This card is an obvious combo with anyone who can take Chuck the O’Bannion. But it’s come into vogue for an investigator who takes more Tricks than gin rummy.

Pilfer isn’t just “get clues with agility”, it’s “get a lot clues with agility.” And while Rita could take it before, she didn’t have the economy to make it happen…until Crafty came along. With Crafty, and some combination of drawing thin, easy mark, or even another Crafty, you can play this* every turn. The flexibility of going from boss evader and map explorer to second seeker is wild.

Things like live and learn, “hit me!”, heavy furs and lucky(3) can make sure you meet the success by +2 threshold. Survivor blessed tech will also help a lot. It's a new day for multiplayer Rita. A day filled with pilfering.

*Level 3

As existing reviews point out, it's relatively difficult to get value from Bruiser, because few investigators that repeatedly play Armor, Firearm, or Melee cards, relegating the main use case of this to act as a pseudo-static boost on fight checks. It works fine for that purpose, though it's a little overpriced for it.

But there are quite a few investigators who would go quite far with the discount. Allow me to highlight some of them:

• Silas Marsh can now return the Sea Change Harpoon to hand every round if he wants to, returning a whole bunch of skills to hand each round
• Tony Morgan can cycling through his Tony's .38 Long Colts, Luparas, and .41 Derringers, and would love to be more reliable oversucceeding on his Switchblade.
• Tommy Muldoon could repeatedly play Protective Gear in a hazardous campaign
• Yorick could repeatly play the new Fire Extinguisher (3) from the discard to easily automatically evade large groups, or just juggle the Chainsaw. Even repeatedly replaying the Gravedigger's Shovel feels much better if said shovel were free. Ice Picks are Melee too! There's quite a few good options here.

I think Rita Young might really favor this card as well. This really supports Pilfer in the absence of Chuck Fergus. Plus Tool coverage is nothing to be scoff at for Survivors (Ice Pick, Chainsaw, Old Keyring, Lantern, Sledgehammer, Fire Extinguisher etc)

A major improvement from the original composure set. The new composures included in End of the Earth are, in my opinion, auto includes. 2 constant stat boosts, 0 cost, soak, slotless, a way to spend resources you don't need, and to top it all off it doesn't even cost an action to play. All you need is a way to find it in your deck, and as long as you can protect that 1 damage/horror that will send it to your discard then it can stay in play all game, easier said for Survivors probably. Much like the original versions, I personally think moxie and Plucky are two of the stronger ones as they help protect against treacheries and can help with monsters/clues respectively. Rogues really can get a lot of treachery protection out of moxie especially if you can generate a lot of resources (and which rogue can't). And honestly, who doesn't love the art for this card? Save the puppy!

Emergency Aid and Logical Reasoning seem like good benchmarks for healing events. They both cost 2 resources, and they both heal for 2. Meditative Trance has the same printed cost, but will only heal for 2 if both of your arcane slots are filled, which in the end costs more resources, cards, and actions. In a vacuum, definitely not worth it.

Of course, you're not filling your arcane slots purely for the sake of getting this card online--arcane assets do useful things too, and odds are if you're running this card you're also running Dragon Pole. We run into the same issue here as we do with the staff: cards that depend on other cards being in play to be strong are questionable in their utility and efficiency. However, as a healing card you'll be more likely to play it later on in the game anyhow, at which point hopefully you'll have your slots filled. On the other hand, theoretically if your assets are fully set up that means the game is probably going well, meaning you may not need healing.

In addition to the obvious, there are a few not-so-obvious things that make it even less appealing:

• You can only target yourself. This limitation dramatically nerfs the usability in comparison to other healing effects.
• Despite being a event, Meditative Trance is not a Spell. There are several interactions which may be taken for granted that simply don't work with this card.

However:

• Unlike Emergency Aid and Logical Reasoning, the healing itself is flexible! This somewhat makes up for the fact that you can only play it on yourself. Maybe you can run it with Solemn Vow and such.
• Breaking the limits and having more than 2 arcane slots filled takes you into value town. Even just having 3 (from the additional slot you get with Dragon Pole) is pretty good. I'd caution against just taking a bunch of cards that increase your slots, but like the pole if you push it, the effect becomes massively strong (albeit increasingly impractical). I'd probably stop at 5, but if you want to make a deck that allows you to heal 11 damage/horror at once, no one is stopping you.
• Lack of the Spell trait locks out some good combos, but Insight and Spirit have some okay stuff going on! De Vermis Mysteriis and Prophetic still work, Crafty and Boxing Gloves are there I guess, Calvin Wright can take it but shouldn't, Cryptic Grimoire and Eidetic Memory might be good.

Overall, I'd say this card is only worth considering if you're building a Dragon Pole deck and really chugging your arcane slots accordingly. I'd still like to see more support for this deck archetype as it doesn't really seem all that practical especially at higher XP level play, it's just such a cool effect that as of now takes too long to set up and has fairly meager returns for its considerable expenses.