Pros

• Becomes flexible in the later game when you have a choice of skill to pick from your teammates discards
• Becomes more powerful as your teammates gain XP and upgrade their skills
• Provides some pseudo recursion to your teammates
• Triggers Winifred Habbamock's draw ability

Cons

• XP expensive in a class with lots of card competition for XP
• Not great in the early turns as there won't be much in your teammates discard pile
• Only usable in multiplayer (otherwise Unexpected Courage is a strict upgrade)

Obviously it's only good in mulltiplayer and you'll want at least one of your teammates to be running some good skills. Generally though I haven't found that to be a problem, there are plenty of good skills out there and even pulling out an Unexpected Courage nets you a boost.

Ideal targets are in Seeker with:

• Deduction (2)
• The Eye of Truth

and Guardian with:

• Vicious Blow (2)
• Leadership (2)

And not only do you get the benefit but goes back in their deck to redraw so between you and your teammate it's perfectly possible to play a single Deduction (2) 3 times per deck rotation.

The main downside is the XP cost which is prohibitive in Rogue with so many powerful cards to spend their XP on.

Conclusion

If you're Winifred Habbamock and one or more of your teammates has relevant skills I highly recommend including this card, it's both powerful and great fun to play!

If you're a different Rogue investigator it will still be good if your teammates have high impact skills but you'll have to carefully consider the XP cost vs other potential upgrades.

Hatchet Man synergizes with:

• .25 Automatic (0)
• Delilah O'Rourke (3)
• Sneak Attack (0)
• Sneak Attack (2)
• Cheap Shot (2)

If you build around some of these cards Hatchet Man can be worthwhile.

However, unless you build quite hard around it most of the time I don't think this card is worth the slot in your deck. Situations in which you want to evade first and then do damage just aren't common enough and you'll often have this card sitting in your hand for a while before you can get a chance to play it.

If you've got a weapon out or damage card available you're usually just going to use it to attempt kill the enemy off. If you don't have a weapon or damage card that can deal with an enemy you're more likely going to want to move away or seek alternative solutions after evading.

I think this card deserved another symbol so it was more playable even if you weren't going to get value from the text and you'd more easily consider it over a Manual Dexterity. As it stands you need to be playing the combo cards to make this worthwhile

The basics

Who can use this

• All Rogues
• Dexter Drake
• Leo Anderson
• Wendy Adams
• Father Mateo
• Ursula Downs
• Lola Hayes

Pros

• 2 powerful effects
• Unlimited uses
• Cheap to play (2 resources)

Cons

• Uses a hand slot, which is highly contested in many investigators
• Exceptional so you can only play 1
• Can't be used for tests in the mythos phase
• 4xp when there's lots of competition for xp in Rogues

Should you take for the base skill value 5 effect alone?

Every turn for no cost you get a skill test on your turn at base 5! That will often amount to a minimum of an Unexpected Courage on a secondary stat, and even boosting a primary stat from 4 to 5 isn't terrible.

Even in a highly specialised investigator who already has a base 5 in their core stat regularly is required to take tests that they don't excel at, e.g.

• Treachery card tests in your threat area
• Tests on locations or when advancing acts
• Parlays
• Basic evade/investigate action (still generally useful even if your deck isn't built around them)
• Basic fight action (though usually less useful without support cards to deal extra damage)

If you start to build around the effect then it only becomes better. It's powerful, flexible, cheap and requires a little build around to be good.

So most investigators would want the effect but should they all take this? No, the biggest downside is that it takes up a hand slot, and for most investigators that can take this hand slots are in short supply, especially for primary fighters they're often taken up with weapons.

However for the investigators that can often spare a hand slot and have weak stats or weak secondary stats this card is already looking very appealing. The most obvious candidates that fulfill these critera are Dexter Drake, Jenny Barnes and of course Preston Fairmont.

OK for all investigators. Excellent For these investigators with poor stats and free hand slots.

Should you take for the bless / curse effect?

OK, so for some investigators the base 5 effect is great, for others it's merely OK. But we've not considered 2/3 of the text on the card yet... so let's do that!

If you're starting Dunwich on standard you'll have 15 tokens in the bag. Then if you've stuffed the bag full of blesses and curses you have:

• 10/35 or 28.5% chance of gaining another base 5 skill test
• 10/35 or 28.5% chance of gaining another action

That's over a 50% chance of getting another powerful effect, and sometimes you'll get both!

