Chapter 2 review

Favor of Baalshandor is an interesting one. Firstly, it can only be used to discount Spell or Ritual assets and not events. This is quite limiting, as it stands there are only 7 eligible assets for Favor in the Chapter 2 core and Marie starter decks (Dread Curse of Azathoth, and then Second Sight, Cosmic Flame, Shadowmeld or their upgrades). It does also bypass attacks of opportunity but, as most spells can be used without consuming charges in Chapter 2, there's less of a need to play a spell and refuel mid-fight compared to Chapter 1.

It also comes with the cost of damage, which can at least be handled fairly well with Cosmic Guidance and Bloodstone. Lastly, Favor is bereft of icons - so if you don't have an appropriate asset to play it with then it's a dead card in your hand (compare to say Uncage the Soul in Chapter 1, which both icons on it and could be used on events, plus lacked the damage cost).

Favor of Baalshandor is not the only damage-for-resources card introduced in Marie's starter deck. With Offering Bowl you can net 5 resources, and don't need a target asset in hand for it to work, and it has a icon to commit as well. The damage cost for those resources is steeper (3 damage as opposed to 1), but in some ways Marie prefers this to provide easy means to trigger her ability (and if running upgraded Jim Culver, more damage is often better). Regarding Dexter, cards like Out the Door and "Watch this!" mean he doesn't need to run resource economy cards like Favor. So, who's this for?

For me, Favor of Baalshandor is ironically best suited to Mystic-leaning Izzie Barnes. While she has the lowest health of all new Chapter 2 investigators who access the Mystic card pool, she can recur Cosmic Guidance healing with ease (and you will be running other damage soak anyway to better offset Breaking Point). Further, the Survivor card pool has very poor resource generation on the whole (situational cards like Same Old Thing, Hidden Shelter, Pocketknife, and then using Hunter's Instinct to recover Emergency Cache), so any extra source of resources is welcome. While Offering Bowl could be used on Izzie, 3 damage to access its full payout tends to be a bit too much.

Conclusions: Considering the Chapter 2 card pool, Favor of Baalshandor is often outclassed by other less situational resource generators for Marie (Offering Bowl) and Dexter (Out the Door and "Watch this!"), and so may be best suited to Mystic-focused Izzie decks which lack other straightforward resource economy options. The card still remains niche as there are only 7 eligible assets it can target in the Chapter 2 core + starters card pool, with more targets likely to be released as Chapter 2 progresses. Including it in a deck usually is a question of how badly you need any extra source of pseudo-resource economy (for Izzie, the answer is often pretty badly!).

On its surface this card looks like it makes Robes of Endless Night entirely obsolete—a mere 1 XP for a 1 cost card that does essentially the same thing but for rituals too, and a wild icon to boot? So good!

But the pretty space robes aren't entirely done for. Crucially, the effect on RoEN is an optional trigger, whereas Ceremonial Robes is always the first spell or ritual of the round. So if the first spell you need to cast is 0 cost, the effect is wasted. Not to mention the upgraded RoEN that lets you avoid AoO. And you might prefer the 2 damage soak over a split 1/1.

In short, Ceremonial Robes are very good, I would absolutely take them, but there could be cases where you'd still prefer more expensive Robes of Endless Night.

I'm not really sold on Marcus.

At first he seems like a great addition to any big money or big spender deck, since getting extra resource every upkeep is really powerful. With Stylish Coat on your back you would get yet another extra resource at the same time, what's not to like?

The problem is, he's most likely going to snuff it before he has even had time to pay for his cost. Unless you purposefully build your deck to protect your wealthy patron, he's only a two failed treachery card skill rolls away from a trip to the loony bin. The updated version can take a little bit more abuse, but that costs experience.

So in short he seems like a bit of a trap card. He fools you into bying him dinner, but bugs out before the check arrives. That said, I'm probably still going to try to run him on a purpose-built Jenny deck to try and see if I can keep him sane long enough to enjoy that sweet, sweet 4 (or 5 with Lone Wolf) recourses per upkeep. At least Jenny has a not-completely-terrible head of 3 on her shoulders so with a little bit of help from greasy palms she could manage to keep her benefactor from loosing his mind right away.

Chapter 2 review

Paint the Town Red is a resource economy card, and it also allows you to pull out enemies from the encounter deck (e.g. to fish for a victory point enemy). It's a Parley event so you can use it with an enemy engaged without an attack of opportunity (though why you'd want to I don't know). It also has a and icon, so it's somewhat useful to commit.

For me the only use case for this currently in Chapter 2 is Dexter, and only if you're just using the core box with no starter decks, and only if you're looking to target Bat Horror. Dexter's assets tend to be expensive, so extra resources are appreciated, and with the Bat Horror's 4 health you get 4 resources (and then as it's elusive you can shoo it with an attack action). This gives 2 resources per action spent vs. Emergency Cache's 3 (and even then, you need to not care about a Bat Horror running around for the remainder of the scenario...).

For most other 3 health enemies (Hellhound or Mutated Experiment) then you're then at 1.5 resources per action assuming you have Shadowmeld to get away from the enemy or upgraded Cosmic Flame to kill them in one - and even then I'd say keeping charges on these tends to be more valuable than netting 1 resource. Note for Rogue Gangster he will lose you a resource when he engages, so he's not a suitable target for this.

The resource tech in André's starter deck (e.g. Out the Door, "Watch this!"), or even Spiritual Charm from Marie's deck if thinking of Dexter, make this totally and utterly redundant for me.

Conclusions: Aside the very (very) niche use-case I described, this is one of the most binder fodder-worthy cards I've ever seen! Generally new enemies = bad, and you should not be trying to draw them without a stronger incentive (e.g. Stalk Prey is an example of a good incentive). Unless FFG give us more incentives to pull enemies out of the encounter deck in later campaigns then I just don't see a use for this, and even then usually enemies like this come out of the encounter deck sooner or later without help. Easily the worst card in Chapter 2 for me, and it's not even close!

Chapter 2 review

It appears 3 XP is the new benchmark for clue compression events outside the Seeker class, with other examples including Stakeout and Right Under Their Noses. For me, I don't actually mind this XP pricing - I think in Chapter 1 clue compression was by and large too easy (e.g. compare to 0 XP Read the Signs), so putting a sizeable XP price tag on compression is a nice balancing effect.

Even so, there's plenty of other cards Mystics want, so is this worth it with respect to the wider Chapter 2 card pool? To that I say... maybe. For one, it gives you a very good chance to crack a high shroud location by adding to for the investigation - and once you pass that test then you get two clues off the location. 2 resources doesn't seem too steep for this effect.

The extra "if" effect I see as icing on the cake, and there are some nasty new Hex (Langour) and Terror (Unspeakable Truths) treacheries in the core it can target (while also able to target relevant treachery weaknesses such as Pursued). There are enablers of this in the Mystic kit (e.g. Premonition, Sacrificial Doll, Mask of Silenus), with Premonition being the lowest effort of the three. I don't think you necessarily need to trigger this effect for Augur to worthy however.

In terms of close competition, there's upgraded Second Sight. I tend to find this a bit expensive for what it is, as it doesn't net you more clues than basic Second Sight. The benefit of Augur is it will actually make your Second Sight charges go further, so I'd say it's complementary. For synergy, there is Ritual Dagger - but as it shuffles the event back into your deck you need someone who can rattle through their deck quickly to make this work (e.g. Marie Lambeau).

Conclusions: It's worth consideration on Mystic decks focused on clue-finding, and/or for an event focused deck with Ritual Dagger. Otherwise, it's probably worth a miss on most decks (and it's not worth it at all on decks using the a wider legacy card pool).