While an excellent card to play for either of its effects, as with all reactive cards of this sort, you need to have this card in hand at the time your ally is discarded (and be able to play it). You also have to be at the correct location, if you are planning to use it on a friend.

...Except if you have A Chance Encounter. A cheap, level 0 card that lets you pull an ally from any discard pile, long after their untimely end, and put it into play, where it will either get defeated or self discard by the end of the round, unless you do something silly like bump it out with another ally.

Card draw is always useful, being able to resurrect an ally from your discard pile is great. But most survivors have access to the level 2 A Chance Encounter and Resourceful, so this benefit is not particularly special. Where this combo truly shines is in multiplayer, where you grab an ally from another player's discard pile, get to use it for one turn, and then either give that player 3 cards or their (preferably) high XP ally back. You can do this all the way across the map - there is no need to be anywhere near each other.

If you can force that ally to be discarded during your turn, that's even better because then the other investigator won't have to wait till the end of the round to get the bonuses. An investigator bogged down by enemies getting a quick infusion of cards, or another one on the brink of defeat suddenly receiving a soak in hand, are great tricks you can play with this combo.

Minh, Agnes, Patrice, Lola have unrestricted access to both cards, while Marie, Jim and possibly Mandy will have to burn one of their splash cards. You don't need both of them on a single investigator to pull this off, but it definitely helps.

This is a great card for helping to enable big money builds. Other people have said all the reasons that it is good. Only thing I would add is I wish for fluff reasons they had made the forced ability check for like 12 or 15 resources. After all how can a loan at 0% interest be unscrupulous?

You can loan to just "show" how rich you are walking around with the money, not having to worry about Exile consequence. For example, allowing investigators that can't pump money to hold The Black Fan or use Money Talks (2). (All provided in the same EotE pack.) Also kind of funny when they go brag around with money they just loaned and it works..

For beginners wanted to try this card without mathing out probabilities, see if your deck's starting cards are :

• Missing a few or even a single big, expensive piece, that would instantly make everything shines. (As opposed to missing multiple smaller pieces, that gradually adds up over multiple scenarios.)
• Depending on seeing your 1x signature card, which there may not be many search tools to get it.

If so, this card can be thought as early campaign upgrade booster just like Down the Rabbit Hole. That key card maybe so expensive (exceptional or not), probably right after the first scenario you can only purchase that one, it may not be enough to feel like you have changed the fate of your deck. It is until the 2nd or 3rd scenario that things started to finally click.

But with this card, you can really feel an impact of your big purchase early even if it is a single card added.

My solo Monterey Jack deck really needs Michael Leigh (high 5 XP cost) to make his whip deal a potent 3 damages, and there are other whip supporting tools available already. I am just waiting for this Michael Leigh guy.

After the 1st scenario I got 5 XP minimum and purchase Michael Leigh. I have been managed to consistently see this 1x copy of Michael Leigh before trouble comes and in turn it helps me get much more XP in the 2nd scenario onwards.

It may lose out an advantage compared to decks without it later on, like Down the Rabbit Hole. (Other decks gets better than you when they started purchasing 2x of leveled cards), but since you get good faster than others, you are already useful to the team to help them through early scenarios.

I've been playing through Edge as Mark with this on my Stick to the Plan while having Flamethrower as my big weapon. In that context I think the card is fairly good, being able to get a free engage so you can hit all your targets with Flamethrower is pretty nice, the card draw is cool too, and the extra damage gives absurd burst damage especially when combined with stuff like Beat Cop and either Vicious Blow. This is in a 4 player group with me being the main player tasked with creature control, so this is definitely a situation where that level of firepower can be sometimes needed. In this specific scenario it's fairly good, and since I got Stick to the Plan it both doesn't eat up a draw and delay my core assets like weapons and allies, while also being easily accessible whenever the situation where it's needed comes up.

If you aren't running Stick to the Plan and Flamethrower in a 4 player game where you're the big person expected to deal with all the enemies though, I'm not sure if this really cuts it outside of maybe a Nathaniel deck because he gets extra value out of the damage it deals. Most weapons work just fine if enemies are engaged with allies and if you're good at your job the risk of misfiring and harming an ally is fairly minimal to the point where I don't think it's worth spending a card on it, the xp extras are kinda nice but realistically I feel like you need to hit at least 2 enemies with it while also really needing the engage part of it to be useful too. That sort of situation won't be coming up regularly, and until then you spent 3 xp on a card that is just sitting in your hand not doing much. I feel like a lot of the time you'd just cash this card in quickly just to get something you need more immediately instead of waiting for the potential big value play which might never end up presenting itself. With this card on Stick to the Plan, you can wait for when you really need it because it's not taking up hand space or eating up a draw, and Flamethrower obviously cares a lot about being engaged with enemies rather than being able to hit them off your allies.