I am excited to try this card in a Dark Horse deck. It is another event that can get you up from 0 to a lot at the start of the turn, to then be able to play some important assets or dump money into a Fire Axe or the new Mariner's Compass.

Many people will compare this card to the Rotting Remains card from the Core Set. However, a veteran player will readily notice there a few subtle differences.

The first difference of course is that the card doesn't come from the Core Set, but rather from the Blood On The Altar Mythos pack. This means that it will has a different encounter set icon , cycle set icon on the bottom, and different numbers. You will note that this doesn't have impact on the gameplay though, although it might become important in the setup and teardown phase. Putting a card away in the wrong encounter set is annoying, and is known to cause severe mental trauma.

The other difference is in the flair text. While the Core Set Rotting Remains has the text firmly split by the sentence, the Blood On The Altar version decides to shake things up by putting the words "You're" in the first row. This ups the ante significantly, since while reading the flair text you are effectively left with a blood curling cliffhanger referencing directly you, and it only gets resolved when you finally reach the second row, allowing you to breathe a sigh of relief.

Overall, a nice change and a fine improvement on the original design. Good work FFG.

I’ve played this game for a hell of a long time with many many different people, and nobody seems to pick Marie Lambeau.

Maybe she’s not designed for multiplayer; the risk/reward ratio for her as much different. Solo, risking an extra doom might lose your three actions to gain an additional one every turn; in a group, the trade-off is one action for 12.

It’s also because there aren't lot of cards that let you manipulate doom; Arcane initiate, Alyssa Graham, David Renfield, blood pact, and De Vermis Mysteriis. With the latter, you get tons of event compression; one action from the book turns into two.

She’s also a 4/4/1/3 Mystic with a tremendous weakness. She loses an ally slot, and amplifies damage for several turns while adding doom to the board.

Still, with access to spells instead of Mystic cards specifically, she gets some oddities from other classes. Blood eclipse or arcane insight, feed the mind for card draw, Alter fate and suggestion, but as of press time, there are 18 non-mystic spells in the game out of almost 100 spell cards.

The only place Marie might fit is in dream eaters A, where doom totals can reach the double digits without advancing the agenda. Perhaps with more doom cards, but even after six expansions, Marie is still best as a solo act.

What a lovely Goldilocks version of this evasion classic! I take the Level 0 version of this card in most of my mystic decks, but I'm rarely willing to shell out 4xp to upgrade it, even though the Level 4 of this card is bonkers good with its +3 to .

But I think I'd pony up for the grande Mists more often than not. That +1 puts most investigators at a comfortable 5 or 6 on the check, and five charges is just as good as the venti version. For me, this card falls right in the sweet spot between the other two. And, as an additional advantage, it can be taken by off-class mystics like Daisy Walker and Sister Mary. Those investigators sometimes have 's too low for the base Mists to be a good idea, but this mini-upgrade could change that calculation. For example, I could see this in a Daisy deck, especially one with a static boost somewhere in the form of Whitton Greene or Holy Rosary.

I want to build on the conclusions of @Tsuruki23 below: "You can teck this like a silver-bullet against scenarios that you know involve heavy backtracking or back and forths." It's very true -- in a generic scenario, in which you're simply using the Atlas for mobility, it's a mediocre card. Basically, you're paying 5 actions, three resources, and a 2xp card for 12 moves -- and that's if you manage to use all four secrets. But in certain scenarios, it's a godsend. I'll give four examples. Don't read this review if you want to avoid spoilers!

"The House Always Wins": That title has been quite true in my experience, until the Atlas came along. When you play this scenario second, you're faced, late in the game, with an almost impossible task. In very short order, you have to get to a locations three spaces away, parley with some fool, and then get to the exit, which is three more spaces away. In between are likely to be a gauntlet of enemies, guarding a pair of locations that form a bottleneck. The final agenda is likely to be running out, and even if it isn't, you only have a few turns to rescue your target before the Bubblebath from Hell squelches him to death. The Atlas lets you helicopter over ALL that. It doesn't just save you two moves; it saves you any number of fight and evade checks, and quite likely a bunch of damage and horror, too. Once you pick up your man, you can medivac him out of there with similar ease.

"Doom of Eztli": After you yield to your inner Indiana Jones and snag the shiny artifact at the center of the temple, you'll be faced with a tall order -- navigating back through the temple, which now forms a continuous, snake-filled tunnel. You can try to hack your way through it all, or... you can pogo-stick along with the Atlas. You can probably be home free in a single turn, with two bounces and a resign. And since you don't have to teleport EXACTLY three spaces away, you can just land on the empty locations and bound over the crowded ones.

"At Death's Doorstep": The Meiger party is a relatively tame affair until the Watcher and his spectral crew crash it. Timing your getaway can be difficult -- since you want to wait until you've rescued at least as many Lodge minions as the Watcher has dementor-kissed. If you have the Atlas in hand, you can resign in two actions from literally anywhere on the board -- one to hop to the exit, the other to resign. And if you still need to bounce around the map a bit for clues or anything else, the Atlas will help you do so while avoiding the Watcher.

"The Wages of Sin": This is one of the few scenarios in which all locations are always revealed. That means that from turn 1, The Atlas gives you exceptional mobility. You'll want it. It's a grueling, miserable, scenario that has you trekking back and forth across map, often while lugging a bagged witch who's casting curses on you every step of the way (if you've played it, you know what I mean).

I could go on and on! The general point is that every campaign has some scenarios that involve back-tracking and racing to the exit, and others that are more or less a forward march (think Essex County Express). I would recommend snagging the Atlas only for campaigns you know, and then only if you think the scenarios in which it's useful would be dicey otherwise. For instance, the Atlas is very helpful in "Doom of Eztli" and "At Death's Doorstep," but most players can handle those scenarios without special tricks. "The House Always Wins" (as scenario 2) and "The Wages of Sin," on the other hand, are downright brutal scenarios, and there the Atlas can have a huge impact on your odds of a good outcome.