"You owe me one!" is a unique action economy event whose inefficiency is made up for by the possibility of playing a card your investigator might never have otherwise had access to. It's kind of like a mini-Teamwork, but where Teamwork costs you a card, "You owe me one!" replaces both itself and the card you "borrowed". This ends up being action economy because, as an example, had your partner played their Emergency Cache (0) on its own, they'd be down a card and up three resources, but with "You owe me one!" they get that card back, and someone on the team still gets the three resources. It's almost like playing Emergency Cache (2), just with the resources going to a different player.

If this action economy was all it did, "You owe me one!" would be pretty boring. A fast zero-cost event that draws you and another player a card is certainly positive value (and this is comparable to the drawing cards effect of "You owe me one!"), but it is not a particularly powerful effect. Like Teamwork though, "You owe me one!" can allow for all sorts of crazy combos when you play things outside your cardpool. I'm actually not going to delve too deep into the possibilities here as they're as broad as your collection, and many have been mentioned in other reviews (including for Teamwork, so do look at those too if that's what you're after). What I am going to do is try to show briefly why "You owe me one!" is much better than Teamwork for a typical investigator deck, and also how to best take advantage of it and make it shine.

While Teamwork lets you exchange any number of Item and Ally assets and even trade resources, it has always been held back by its cost. "You owe me one!" only lets you swap a single card, but the meager action economy also offered makes a huge difference to the card actually generating an advantage for the team. Teamwork has to enable giving or receiving something really momentus to justify burning an action and a card, whereas you can play "You owe me one!" and be satisfied with even a mediocre trade. Additionally, "You owe me one!" allows you to play any asset or even an event from another player's hand, so can trade some things that Teamwork cannot, and I think this is generally much stronger than resource re-allocation. The cherry on the cake is that, bizarrely, you needn't even be at the same location! Luke Robinson, eat your heart out!

One big downside to "You owe me one!" being used to set something crazy up is that investigator hands are hidden zones, and the rules prohibit explicitly naming or revealing cards in your hand to other players. This is a fairly soft and fuzzy rule so I'm sure if you were determined enough you could work around it, but even sticking to the spirit of it very closely there are still some ways to know what is in another investigator's hand.

Firstly, Norman Withers. Vengeful Hound aside, Norman reveals every card he draws, and if you pay attention you can be sure what kinds of favors are available. Secondly, cards that add bonded cards to hand. If your partner just played their Occult Lexicon, you know they will be holding Blood-Rite. Do note though that, if you play a card like Occult Lexicon with "You owe me one!", your bounded cards don't include Blood Rite, so the book itself is useless to you (as are many other cards with bonds, such as Summoned Hound, which you cannot play with "You owe me one!" because you cannot pay the additional cost). Thirdly, cards that move other cards from non-hidden zones to the hand will also guarantee you targets; Calling in Favors, Sleight of Hand, Resourceful, and Scrounge for Supplies can all tell you a card in another investigator's hand without breaking or bending the communication rule. Searching hidden zones for certain cards can also give partial information; if your partner just played Prepared for the Worst and drew something, you know they have a weapon you could "borrow"!

There may also be some other edge cases where you can reliably infer a card in your partner's hand. One example I am aware of: if your partner draws a second card with Mr. "Rook", it must be a weakness (they may even announce so). If they don't then resolve a Revelation effect and just add the card to their hand, it may be their copy of The Tower or Dark Pact or Carcosa campaign spoiler, and perhaps you'll then want to play "You owe me one!" to do them a favor and play that weakness for them! "You owe me one!" does not allow you to play weakness cards, so my particular example here is moot. Thank you user SGPrometheus for the correction!

With all those options available, it is entirely possible to co-ordinate your deck with a teammate to make it likely that you know when there is something good to "borrow". Even if you don't do that though, it should be pretty rare for "You owe me one!" to miss entirely unless your partner's deck is all skills and unique allies. Just play it while your slots are open and they have a healthy handsize. You can however also build your own deck to take even greater advantage of "You owe me one!".

Rogues tend to generate lots of extra resources - particularly Preston Fairmont and Jenny Barnes - and you may be able to take and play a card that another investigator was struggling to pool the resources to play. Building your deck to be more generalised also makes you likely to be able to take advantage of whatever you find, rather than being a monster hunter stuck with a Magnifying Glass. Finally, consider the value of combining "You owe me one!" with Crystallizer of Dreams. I already discussed how "You owe me one!" is a kind of frictionless action economy, replacing itself and the card you play with it, which is absolutely perfect for the Crystallizer to grant you effectively "free" skill test icons for the future. Even better if you play another investigator's event that you can also attach to the Crystallizer!

Existing reviews for Stargazing understate its power. A comparison to Ward of Protection is in some ways fair, as both are low level Mystic events that mitigate the debilitating effects of the Mythos Phase, but they do so in very different ways, and are ultimately quite different beasts. User Bronze is right to point out that, where Ward protects your party from a particularly nasty treachery, such as Ancient Evils, Stargazing instead reduces the number of encounter cards you draw, replacing one of your next 11 encounter deck draws with The Stars are Right. Ward of Protection is a comparatively costly silver bullet to shut down a punishing treachery, and Stargazing is all-round Mythos Phase protection and fantastic value proposition. I think it is ultimately clear that Stargazing has a place in more decks than Ward.

