The early reviews of this card bury the lede: TOKEN MANIPULATION FOR GUARDIANS IS FINALLY HERE!

Re-drawing a bad token is an incredibly powerful. And being on a skill card instead of an event means that it's a no-action effect. For a single experience point you get all of that plus an extra point of damage. Furthermore, it can stack with Vicious Blow, not just replace it.

In order to re-draw you need only accept some damage. Given the lopsided stats of all the serious fighters, this is a small price for the usual suspects like Roland, Zoey, Mark, Yorick, Leo, Joe, Tommy, Tony, Nate, Silas, Vincent, and Hank. The only investigators who miss out due to faction restrictions are Rita and Daniela, both of whom would love this tech. As consolation they can try out the new Long Shot...

Verdict: it's really important that if you're engaged in an important combat and committing cards for extra damage that you actually hit the enemy. And this card makes that a near certainty. Instant staple.

I’m calling “bullocks” on that decision to apply crack the case between step 7 and step 8 of the skill test. Applying crack the case after that skill test ends should be considered immediately after getting the clues. That’s bogus that flashlight, old keyring, etc. punish this card. I’m not buying it. Is that even an official ruling?

"Any skill tests you perform nested within a parley action have their difficulty reduced by 2, too." (from the FAQ)

Banger.

Of course, cards with an inherent Parley. (Stall for Time, Hold Up, False Surrender, etc.) are already fine with the clothes, but can we take it one step further? If we really wanted to get the most out of this card, what could it look like?

Let's see: In my opinion there is a general way to approach this, with the possibility to specialize towards a few directions, with the general way being:

1) Perform a Parley. skill test.

2) Use a player window during the skill test to play a fast event or trigger a free triggered ability.

3) Profit.

Ad 1): There are quite a lot of them scattered across scenarios, but to consistently trigger this step, I would recommend something like Bianca "Die Katz" or Beguile. Alternatively (or if you are Alessandra Zorzi anyway), a vast array of Parley. events will cover you aswell.

Ad 2): I'll start with this: Using this combo saves you 3 XP per copy of Chuck Fergus. And this is already how we relentlessly squeeze our Tactic./Trick. events into these fine player windows, getting a sweet -2 difficulty for each of them. This is already great, since it can get the difficulty down to 0 and almost guarantee we did not waste our precious event, but also additionally play into an oversucceed type of deck.

Just looking at Tactic. events, I claim they offer a lot:

• Play cards of the Winging It suite to further benefit from the difficulty reduction, zeroeing a shroud 5 location with Flashlight (or a 7 with two of them) -> best suited for Preston, I suppose.

• Open up endless possibilities with Pushed to the Limit or Task Force.

• Perform even more skill tests with reduced difficulty on cards like Flurry of Blows, One-Two Punch, or Butterfly Swords (if combined with the previous bullet point).

I would love to think Fence works similar here, but there is only one useful event I found: Dirty Deeds.

If you want to play this a bit more simple (i.e. without extra combo pieces like Chuck Fergus), just trigger free abilities on cards like Eon Chart, Garrote Wire, Close the Circle, etc. to make them easier.

To delve deeper into the difficulty-zero playstyle Stealth is a great enabler for nun-Hunter enemies or a follow-up with Exploit Weakness.

Let me know what I missed ;)

This card is an absolute beast. Especially on Zoey because that's suddenly a guarantee (like if you are making Fighter guardian, you WILL kill enemy) 4 resources thanks to her ability. No resources spent, no actions spent, and you avoid some mean treachery. It only costs a card slot.

My Zoey first goes 2x On The Hunt + 2x Emergency Cache and once I upgrade On The Hunt to (3), both Emergency Chance can be swapped for some other good cards since you are covered when it comes to resources.

It's also Tactic so if you are playing Stick to The Plan build it can be attached at start. Hell, if you are making some really resource heavy Guardian deck, 2x On The Hunt (3), 2x Emergency Cache and you can start with OTH(3) and EC in your STTP, having easy 6-7 (if Zoey) resource access.

10/10 card. Guardians don't have that many amazing 10/10 cards but this one takes my personal vote as one of them.

This weapon is really efficent in the most of the investigators that can run it. It's so easy to compensate the extra damage and the possibility to pass the weapon to other players is very fun. But i have a stupid question about this weapon : If the attack miss, i lose the control of the Hatchet or not?