This card and its other versions are solid, but it feels like 5XP is too much, also it should probably be fast (edit:it is but the fast keyword is kinda hidden there amidst all the text). Still, it is a good effect if you have the Arcane slot to spare and the XP to spend if you are playing an investigator that doesn't already have access to treachery cancelation effects, I dunno if any who can play this fits the bill.

This card seems useful for all of those times when you have a Gatling Gun, a few extra resources, and a lot of... "Friends" that need to be taught a lesson in civility.

A one ? skill is kind of blah, but for a single resource it get +200% better. That is money well spent.

This seems like a niche card that’s better for solo players and lower difficulties. That is my review.

What’s left are rules questions, because I find this card ambiguous. Does “Immediately Fight or Evade that enemy” allow the investigator using this card to activate an asset such as Blur or play an event such as Spectral Razor? Or does it presume a basic action of the relevant type? If it allows assets and events, I assume it saves exactly one action cost? Like from the Sledgehammer? And if you’re Frozen in Fear or otherwise can’t afford additional action costs of your desired swing, you presumably couldn’t do it?

One of the best arts in the game, sadly the card in very underwhelming, having your base stat be equal to the shroud of the place is not at all a good thing, it can help you if you are a 1-2 foot investigator or a 1-2 fist investigator but it is still not good, and you need to seal a good token to keep it "armed". There are many way better ways to deal with enemies in the rogue class even for gators with low foot or fist.

Even if this card worked the way that the designers clearly wanted it to, it seems overly specific. There's only one archetype that cares about succeeding by specific numbers - Exact Number Seeker. Oversuccess Rogues might have this competing acting as three boosts, and they'll usually have Savant filling that role if they aren't already pumping the number in other ways. For everybody else, good old Unexpected Courage exists and works better for their cases.

So, this is only useful in a specific archetype (and lucky for that archetype, most of the time the deck building restriction is going to match). Is it going to get a lot of mileage? That's somewhat limited. Innate isn't a particularly useful keyword - it combos with True Survivor, which could be helpful for Darrell Simmons, but that's pretty much it. (Darrel and Alton O'Connell could make for an amusing duo, though.) It also only boosts a single use, meaning it's not going to go as far or be as flexible as tools like Artistic Inspiration, which can act as mini-Lucky! on demand, or Steady-Handed, which can incidentally heal horror as well. And out of the cards that care about exact numbers, the more impactful ones (Chemistry Set or Antikythera) already have successful results within a range of two numbers - which means you really don't need to tune that much. Sure, this could help enable Alton O'Connell or Dr. Charles West III - but spending XP just to enable them once seems like a stretch to me.

This isn't bad, but it's fairly low down the list of exact skill enablers - there are better options before then. And once you have those in play, I don't think you need this. Unless you're really eager to see Carson Sinclair use a Katana, this falls a step behind for its XP cost.