Split the Angle

As other reviewers have noted, this card pairs beautifully with Alyssa Graham. Basically, Alyssa lets you look at the top encounter card for free, but makes you pay a hefty price -- doom -- to get rid of it. Split the Angle makes you pay to peek -- an action -- but then discard what you saw mostly for free. Put the two together, and it's ALL free.

Commenters, however, have done what commenters do, and raised annoyingly rational objections. They point out that you only get one StA, so you might never find it at all, and if you do, there's no guarantee Alyssa is in play, etc. etc., doom and gloom. Unfortunately, they are right...

I think, in the end, StA takes a sweeping deckbuilding commitment to make it reliably good. Step one is including 2 copies of Alyssa Graham. As others have noted, you'll probably want to upgrade into level 3 Scrying. Scrying is especially handy in solo, because it gives you multiples turns of information about the encounter deck in a single use. Say you're solo-ing away, and in the tea leaves you find a pair of ancient evils and something relatively harmless. You can arrange them into an Evils-Meh-Evils sandwich; and use StA two turns in a row to discard the two slices of death-bread, drawing only the mild Meh in between (and something random) -- all for no actions at all. Of course, the downside here is that you are now using both your arcane slots on encounter-deck mining...

As long as you're investing in all these cards that let you burn through or optimally order the encounter deck, you may as well toss in Stargazing (you are an astronomer, after all...). You're much more likely to actually draw the The Stars Are Right if you can dig for it with Alyssa/StA/Scrying.

With 2 copies of Alyssa and 2 copies of level 3 Scrying, the odds are now pretty good that if you do manage to draw StA, you'll have something to pair it with. If you are absolutely determined to make this combination happen, Word of Command can help you find StA or Scrying, and Calling in Favors can help you track down a shy Alyssa.

By now, we're talking about quite a commitment! Is it worth it? Strategically, maybe not, but it might make for a fun thematic build. A prescient astronomer with occult leanings reading doom in the night skies -- and then somehow averting it by means of dubious geometry or an eldritch astrolabe -- that sounds pretty Arkham-y to me.

Correction: Split the Angle does not use up an arcane slot! Thus, you can have both it and Scrying in play, and still be packing heat as well. — Mordenlordgrandison · 456
Practice Makes Perfect

While Practice Makes Perfect has some good uses with combatants, I also wanted to point out that Mandy Thompson can use it to rather ludicrous effect. Using it on an arbitrary investigate can turn it into a single trigger where you can pick two of the most fitting cards to use out of a selection of cards including Deduction/Deduction (2) and Perception. This can turn a single card into both a boost and bonus clues or card draws over multiple tests. It only gets better depending on the secondary class picked - you can also branch into things like Enraptured with mystic access, or Momentum or Three Aces with rogue access.

The ability to improve Practice Makes Perfect from one draw/boost/bonus effect into two draws/boosts/bonus effects is immense, and given the symbols on many of those cards, it means she can throw it on pretty much any investigate action to get a lot of effective resources on top of a notable boost.

Ruduen · 1004
It can't actually search Eureka! Needs to be a Practiced card. Otherwise, you are quite right, Mandy can definitely make good use of this card. — WolfGeneral349 · 12
Whoops - somehow got that mixed up when looking over the Practiced card list. Fixed! — Ruduen · 1004
Is it optional to commit a suitable practiced skill card? I concider putting Daredevil in my Amanda deck with no other rouge skill to discard my deck. As Daredevil is a ? it could be the only fitting card so this effect would be triggered unintendedly. — Unterberg84 · 1
Read the Signs

What exactly does it mean "which would trigger during the investigation"? Things like Haunted are included? Location effects like "When you discover the last clues at this location: ..." ? Does this card automatically make blank the text on a location?

Goro87 · 1
Yes, exactly that. Although you can choose whether or not that happens. — Sassenach · 179
Hola, se pueden asignar iconos de Voluntad a la prueba? O únicamente se tiene en cuenta el valor básico de Voluntad Oda sumar al valor de intelecto? Gracias — PepeGepé · 2
Preposterous Sketches

I'm surprised this hasn't come up yet on this page, but put 2x of this in your Joe Diamond Hunch deck, and you basically added 4xp to your deck, as you will get the effect of playing Preposterous Sketches2 because of Joe's Hunch discount!

Soloclue · 2604
Summoned Hound

This cards makes me instantly think of Inspiring Presence. Inspiring Presence allows you to reset the dog immediately after using it. Inspiring Presence conveniently has both and icons so it can be used for either test.

There's currently 4 investigators that can take advantage of this combo:

flamebreak · 19
Can another player use "You Owe Me One!" to play the Hound from my hand under their control, without the beast getting added to their deck? I assume that works since they don't have the beast in *their* bonded cards. It's a bit silly. — iguanaDitty · 5
Good idea, but no. You are still playing the card so you must search your bonded cards for the beast. If you don't have it there (likely, as this was the idea) then you can't pay the costs so you can't play the card. — vidinufi · 69
Ah gotcha. Thanks! — iguanaDitty · 5
Theoretically Lola can do it, but technically not really. - You use the beast - switch role to guardian - use inspiring presence - and you have to switch back to mystic to use it again. As this means 2 role switch you can only do it with improvisation, and unless you want to play a mystic card it would a waste. So if the stars align you can do it. — vidinufi · 69