The most powerful card in the game

The payoff for playing this card is gigantic, especially in higher player counts. In a 4 player game it skips a minimum of 4 encounter cards, and sometimes more because of surge effects. It works no matter the type of encounter card either, so perils and enemies are indiscriminately blasted from existence.

You could argue that you don't get to choose the encounter cards you want to cancel, and that you're not really cancelling them but instead delaying them. Both those points are true, but ultimately every time you play this card in a 4 player game you're seeing 4+ less encounter cards during the scenario.

When played early you get incredible tempo setting up and getting ahead of the game. Played late you get certainty in closing out the scenario or pushing for more victory points.

What's the cost of this incredibly powerful effect you ask?

• 1 resource
• 5 bless tokens

Now Survivors might not have the most powerful economy but 1 resource is a pitiful amount even for them!

Ah, but it costs 5 tokens, those must be difficult to come by at least? Nope, turns out blessing generation is incredibly easy. Even in class Survivors have great access to easy low cost generation with:

• Keep Faith (0)
• Predestined (0)
• Signum Crucis (2)
• Spirit of Humanity (2)

and also the neutral:

• Tempt Fate (0)

It's fairly trivial to keep the chaos bug stuffed full of tokens all game with very little investment.

But wait, this card is in Survivor , a class with a primary mechanic of card recursion. Even with a simple 0xp investment of 2x Resourceful and 2 x Scrounge for Supplies, both already commonly played cards, you can play this 6 x per deck rotation. With further Survivor shenanigans you'll be able to replay it much more than that.

Not only is the effect incredibly powerful it's also very un-fun, Arkham is a game of fighting against the odds and battling against adversity. You'll occasionally be able to breath a sigh of relief as your Mystic plays a Ward of Protection against an Ancient Evils. However, this card allows you to pretty much skip the challenges that game would try and throw at you.

It's so powerful that if you're only aim is to win then I can't see any Survivor deck not spending their first 6xp on 2 copies of this. I don't know what happened in the balance meeting when this card was discussed. I can only assume that it was thought that generation would be much harder than it actually is, as a number of bless based card in this cycle seem way overtuned. Once you realise bless generation is trivial this card is obviously busted just by reading the text box.

Summary:

• Incredibly powerful effect
• Very low setup and cost to play
• No downsides
• Easily recurred

Absolutely needs taboo, completely game breaking.

As a card on it's own it's great. A 2xp permanent with pure upside is unlikely to be bad. As long as you have some bless token generation in your team pulling one during a test will almost always result in a success and you'll never need to use up more bless tokens than necessary.

However, alongside Favor of the Sun this card becomes game breaking.

This mini combo is available for just 4xp and is currently available to all Survivors , Agnes Baker, Father Mateo, Tommy Muldoon, Preston Fairmont and Minh Thi Phan.

With a single fast action and +1 resource play of Favor of the Sun you get 3 turns with a guaranteed +2 skill test.

This is a hugely powerful affect, +2 should usually translate into an auto success for most attempted skill tests. However, even if +2 isn't enough you'll know exactly how much you'll need to boost/commit.

It's also immensely flexible. You can pick the exact tests you want to succeed and the test doesn't even have to be on your turn:

• Guarantee success against dangerous and difficult tests in the mythos phase
• Guarantee success on an important investigate/fight/evade
• Guarantee avoiding a disastrous cultist, skull or elder thing token in the last turns of the scenario
• Guarantee a big combo/commitment play (less relevant in Survivor but huge for the Survivor secondaries)

Survivor has great access to easy generation with:

• Keep Faith (0)
• Predestined (0)
• Signum Crucis (2)
• Spirit of Humanity (2)

and also the neutral:

• Tempt Fate (0)

This combo is incredibly easy to pull off and requires no slots or build around, 2 x Tempt Fate is more than enough to keep the chaos bag stuffed full of bless tokens. With some reasonable card draw you can keep up Favor of the Sun the entire game.

I've play tested this in Preston Fairmont and it's degenerate and triviliazes the game even at expert difficulty. Comboed with the success / over succeed mechanics in Rogue this effect is far too powerful. While occasionally being able to cheat the bag is fun, being able to reliably do it once every turn takes away a lot of what makes Arkham the experience it is (the chance of drawing the ).

Rogue is the most able to abuse this with big all in plays, see my Preston - The Favoured Sun Over Succeeds deck for an example of what's possible.

Survivor is the only class that has a somewhat hard time abusing it and even then it's way overtuned. I would suggest that Ancient Covenant needs to be tabooed to only be usable on natural bless token draws from the chaos bag.

Between this and A Watchful Peace I think the Innsmouth playtesters forgot to turn up to the Survivor balance meeting!

