Captivating Performance

Hot garbage, arguably one of the worst Specialist cards around (Feel free to tell me I am wrong and provide examples of Specialist cards you think are worse)

It is inevitable to make a comparison to Haste when looking at this card, as it is basically the inverse of it: the main two differences is that Captivating Discovery is slotless and Haste is, you know, a good card! Take 2 actions of the same type to perform an extra one, which also allows you some mix and matching because some actions are hybrids of each other (playing an event with Fight is both a Play action and a Fight action) and makes the card fairly flexible to use in most builds

That is not the case here: now you need to perfom THREE different actions, spend your entire turn, before maybe getting an extra action, and all of these actions, both to activate the card AND to gain the extra actions need to be different!

Originally, as it is written this was botherline useless, because the same thing that made Haste strong, also made Captivating Performance weaker, you had to avoid performing actions that overlap in order to be elegible to an action you may or may not be able to perform, and that most of the time was gonna be a Resource or Draw action: given the card's cost in exp and resources, that is pathetic

THANKFULLY, the FaQ did specify hybrid cards ONLY count in the sequence the way you want them to, if you for example use Sixth Sense, you can say you are either Investigating or Activating a card, which turns Captivating Performance to nearly unplayable to just... Bad, to still being a bad card, but actually being usable.

Even then that doesn't remove the problem that the card locks you into really sub-par turn to use, as you need to make sure doing 3 different actions each round to be elegible to another one, which often is of limited use because 3 different type of actions ALREADY covers a good amount of types you can do (at the time of these writing, action types include Activate, Engage, Evade, Fight, Investigate, Move, Play, Resource, and Draw, another FaQ added Parley. I think jury is still out for Forgotten Age's Explore)

And while the resource cost is same as Haste, this is a Level 3 card as opposed to Level 2, costing an extra exp to buy: that is incredibly dumb. This card definetly isn't worth 3 exp, as it is strictly worse than its Rogue's counterpart (which arguable should be higher level) with a stricter requirement of an extra action to trigger (basically a 50% difficulty increase to trigger the effect): even the fact it is slotless does little to change my opinion; sure, a slotless asset is stronger than one taking up a limited slot by design, but it still does take up your decksize space, and if it is far harder to use and has a less tangible benefit, it still not worth using, especially given you have time to play only so many assets before you Doom out.

It's really sad, because I like the concept of Specialist cards, but this ain't it chef: it's cumbersome and underpowered! I tried it on my Jim deck (where I even mistook this took an Arcane slot, hence I had to edit the review) and I wasn't impressed. Doesn't help, most of the people that can use it are Mystics with the exceptions of Lola, Patrice and Lucius, which are the most likely to repeat the same type of action by either keep activating a Spell asset or playing Spell events: if it wasn't for the FaQ specifying how "Hybrid" actions work in relation to Captivating Discovery (as in, you pick as which action they count for between the various eligible options), it would be literally unplayable. And this isn't that great even for the few non-Mystic that can run it.

Ok so, 1. It's not an arcane slots, which is why it costs 1xp more than haste, which is an arcane slot, and why its not too painful for mystics to include. 2. In my experience its super easy to trigger with the ruling. Say you have a combat spell and an investigate spell, a pretty standard setup for mystics, and you have a 4 health enemy to deal with. You can "activate" shrivelling, then you can "fight" with shrivelling, then you can "investigate" with sixth sense, and then you can play or move with extra action. Or if you dont draw an enemy you can "investigate" then "activate" then "move" then "play". Which are both pretty normal turns i would expect to happen a fair amount. Without even putting any effort into optimising for using captivating discovery — NarkasisBroon · 11
To be clear, I dont think its a strong card, it is, effectively, a more balanced haste, which as you say is a bit too good. But this is one of the playable specialists in my opinion. Too many of the other specialists are unplayable :-P — NarkasisBroon · 11
*Facepalm* I have no idea how I missed that... Must have been muscle memory. Time to edit to save face (puts clown getup on). — HeroesOfTomorrow · 65
A lotta work to add an extra play, resource or move SOMETIMES. — MrGoldbee · 1496
The card seems most practical for Marie since she gets more "tries" fo — AlderSign · 420
with her extra action.* — AlderSign · 420
Marie is probably also the best user because she has good Intellect and decent Agility, meaning she can actually Investigate and Evade on her own without the aid of spells, and Captivating Performance rewards Investigators that do multiple types of action more than the ones that do just one repeatedly — HeroesOfTomorrow · 65
Nine of Rods

How does this card interact with overzealous? Would the second card that you draw from this card not have surge? Is this an effective counter to it? 200 characters 200 characters 200 characters 200 characters

MrMewMews · 1
Since overzealous says that first card get the additional trait surge, I think the cancel effect of the tarot also works on this. Also you draw a another encounter card and do not replace the original draw, so the effect of overzealous has no further effect — Tharzax · 1
Magnifying Glass

To all the "new" players around here, this card doesn't really justify the xp cost, so yes 0 in ressource instead of one is nice, is it critical ? no It will maybe be useful in some very niche decks with recursivity to push assets in the bin but it's really a QOL upgrade and nothing more.

blobe · 4
Why is "new" in quotes? — MrGoldbee · 1496
https://youtu.be/4DqoQq1zME8 — snacc · 1022
Riot Whistle

The cool thing about this card is that you only need to play it on the turn you need it - you get the action for playing it back immediately. Even more, Wilson Richards can play it for 1 resource cheaper! Also, with Tinker or Tool Belt the slot should not be an issue anymore.

AlderSign · 420
Tool Belt isn't a very good solution. The slot is only available if the other accessory is also a tool. Currently, that's only Cleaning Kit or Chemistry set for the cross-class investigators - that's not exactly a large range. — Ruduen · 1025
The problem with waiting to play it until you need to use it is that typically the whole reason you are using it is that you want to do as many actions as you can in a single impactful round, in order to rescue your cluever. At that point, spending an action to play this completely defeats the purpose of even having it. Fighters are all about squeezing as much damage as they can into their important rounds, and trying to spend their time productively when they have nothing to fight. Riot Whistle is absolutely the sort of card a fighter should be equipping on their downtime, not when their actions are needed! — snacc · 1022
Artistic Inspiration

This may not be obvious at first, but for George Barnaby this card is insanely good. You can use the fast action on Artistic Inspiration during the enemy phase to trigger his ability.

As there are not many cards that can trigger a discard during the enemy phase, this essentially nets you +1 card per turn.

Nallej · 1