I think Dexter is the strongest Mystic investigator yet. His power gives +2 economy (including saving an action, the most precious commodity in AH) every time it's used, and it isn't too hard to set it up. He makes cards that are already strong even stronger (e.g. Arcane Initiate, David Renfield and Scroll of Prophecies, as well as the typical suite of spell assets), brings decent cards into the strong contender range (e.g. Forbidden Knowledge), and even makes a few obscure cards worth playing (like Alchemical Transmutation). The reason his power is so strong is the same reason why fast effects and cards are so good: saving an action and breaking the normal restrictions on play windows can be incredibly useful, especially on harder difficulties.

This card needs combo effects to be good. Namely, consider using this with Jacqueline Fine around, Olive McBride, or Dark Prophecy. Also Eldritch Inspiration can make the damage to the enemy go off twice. Canceling the attack and not getting the return damage on the enemy is a subpar effect for how expensive this card is, so you want to try to get the return damage every time.

Also worth noting that this works on Elites, so this can cause some big bads to hit themselves for a bunch of damage, which can be very useful.

As of the end of the Dream Eaters cycle, this is the only Rogue weapon that Preston can take. He probably doesn't really want or need it either since he'll be fighting at a 3, but hey, it could help you against rats?

This card is really good. Don't listen to the haters who say "if you want to support your fighter the stars need to align and you need to be together with them."

That's true most of the time, and when it isn't it's usually because they're coming to you--the enemy is in your face. That, or it's somewhere you both need to be.

For Daisy, Minh, Rex, Norman, and Ursula the 5 or more remaining sanity is rarely relevant. For Ursula and Rex it's even a decent trick just for defending yourself.

Pack it the next time you're running about at level 0. When your fighter lacks >+2 options for damage, this card is worth its weight in gold.

Alright mathematicians, I've got a question that requires some technical wizardry. If I had the option between this and Stick to the Plan, which one gives me better odds of drawing a tarot in my opening hand? We all know SttP thins your deck down by almost 10%, making your opening hand around 1/6th of your deck, assuming the deck is "clean" (i.e. it doesn't have a bunch of clutter from the campaign). Studious here has a similar effect by allowing us to see more cards with our opening hand, which lets us mulligan into our tarot more often. With 6xp put into Studious, we start with 7 cards, about 20% of our deck, so we see about 40% of it if we mulligan as aggressively as possible, right?

I'm not pitting the strength of one card against the other; I'm just curious what the math bears out in this particular scenario. Assuming we mulligan the whole hand, and the deck is clean and only 33 cards, which gives us better odds to draw card "x"? How about if we have two copies? How about if we mulligan 3-4 cards instead of the whole hand? Where do the curves meet up?

Anyway, I was just deckbuilding earlier and started to wonder about it. I think only Lola can actually take both cards, so maybe it'll be useful to someone deep into building her. What say you?