Mandy Thompson















matt88 · 814
Dr. Henry Armitage

Now that the janky applications of this card have been officially ruled out (no, he won't let you solo a scenario without ever drawing an encounter card... and no, he won't make your deck weakness free...), it's time to take stock of what remains. So what does this fusty, jittery, bespectacled old bookworm have to offer?

In short, money. Cheddar. Thick wads of cash. Sacks of doubloons splitting at the seams. Once per turn, whenever you draw a card, you can instantly discard it for three resources. How good is that? Think of it this way: Armitage turns every card in your deck into an actionless Emergency Cache. Absorb the magnificence of that: you now have 30 lovely cards in your deck, doing all kinds of lovely things, which can ALSO be played as FAST Emergency Caches... Armitage is the King Midas of allies: whatever he touches turns to gold. Simply put, there is not a card in the game that can match the income-generation of this creaky old Croesus.

Of course, one hardly needs to spell out the uses of an enormous resource flow: every player has their own fantasies. Expensive assets, fodder for your Streetwise, the world's buffest Money Talks, whatever you like!

Oh, and just in case all that wasn't good enough: in a pinch, here's your third copy of Unexpected Courage.

Solemn Vow

Weird, but useful.

TL:DR, if tanking is your thing, this is now in your deck. Period.

Edit: By tanking in this review I mean the classical term used for roleplaying and videogames, a character who interposes himself between friends and danger and does everything he can to take on as much pressure and pain as he can handle, so that everybody else might do their jobs in peace.

Certain characters are really good at just, taking pain. That's what they do. They'll even do it intentionally for one reason or another. Obviously the characters I speak off are the + combinations Tommy Muldoon and William Yorick. Leo Anderson can do it too but he's not quite so good at it, those other guys don't care if their soaks die, Leo Anderson cares a lot!

Via beefy allies like Guard Dog, Madame Labranche and cheap soaks like Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake these guys can take twice as much pain as anybody else and keep coming back for more. They can even leverage it into game advantages by taking on the pain for others, with cards like "Let me handle this!" or Heroic Rescue.

Solemn Vow is the new capstone card to this strategy. The key issue with the other cards is that they only apply when the cards are drawn and enemies attack, raw damage and horror however, those are easy as pie to find, and Solemn Vow makes it possible to just funnel all of that bad stuff onto the tanks and their soaks. You might even have a deck totally dedicated to the funneling and management of damage via soaks and healing, using First Aid and/or Painkillers to move the hurt around and make it go away on a choice soak or heal-able target.

It's fast, it's free, you can adjust the number of copies in case this strategy is important, it has 2 icons so the unused copies double as a defense mechanism for the tank himself.

So yes, Tanking, now a far more viable strategy than ever. Even if the "selfless tank" events we've got already didn't exist Solemn Vow single handedly grants viability to this whole strategy.

Tsuruki23 · 812
Armor of Ardennes? Peter Sylvester? — Django · 2027
The thing is that tanking is, in of itself, not a winning strategy. You survive, but what do you do? This card lets you do the survival FOR your friends, I.E why this card is required — Tsuruki23 · 812
This card is Carolyn Fern's new favourite. Basically it's a new way of "healing horror" for her, as she can use Peter Sylvestre to soak horror for all the team, while gaining resources in the process. It basically functions as a new horror-healing card for her. The only difference it has from other horror-healing cards is that she is the one that gains the resource instead of the one being healed and it has no limited uses. What's even better is that it costs no actions and it comes at 0 XP. — matt88 · 814
There's a lot of people that can take maximum advantage of stuff being piled onto them. Tommy is the obvious one since he was in this pack, but Carolyn if she's running Peter Sylvestre is another. It's also a Spirit, so Calvin can take it and boost his stats even faster. I'm a big fan of this card. — StyxTBeuford · 436
Love the idea of this card. Hate that the way it is written gives away all control over its use. — Kael_Hate · 1
Thoughts on this card for Mark Harrigan? Given his ability of drawing a card each phase he takes damage, seems like you can get an absurd amount of cards by soaking everyone's damage... — NorthernPolarity · 1

Because of the many possibilities this card opens up -- and the fact that you have to play a bonded asset to access it -- it often confuses people. They try to calculate whether drawing two cards for an action is worth it, or how often they are going to want to trade a card for a resource. The damage-dealing capacity of the card, which involves both discarding cards and paying resources, only makes things murkier.

Nevertheless, this is an outstanding card. One usage along justifies it -- all the rest simply gives you more flexibility. For simplicity's sake, try reading it this way:

"Spend an action. Discard the top two cards of your deck and deal one damage to an enemy at your location."

That's basically what would happen if you used Blood-rite to draw two cards and discard them both -- using one discard to gain a resource, and the other to spend that resource and deal a damage. The only thing that could derail that plan would be drawing a weakness, and even then, you could probably still pull it off with an additional discard from your hand.

How many level zero cards let you deal guaranteed, almost costless damage like that? Sneak attack costs 2 and requires that the enemy be exhausted. Beat cop makes you discard a four-cost asset. Guard dog costs 3 and requires you to get hit. Dynamite Blast is amazing, but requires you to take out a second mortgage on your house. Zoey's Cross is great, if you're Zoey. And none of those are Seeker cards.

And of course, this is only ONE possible use of Blood-Rite. Want to do two damage? Pay a couple resources, and still keep your hand level. You really like the cards you drew? Discard two other cards instead. Absolutely love everything in your hand? Don't discard anything, and simply revel in your good draw luck. Strapped for resources? Good thing you have this poor man's Emergency Cache.

There is no doubt that this card is a rocking level zero event. The only question is whether you have a hand free to tote around Occult Lexicon as you wait for your two additional copies of it to appear.

An absolute must have in Mandy by the way. She can find all the copies easily and cycle through her deck quickly to get more. — StyxTBeuford · 436
Ever Vigilant




Insert for the combo goodness:


You get bonus points if you:

Tsuruki23 · 812