Card Reviews · ArkhamDB

Nautical Charts

It seems obvious but as no one has written a review yet ... Use the action on this card to discard Winging It: you gain 2 clues with Nautical Charts and then you can play Winging It from you discard to try to get 2 clues in a single action. If you play a solo deck, you can of course do this with the other Improvised events (Improvised Weapon and Impromptu Barrier).

And use Tool Belt to stack Nautical Charts, Hand Hook and Anchor Chain. Then you need a good card draw to get the events back.

4/12/25

AlexP · 266

Inquisitive

Does this card just not… work? If I recall correctly “IF this skill test is successful” resolves in step 7, while “AFTER” in step 6. It so happens to be that most effects that depend on how much you succeed by trigger before Inquisitive has a chance to have any effect: Lucky Cigarette Case, Antikythera, Precious Memento, Alton O'Connell, "I'll take that!"…

4/12/25

Nenananas · 267

You are correct. — Eudaimonea · 5 4/12/25

Dr. Christopher will never believe this! — MrGoldbee · 1484 4/12/25

Yes, and no. A quick filter indicates that there are 49 player cards with "if you succeed by" printed on it. So there are a lot of cards it works for. But it does seem like an oversight that there's also a bunch of cards it doesn't work for and really should. — NarkasisBroon · 10 4/12/25

I don’t think it works on those 49 either. The phrase “(If/After) you succeed by” refers to the timing point at ST.6 when you determine success and failure. “(If/After) this test is successful refers to the timing point at ST.7 when you apply the results of the skill test. Within each of those steps, the “ifs” go before the “afters.” — Eudaimonea · 5 4/12/25

I'd say this is a replacement effect, not a separate trigger. The thing it tells you to do isn't a new game effect, but a modification; you succeed by up to 2 more or less INSTEAD of succeeding by the original amount. So it's not going to use normal timing for if triggers. — OrionAnderson · 114 4/12/25

Yeah, to me this is a clear case of harmful overthinking while the idea behind this card is so obvious. — AlderSign · 381 4/12/25

@AlderSign, that’s just word salad. I don’t know who or what is “harmed” and it doesn’t take much “thinking” to apply the rules rather than personal vibes of my subjective sense of what a card should do. Vibes are subjective, so when you sit down with another player and try to use a card that you think “obviously” does a thing based on your sense of grammar and other players find it less obvious, you’re in trouble. Rules exist to solve that problem, but the devs have to know and for the most part faithfully apply them. Once they don’t, we’ve got a Babel of conflicting interpretations. Talk about harmful. — Eudaimonea · 5 4/12/25

The spirit of the game is harmed, as are design guidelines, if you have to ask. You can find plenty examples in the meanwhile of "devs" being contradictory (see the "as if" ruling for example) due to unclear wording or oversights. This card (and issue at hand) is exactly one of the cases where either the "devs" and/or people supporting the claim of this review bring "conflicting interpretations" to the table. But that's just my opinion, you are welcome to have your own. — AlderSign · 381 4/13/25

@OrionAnderson, if it’s a persistent rather than triggered effect, when do you imagine the player deciding whether “to succeed by up to two more or down to two less”? I suppose the answer would have to be immediately when the card is played? — Eudaimonea · 5 4/13/25

@eudaimonia, I'm not imagining it as a continuous effect but rather a replacement effect, as defined here: https://arkhamdb.com/rules#Instead . Everyone assumes that succeed by more/less effects override the original test result rather than duplicating it. Suppose you succeed by 0 before taking the text of Inquisitive into account. If we take this super literally as an "if" timing, then you would succeed by 0 first, resolve various effects that care about then, then succeed *again* by 2. You could get both he resources and the draw off a chemistry set by succeeding by exactly 0 and exactly 2 on the same test. This is not how anyone believes degree-of-success modifiers work. So they must work by immediately replacing the original margin of success with a new one before anything else can happen. — OrionAnderson · 114 4/15/25

Okay, I understand your argument a little more. The RR is pretty clear that replacement effects include the word "instead" though. So your belief is that despite this card having the same wording as Perception, Overpower, Eureka! and a whole range of other cards that trigger at ST.7, this card creates a new category consisting only of itself called "replacement effects that don't say 'instead'?" Also, the example of Chemistry Set isn't right because that also is in ST.6. The test "succeeds / fails by X" and all the "when/if/after" effects referring to amount of success or failure trigger, then you apply the consequences of success or failure, which are all the effects that begin with the phrase, "If this test is successful." At least that's how it has worked for the first nine years of the game's life. — Eudaimonea · 5 4/16/25

