Sadly, this card is mostly useless at the moment. I played it through a campaign as William Yorrick with a chainsaw - which seemed like about the best-case scenario for dealing the excess damage. But even after playing it many many times, I still almost never managed to get a single resource on the card.

In order to deal even 1 excess damage, you usually need to spend something that's worth more than 1 resource - like commiting a Vicious Blow, or wasting precious Chainsaw ammo on a weak enemy. The reward just isn't worth the cost, especially when you compare it to Emergency Cache.

All hope is not lost, though. I personally hope that we will see more cards to support this "Overkill" archetype in future. With more ways to overkill enemies, and more rewards for doing so, this could become a really fun playstyle. Perhaps someday there could even be a guardian who focuses entirely on overkilling enemies for big rewards. This could eventually redeem this card, in the same way that Winifred Habbamock finally redeemed Opportunist.

If that day ever comes, I will be incredibly excited to take this card out of the binder.

Contrary to the other reviews here, I do think this card is quite good.

There are maybe ~18 rounds average on the doom clock in Arkham.

• If your investigator has soak/healing (Tommy, Carolyn, etc) you can use it to straight cancel 2-3 of the worst treacheries you draw (~1/6th of your total in a game!), and transfer some more into random ones (using the 'remove corruption' option, depending on just how much soak/heal you have)
• If your investigator doesn't have soak/healing, you can still use it to cancel 3 bad treacheries and take a random one later (in any fast action window!)
• It makes you more resilient to unfortunate game states, and allows you to maximise your chances:
  • You pull something and have no skill cards in hand (wait until you have a hand, then draw one & heal)
  • You can choose to pull the 'instead' encounter card(s) when grouped up with the team so they can commit if necessary
• You can effectively use it to transfer damage/horror between your investigator card and your allies
• It can save your life — there'll be a fair few occasions when a treachery you draw will do worse than 1-1 to you
• It can buy you extra rounds of the game, in scenarios where Ancient Evils and other 'add doom/can cause agenda to advance' effects are in the encounter deck
• Calvin can use it to take damage/horror quickly and then heal a bit for a fast action when necessary (bonus: I believe the treachery you draw will be tested at your higher stats - i.e. before healing - because it's part of the cost)

TL;DR is bad encounter deck pulls at the wrong time is the easiest way to tank a scenario (possibly the only way for a lot of us), and something most investigators don't really have much say over... at least until now (neutral, asset with uses). Straight cancelling is super powerful if you can afford the cost here, and if not then transferring a bad treachery for a random one at a time of your choosing is also strong. It's expensive, but worth a look.

This card is soo good! If you dont have more than 6-8 skills in your deck with Deduction beeing one of them you have a HIGH chance of getting both attached.

This will be one of the first cards to purchase with Minh Thi Phan. Using skills like: Deduction x2, Sharp Vision x2, Resourceful x2 and Beloved to get alot of extra value out of this card.

This is a perfect weapon against retaliate enemies, as retaliate enemies can only attack back if they are ready. Great if you have way too many enemies on you as well, as you can evade the first enemy to fight the next enemy. Then evade another one to fight the 4th something.

I have learned that just having an infinite +2/+1 attack on tap is already one of the best things you can manage. For most Guardians, at least on normal, it means you fight at 6 and can reasonably hit most things without other setup. It is also nice to be able to run other cards besides Beat Cop and Ace of Swords. In this sense, the first ability compares favorably to Timeworn Brand. Now, this does take an extra hand slot, but does cost one fewer resource. So how does the second ability compare?

First off, the second ability is repeatable this time, though requires bless tokens and some usage of the first ability to get it off. +4/+2 is pretty good for just being able to lay the hurt into most things, and if you have some sort of plus 1 damage ability, whether through beat cop, Vicious Blow, or Enchant Weapon, you can whack a 4 health enemy pretty reliably. I would say I prefer the flexibility over the Brand.

So, is this worth running? If you are already running Bless, absolutely! The question is more, is it worth running bless to get access to this weapon? I would say, maybe... It probably isn't as good as Flamethrower, but that has to run its own support suite to be repeatable. I don't think you're going to ruin your game though if you go for this. If you want to force bless tokens just to get the spear, I'd say go for it! Guardian doesn't have great ways to get the tokens into the bag though, so you might need some help, and as always, check with your group to see if they are on board with it. But ultimately, I am glad there is another viable high-end option for using violence as the solution to all problems.