User AquaDrehz rightly points out that the action economy for Stargazing is exceptionally favourable. You draw one fewer encounter card, which saves you whatever cost you would have spent dealing with that. This is a variable reward, but while some encounter cards can be shrugged off, others (e.g. Frozen in Fear) can eat several actions or outright threaten to defeat a vulnerable investigator (e.g. Rotting Remains). Many enemies you draw will do both! Preventing just a single encounter draw can be a substantial action advantage, but on top of that, The Stars are Right makes Stargazing effective action economy too. You trade an action and a card for an action, a card, and a resource. That might not sound amazing, but the ability to move actions from one turn to another is often useful, and The Stars are Right can grant any investigator the reward. Stargazing is a bit like an Easy Mark in that it replaces itself and grants a meager resource benefit, but it also lowers the threat of the encounter deck and re-gifts the action spent to play it. This is incredible value!

The catch is that the reward comes later, and is only guaranteed while there are enough encounter deck draws left before the end of the scenario. In a 2-player game, you are guaranteed to draw The Stars are Right by the 6th round following your playing Stargazing. That is a while to wait for your reward, and you will also have to beware of effects that shuffle the encounter deck, which could put The Stars are Right completely out of reach. These effects usually come from advancing agendas, and you can play around them in many of the scenarios where they come up. While Stargazing clearly has a larger window with more players and in longer scenarios, most scenarios have plenty of time to Stargaze, and you won't hate missing it in your opening hand as much as the Tarot assets. In short, Stargazing's conditions are not as restrictive as you might have thought. Solo play is really where that condition becomes truly cumbersome as 11 rounds is too long to wait.

While playing through Return to Path to Carcosa, I occasionally found myself playing Stargazing even when the team weren't totally guaranteed to draw The Stars are Right due to the encounter deck shuffling or the scenario ending before we could draw 11 more cards from it. The value you gain from drawing The Stars are Right is so great that it is sometimes even worth gambling on! It also just feels incredibly good to draw something actually positive and helpful from the encounter deck, which usually has you reaching gingerly across the table for whatever punishment the mythos has in store for you. Stargazing is going to be a staple of my Mystic decks for the foreseeable future.. which is kind of fun to say given that its Augury traited!

Less a review, and more of a note/question.

Similar to Deciphered Reality, It's worth noting that this card doesn't have the world "instead" or "but" on it. This means that the latter half of the effect is not a replacement effect, but an additional effect. Is that accurate? I believe that means that this allows you to Engage and Fight something that's already at your location. After resolving that, you could then choose an enemy up to 2 locations away, move it to your location, engage it, and attack it.

Is that accurate? If so, this becomes even better than it appears at a glance, giving you an opportunity for two separate engages and attacks, or two attacks at the same target. This adds a lot of flexibility as a fast action in exchange for the cost - especially since it means Nathaniel Cho will potentially deal up to 3 damage with it.

If that changes on release or a ruling clarifies things, it's likely still a reasonable card. However, there might be even more power in it than one expects at a glance.

Edit: The recent 2021-06-28 FAQ to Seeking Answers and the comment which said, "some players (rightfully) interpreted it to discover 3 clues in total", leads me to suspect this even further. The same applies for Righteous Hunt - none of the wording explicitly indicate you engage the specified enemy "instead" of the standard enemy you'd engage, or indicate that you can select the distant enemy as a valid target for the standard Engage action. This definitely seems like a case where the intent is clear, but a strict reading of the rules leaves some very odd gaps, and it only hasn't become an issue because only the three cards and Riot Whistle would really interact with it.

If this were the only choice for upgrading Strange Solution, I would rarely, if ever, use it. But given the availability of Strange Solution, no one in their right mind should ever choose this. 4 evades versus 3 attacks with +2 damage each? Evading is generally only better than attacking when the enemy is not hunter and you can do what you need to do and leave the location the same turn. This card should have had at least 6 supplies to be in the same ballpark as Acidic Ichor.

(review edited 2023-09-10)

Disclaimer: this interpretation is just mine, and not offical one.

Original version: if all of the following conditions hold, discarded weakness would not be shuffled into the deck. It means that the weakness can be passed.

• Only the single weakness card is discarded.
• No compatitable rogue skill card exist. It means all cards in the deck should be discarded.
• The test is initiated during the playing a card (commonly event) or during the revalation of the effect.

This is reinterpretation of FAQ point 1.13, linked here.

Taboo 2.1 (2023-08-30): if all of the following conditions hold, discarded weakness would not be drawn. It means that the weakness can be passed.

• No compatitable rogue skill card exist. It means all cards in the deck should be discarded.
• After Daredevil is committed, you need to draw at least 1 card before the end of the test to rebuild your deck. The player window exists. Here is the example:
  • The test is successful with Perception or Lucky Cigarette Case (only level 0).
  • Unrelenting
  • Any fast draw source: Empirical Hypothesis, Cryptic Research, Tempt Fate

Notable things:

• The number of weaknesses in the deck is not important, now.
• The deck is needed to be rebuilded and cannot stay discarded.

This is reinterpretation of the offical FAQ related to Pilfer found in offical FAQ document and arkhamDB Pilfer FAQ.