Jim Culver

Jim Culver

Do not leave home without Alyssa Graham. On top of being sanity soak for the stupid amount of horror that Jim's own deck throws at him, her ability works on "any player deck". That is to say, she can look for and discard Vengeful Shade before it even comes out. Even if you can't clear the doom in time, it's probably preferable to spawning the shade.

CombStranger · 267
I'm not not sure if one doom is beter than dealing with the shade itself, which is just 2 health and you can deal with it without testing against it's 5 combat. But I like the idea of using Alyssa as a basis for your/other's deck (though she doesn't discard the card, but put it in the bottom of the deck). The strategy to handle with the doom must be there, aside from reaching the 5 allies threshold. — joster · 40

Fine Clothes

Fine Clothes

With the release of Hemlock Vale and the influx of good parley cards, this has been transformed from a hopelessly conditional card to enabler of an entire archetype. Obviously, Alessandra Zorzi plays 2 of this card in every deck, but any rogue can use the parley suite to decent success - Trish in particular loves tools like Existential Riddle. Bianca becomes much more forgiving, Drain Essence can remove a small enemy while healing you, and resolving an entire Vamp for free is always fun. Perhaps most importantly, anyone wanting to run the newly-taboo'd Power Word now needs the proper outfit to command their ghoul army. On top of all that, it will still help you with everything it used to - recruiting Lita, rescuing your friends, trivialising The Last King etc. Expect to see much more silk in investigators' arsenals from now on.

beenary · 3
Trivialising The Last King? They TELL YOU to wear nice clothes! — MrGoldbee · 1464
I hesitate to call it "hopelessly conditional." At worst, Fine Clothes serves as 1 cost 1/1 soak. — NightgauntTaxiService · 418
This card influences the design of other cards a lot. If they don't want the Parley test to be near-testless with FC, they have to raise the difficulty to 3. I would say, without FC, the printed difficulty of cards like "Pesuasion", "Interrogate", "Vamp" (0) or the taboo'd "Power Word" would be 1 or 2. — Susumu · 367

Pelt Shipment

Pelt Shipment

How this card interact with a backpack? Its a supply card so it can be attached to backpack... however as it has no cost, it cannot be played. I guess i cannot just draw that card from a backpack (for a action) right ať the end of the game... and cards in the backpack are not considered to be in the hand...

BaranJerevan · 2
You are right. You would have to get rid of Backpack first and then fetch Pelt Shipment from your discard pile (which is not that hard with certain cards). — AlderSign · 300
Or You can simply don't put Pelt Shipment under backpack from its research and draw it "manually"!! :-) — Piegura · 1
As AlderSign says, attaching it is usually sadness. As Piegura says, you can always not attach it. But beware, the rules say that when searching for one or more things, you have to find something if there is something ot be found. So if a Pelt Shipment is the only legal candidate you see, to put in your backpack, you must put it there. — RichardPlunkett · 12

Lifeline

Lifeline

You would be surprised about how many cards end your turn in this game.

As long as you failed at least one skill test during your turn, you essentially say "Nope!" when the game really wants you to not be able to do anything anymore. This gets especially laughable when the "end your turn" effect comes from a failed skill test (and even for only that one action it's worth playing Lifeline, because giving the scenario the finger is always a good thing).

AlderSign · 300
This doesn't actually work unfortunately. Since it doesn't cancel or substitute an effect that would end your turn, it really does only work when your turn would end due to running out of actions. — SSW · 213
According to this I'd say it works, because the additional actions happen before the effect of ending your turn affects the game state: https://arkhamdb.com/rules#When — AlderSign · 300
This might be a situation where if the card says "immediately end your turn", vs "end your turn". So playing a "Let God Sort Them Out" wouldn't work with this card, but nearly getting strangled by an Apex Strangleweed is fine. — techoatmeal · 15

Act of Desperation