Summary

• Great on its own
• In combination with Favor of the Sun absolutely game breaking and deserving of taboo, especially in Survivor secondary classes

This card requires:

• 3 tokens generated (although can be used with less, for less payout)
• 2 resources

In return it gives:

• 3 x Unexpected Courage you can commit to future tests

Not a huge cost but a fairly mediocre pay off for the investment. For similar affect you could just run Unexpected Courage without the need for the setup.

However, alongside Ancient Covenant this card becomes a powerhouse.

This mini combo is available for just 4xp and is currently available to all Survivors , Agnes Baker, Father Mateo, Tommy Muldoon, Preston Fairmont and Minh Thi Phan.

With Ancient Covenant instead of 3 x Unexpected Courage you get 3 x guaranteed +2 tests.

This is a hugely powerful affect, +2 should usually translate into an auto success for most attempted skill tests. However, even if +2 isn't enough you'll know exactly how much you'll need to boost/commit.

It's also immensely flexible. You can pick the exact tests you want to succeed and the test doesn't even have to be on your turn:

• Guarantee success against dangerous and difficult tests in the mythos phase
• Guarantee success on an important investigate/fight/evade
• Guarantee avoiding a disastrous cultist, skull or elder thing token in the last turns of the scenario
• Guarantee a big combo/commitment play (less relevant in Survivor but huge for the Surivor secondaries Minh Thi Phan or Preston Fairmont)

For more power combine with Unrelenting (1) to seal the good tokens to get the draw 2 card effect knowing you're going to pass.

The only real limit is the exhaust stipulation so you'll have to pace out your successes over several turns.

Survivor has great access to easy generation with:

• Keep Faith (0)
• Predestined (0)
• Signum Crucis (2)
• Spirit of Humanity (2)

and also the neutral:

• Tempt Fate (0)

Summary:

• Underwhelming card in isolation
• Alongside Ancient Covenant and even a modicum of generation this card is a monster in almost any deck and is worthy of a taboo

P.S. I've now play tested this in Preston Fairmont and it's as degenerate as I expected it to be. Comboed with the success / over succeed mechanics in Rogue this effect is far too powerful. While occasionally being able to cheat the bag is fun, being able to reliably do it once every turn takes away a lot of what makes Arkham the experience it is (the chance of drawing the ).

Rogue is the most able to abuse this with big all in play, see my Preston - The Favoured Sun Over Succeeds deck for an example of what's possible.

However, it's way overtuned in any class and needs to be tabooed. I would suggest that Ancient Covenant needs to be only be usable on natural chaos bag draws.

Holy Rosary is a true classic, easily one of the best Mystic cards in the Core Set and still a top performer many years later. So when Crystal Pendulum came out, I was initially a bit resistant to switching over to this. Sure, for Jacqueline Fine with her built-in token manipulation and 9 Sanity, the Pendulum seemed like a slam dunk. But elsewhere, was it really worth giving up the concrete benefit of 2 Sanity soak for unreliable card draw? Most of my Mystics don't run a lot of token manipulation at lower XP levels. And this is the same class that must start every single campaign with 2 mental trauma (it's in the rulebook.)

But the more I weigh the Rosary and the Pendulum, the more I've found myself swinging in the latter direction, if you know what I mean. Practically speaking, even without any support, the Pendulum represents something in the neighborhood of 25-30% of a card every round. And the thing is... that's good! That does add up over time. I think it's at the least highly competitive with 2 Sanity. And that's just the floor for the Pendulum. Factor in the random token manipulation effects you may have wanted to run anyway (Diana likes her Dark Prophecies, for instance), and the Pendulum does better.

Moreover, the Pendulum tends to scale really well into the late campaign. Most Mystics want to pick up the really powerful token manipulation effects like Grotesque Statue and Seal of the Elder Sign because, well, those are great cards. And they certainly lead to more draws from the Pendulum. And in the mid-to-late campaign, you'll miss the 2 Sanity from the Rosary a lot less, because you'll have options like Deny Existence V, soak-heavy Charisma builds, etc.

So I think it's very close between the Rosary and Pendulum in the early campaign, and then as the campaign progresses, the Pendulum tends to get better and better. So I've found myself tilting that way recently, and I've been happy with the results.

A final note. The Pendulum is a fiddly card and does have the potential to seriously slow down the game in multiplayer. If you're going to run this, I recommend memorizing the contents of the chaos bag (which is helpful for good gameplay in any case), so you can be quick in making your predictions. Be mindful of your pace of play here. No amount of extra draw is worth dragging the game to a halt!

As far as I know, this is the best place to identify your Ancient Stone! How you pass a difficulty 12 intellect test on scenario 2 (which doesn't even have any clues on it, so you're truly just swinging for the fences) is left as an exercise for the reader.