The RR says that the presence of the word "instead" indicates that something is a replacement effect; it doesn't say that all replacement effects use the word instead. It's trivial to find replacement effects that don't. Usually, they use "would" and then just leave off the word "instead" as implied. Notably, this includes several other cards in this little family of degree-of-success-modifiers. Sure, Lab Coat uses the proper "when you WOULD fail by 1 or less, succeed by 0 INSTEAD." But Daring Maneuver just says "when you WOULD succeed, succeed by 2 more." Granny Orne (0) says when you "WOULD fail ... fail by 1 more or 1 less." These are obviously replacing the original test result with a new one, and only the new one is resolved. Equally obviously, Inquisitive is supposed to be a new member of the Daring Maneuver/Granny Orne family. I wish they had at least used "would," but they didn't. It's probably just sloppiness (lots of one-off cards have frustrating wording quirks), but maybe it has something to do with being a static feature of a skill instead of a voluntary trigger on an asset or event, or the new designers have a different templating system. — OrionAnderson · 114 4/16/25

Yeah, I accept it. The real golden rule is that cards should do something, so we have to find a way for this one to. Works for me. — Eudaimonea · 5 4/16/25

To be more specific, I accept the conclusion but the premises are all wrong. Daring Maneuver isn’t a replacement effect any more than Lucky! is, and there’s no real tension between triggered effects and replacement effects—any given effect could be one, both, or neither. There is no example of a replacement effect lacking the “instead” wording, and this card, as written, does nothing. But it’s true that cards need to do something, and we might as well treat this card as having an entirely different text. — Eudaimonea · 5 4/18/25

Ascetic

Ascetic is also useful for inviting new players to join mid-campaign, like to replace someone that is suddenly busy and will not available to play for short or long period of time. Instead of fearing miserable time dropping into high stats enemy and high shroud locations and outright denying the invitation, they now immediately able to have fun with the XPs as if they have been with the team since the start. If a card allow more game time for more players I'd say it's a great card.

It is also fun for that invited player to create a deck within 10 XP (or 13 with In the Thick of It) and try out any combos they've been itching to test, but don't want to fully commit a full campaign run and climb from 0 XP then get stuck with that idea for too long.

Here's an another idea : If campaign kills a player, you can be strategic about the replacing investigator to come in with exactly what the team needs with this 10 XP, because you got to learn real interactions of your team members for about half a campaign now, while at the start of campaign, you all might have built your decks separately in vacuum. For example :

Start with heals like 2x Earthly Serenity (4) because your team suffered too much trauma.
Use 2x Stand Together (3) or 2x Ever Vigilant (4) that let non-Ascetic player draw/play their more valuable cards.
Build a deck with cards that can use other player's card like "You owe me one!", Flare, A Chance Encounter (2), Eidetic Memory, or Copycat and use their XPs to your advantage.
Get on-success XP skill cards like Vicious Blow (2), Deduction (2) then provide support via committing to other players with high stats to get the bonus, or simply premium skill cards like Seal of the Elder Sign.
Provide testless support like Guidance (1), Counterspell, Ward of Protection (2), Working a Hunch (2), token sealing, The Scarlet Keys Survivor Dilemma cards, XP generation such as Keep Faith (2).

4/10/25

5argon · 11111

This review requires you to have enough friends to make sense, though. — AlderSign · 381 4/10/25

Jacqueline Fine

Tremendously annoying that Jacqueline breaks the convention of 'Ignoring' tokens being when you draw in a batch, and 'Cancelling' being when you return them to the bag and draw a new one, which I'm pretty sure is universal except for Jacqueline herself. Mostly because that makes Breath of the Sleeper and Eyes of the Dreamer not work with her ability. Seems unlikely that it's intentional, considering the gap between them, and it's something I'll probably houserule just to work, but it's something to consider.

4/10/25

SSW · 216

I don't think it actually matters in the case of those two cards, because you can just choose to cancel tokens that don't match the one you're resolving and ignore the one that does. — Thatwasademo · 58 4/10/25

oh I guess that does stop you from possibly getting the bonus after spending 0 charges — Thatwasademo · 58 4/10/25

Gift of Nodens

Note: Stella Clark's Neither Rain nor Snow is a survivor skill card! Arcane is a noncompetitive slot for her, so any Stella deck with even halfway good XP can absolutely justify a copy of Gift of Nodens.

Stella also likes to run Take Heart, which is another fantastic combo here.

4/9/25

Paxie · 3