Vicious Blow is an absolute staple card for anyone who wants to fight monsters (and has access to it). Dealing 1 extra damage is critical for dealing with 3-health enemies with a single attack from a standard 2-damage weapon.

This card will save you 1 action every time you commit it, assuming you hit. No frills.

See also Deduction.

This card is so essential in Stella they even gave her an upgrade for it.

When I’m playing as the postmaster, this is worth keeping in your opening hand unless you’re really driving hard for your chainsaw or an upgraded ally. One extra card for almost every turn of the game, and it’s especially fun when treacheries make you discard your hand. Even better paired with Labranche, to commit cards, get new ones, then get new ones.

This is a fine specialty card, but not a great general purpose card. The problem I have with this is that in general, the goal of Arkham Horror is to find a way to rarely fail skill checks, which means this card will rarely activate. Frequently failing skill checks is a good way to lose the game. Now, the cost of this card is fairly low, that isn't really the limiting factor. The limiting factor is that this costs an accessory slot, and there are many other good choices for that slot. I think this is a reasonable card for most characters to play if they weren’t planning on using the slot for anything else, but I tend to find that most characters have other things they really want in that accessory slot, and this item isn't really competitive with them.

If you have designed your deck to intentionally produce a lot of skill failures that will trigger this, Rabbit’s Foot is a fine specialty card to put in your deck.

Must-have card for Gloria. No action required, and Gloria can look 4 cards; all encounter cards drawn at next mytho phase can be checked and distributed even if 4 player game. (If she discard one, then she will check another by Alyssa or Scroll of Secrets.) If she trigger scrying for each round, you cannot meet any Ancient Evils at all! Of course, the number of charges is limited. However, Twila solves this. The remaining problem is taking horror. In my experience, whenever I trigger scrying by Gloria, I take 1 horror (except very few scenario).

There are a few differences between this and On the Lam:

Most obviously, "At the end of the round you may disengage from each engaged enemy and move up to 2 locations away" - so it is like a mini-Elusive, which is nice given that that card has been taboo'd. Two locations puts you out of the range of most hunters, and the enemies not attacking you means you can drag a LOT of enemies to an out of the way location, and then just jump 2 locations away. Nifty. Before taboo, I normally packed Elusive in Skids for exactly this sort of trick.

However, there is a timing change too; it's not "Play after your turn begins". This means you can now take an action and then play On the Lam. It also means you can mitigate a few treacheries with it too - Serpent's Ire or Deadly Fate are treacheries that have a test - so a player window in the Mythos phase - and failure results in enemies attacking you. On the Lam mitigates that effect (for non-Elites).

There is also a player window at the start of the Investigator phase, so if one of your "friends" is about to do something that would get you attacked... well, great.

In a pinch, there's even a window after Hunters move, so if you're suddenly surrounded in the enemy phase you can avoid all the attacks (and then move a couple of locations at the end of the round).

All in all this is a much more flexible version of the original On the Lam, and potentially a very useful "get-out-of-jail-free" card (kind of appropriate).

The big question is, is it worth Hospital Debts? In my opinion, yes; Hospital Debts (original) has been quite soft since Rogue started to get good economy cards. The biggest issue with Hospital Debts (new) is that it takes 3 turns to clear, so a late draw might be unclearable. But it's still not that bad a weakness - missing out on 2XP is annoying, but it's not like getting mental trauma.