33% less resources while generating 33% more resources total). Similarly, Clean Them Out gives you one less resource, but eliminates a threat for your team. Relentless pays you for overkilling enemies, which doesn't really fit into the "less greedy" theme I'm trying to point out here, but it is another in-faction resource generation card introduced by Nathaniel Cho.

My point is that it feels like guardians have better options than E.Cache these days. Though you can rarely do better than "1 action and card: 3 resources," you can often do something else in addition, which could prove more useful than just gaining an extra buck.

SGPrometheus · 821
Flesh Ward

Not going to lie, an arcane slot card was the last thing I expected from Nate Cho's deck. That being said, this is a strange card that probably has a better place in non-guardian decks, like maybe Akachi.

My problem with Flesh Ward is that for the same amount of resources, I could have just played Something Worth Fighting For which can not only soak horror in a big chunk, but can also do it for my allies and can soak it from Rotting Remains. Basically the floor on Flesh Ward is me taking a single whack of 3 horror from a non-attack, and either dying from it or assigning one of the horror to flesh ward, killing it without spending any charges.

On the other hand, the ceiling of it feels really unrealistic: I have to take four attacks from monsters that only deal one damage of one type, spread over four turns, and then I can take one of each from anything and kill Flesh Ward, mitigating a total of six damage/horror, which is pretty sick, but not at all realistic.

I think there's probably a use case for Flesh Ward as the thing to keep your sanity up while fighting monsters that do one damage AND one horror with their attacks, which there are plenty of in the game. You'll soak some attacks, and by the time Flesh Ward runs out your sanity and health are about even. Maybe you'll get lucky and completely cancel some attacks, and sometimes you'll eat two or more damage or horror and still get hit, but for 50% or 66% of normal, which is strong damage reduction.

The bottom line here is that if you can afford the investment and the time, Flesh Ward will outperform True Grit/Something Worth Fighting For. However, resources and time are in short supply in Arkham, and unless I'm playing Tommy I generally can't find the space for True Grit/Something Worth Fighting For, making me think the same will be true for Flesh Ward, except that because of how it works even Tommy doesn't want it. Maybe it is strong enough to justify its cost for someone like Roland, but I can't tell just from looking at it. I'm sure someone who can manipulate the cancel or the charges would like it a lot, but it looks pretty underwhelming for everyone else.

Update: played the basic Nathaniel deck and got this down very early. Initially, after taking a 2 horror treachery straight to the face, I was like, "I knew it!" But having it for basically the whole scenario did end up saving me 6 health/sanity. I think I end up liking it slightly more than SWFF or TG, but it is a bit selfish.

SGPrometheus · 821
There's a little bit of margin for Flesh Ward with some enemies that behave unusually and ready/attack in unusual circumstances, maybe? Like, it lets you ignore one Eztli Guardian a turn and they can be a big action sink if they have to be dealt with , and there's a couple of unique enemies that can ready unexpectedly in TCU but it does seem super super hard to use well.... — bee123 · 31
That's true; trolling Eztli Guardians is a really funny corner-case for this card. But no matter how erratically enemies behave, Flesh Ward exhausts to cancel the damage, making it impossible to use cleverly. I'm interested in what higher level versions might look like, that either don't exhaust or have larger mitigation, or just lower cost. — SGPrometheus · 821
Great for combo with Guard Dog and Survival Knife though — GWItheUltimate · 1
I've actually grown to really love this card with Mary. If you get it down early, it is an amazing shield that essentially doubles her life, which when combined with her super high sanity turns her into a pretty nice tank. Note that this is when I rely on the old .35 Winchester (taboo) for pretty consistent massive damage from her as well. — lockque · 1
This did feel a bit of a pessimistic review. If you’re a guardian and getting stuck in with monsters, engaging them to take the heat off the other investigators, then you can regularly take attacks (and it’s not being selfish!). Works well used like this with survival knife, riot whistle/taunt, guard dog, counterpunch. Surprised nobody has mentioned the flexibility it gives too... if you are in a high-horror scenario then use it to take the horror away... if you are in a high-damage scenario, then use it to stop the damage — Phoenixbadger · 198
This card would be much better in Innsmouth without the restriction of enemy attacks. Sure, it should not work on "Smoking Pipe" and the like, but it would be nice, if you could counter enemy engage effects with it. — Susumu · 371
Mark loves this card. — tasman · 1
Would this work with Diana? It cancels damage or horror which would trigger her draw a card gain a resource — JourneysintoArkham · 7
I don't see why it wouldnt work with Diana.... But problem is you need to put it under her investigator so you would lose this card. It's not a card you would expect to use up quickly either since it's 4 charges, 1/1 soak and exhausts on use. — fates · 54
I don't think it would work well with Mark. It cancels the damage taken so his ability wouldn't work with it. — fates · 54