In class Rogues can either generate curse tokens with:

• Ríastrad
• Faustian Bargain

can generate bless token with

• Priest of Two Faiths

or can generate both simultaneously with the neutral:

• Tempt Fate (neutral)

If you are considering taking these cards anyway then great, but they are unlikely to be worth taking to solely to trigger the bonus effect on Djinn alone. If you or your teammates are already planning to fill up the bag with with bless and/or curse tokens anyway then the effect from the Djinn is a strong bonus.

OK if you're only taking / generation for this effect. Excellent if you already have / generation.

What if we get full value out of it?

Lets put this card in Preston Fairmont where:

1. Hand slots are not highly contested
2. For Preston a base 5 is +4 boost in any skill
3. Survivor secondary gives incredible cards

Now combo alongside Favor of the Sun and some bless generation and now we get:

• 1 test each turn at base 7
• 1 subsequent test each turn at base 5

that's 5 unexpected courages every turn!

Now add in Ancient Covenant and we get:

• 1 testless action at base 7
• 1 subsequent test each turn at base 5

that's 1 will to survive + 5 unexpected courages every turn!!

Even if your Preston Fairmont deck is completely built around buying your way through the game and skipping the chaos bag all together you're still regularly going to be able to find uses for this effect. As well as all the basic actions and encounter card tests mentioned earliey you can start using your base 5 on tests on impactful event cards such as Pilfer or Backstab even though otherwise you wouldn't have the base stats to support them.

Combos with Favor of the Moon are also possible to reliably trigger extra actions which is also strong, but ensuring a testless action is the most powerful. This is because in Rogue you also have a vast array of sucess and over success mechanics. As you've got a testless action each turn at base 7 you can commit all your over success cards with completely certainty of the result. You can trigger Quick Thinking, "Watch this!", Lucky Cigarette Case etc. for huge (and 100% safe) combo plays. See my Preston decklist for an example of what's possible from just 8xp.

The combo in Preston Fairmont of Eye of the Djinn + Favor of the Sun + Ancient Covenant is absolutely broken and triviliazes the game even on expert.

Summary

• OK in all investigators but unlikely to make the cut for a hand slot in most
• Excellent in low stat investigators with low hand slot competition - notably Dexter Drake, Jenny Barnes
• Incredible if also you or your team already has / generation
• Broken in Preston Fairmont if you build around it

Wendy Adams can easily ruin the game from scenario 2 with FOUR EXP. 1XP for 3* easy mark and 3XP for this card. Assuming you get two keep faith and an easy mark in your hand at the start of your round, and your deck consists of 2 easy marks on top and a watchful peace at bottom. Your amulet is in play. This situation can easily be reached by drawing 3 cards per round, and discard everything else at upkeep phase. The you rearrange your deck with your amulet when it's almost empty.

Action 0: Spend 4 resources, place both keep faith on the bottom, add 8 bless. Action 1: Play easy mark, get 6 resource and draw a peaceful watch, while placing 3 easy marks on the bottom. Action 2&3: Draw two cards, both being keep faith. Upkeep: Draw one card, which is easy mark. Mythos phase: Play a peaceful watch, and now your hand and deck is identical to the previous round, so you just loop forever. Plus: You can do something else if you get more actions from Leo or Haste, and more resources and cards from DT and take heart.

In fact, this card is rarely used in our group because it destroys the fun of playing AHLCG. The game is boring when you break it. This deck also requires no thinking at all while playing. Just drawing drawing and drawing and then looping looping and looping.

The ultimate boring game is to combine a Wendy skipping every encounter cards to a Baker removing every doom. That gives everyone else infinite actions and resources, lol.

A signature weakness tailored to the investigator. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Draw a card from underneath Gloria and play it as a peril and with disadvantages to dealing with it. Considering that you are unlikely to put cards under Gloria unless you have Ruth Westmacott in play (and that will require Charisma, since Alyssa Graham is so much better), this is almost certainly a dead draw, unless you are trying to keep encounter cards from a reshuffle.

The discard condition: Have it trigger an affect when drawn. Otherwise, it is getting shuffled back to provided more dead draw.

All in all, this is a way below average signature weakness, more annoying than dangerous.