This card is excellent. Rogues in general don't have a lot of competition for the accessory slot. Lucky Cigarette Case is nice, but a bit expensive before it really starts paying off and requires you to invest in either oversuccess or extra actions to trigger reliably. Still it's probably the easier card to run versus Crystallizer of Dreams, which requires paying very close attention to the pips on your event cards. You can do a quick search of Rogue Events here on the db and see that two icons show up fairly often on most cards: and . Staple cards like Elusive, "You handle this one!", Sleight of Hand, Think on Your Feet, and Slip Away all have this exact pairing. Easy Mark for 1 XP nets you great economy and deck cycling in 3 cards, all of which also have this pairing. Intel Report and Narrow Escape are also solid includes with double icons.

It's for this reason that I think the card is particularly standout for Finn Edwards, who can easily take advantage of both stats. "Skids" O'Toole is also pretty keen on it, and On the Lam is an ace target for the skull. If this does work with The Painted World (for now I assume it does) then it's obviously a strong pickup for Sefina Rousseau. All of these investigators can take advantage of the icons for events they already want to play.

Tony Morgan is also a great Crystallizer candidate, but he probably has to build around it the most carefully. He doesn't like first of all, so a lot of Rogue events are just worse for him in that way. However, he gets // access, and depending on how you build him you have a lot of great icons available to make him more flexible:

• Evidence!, Ever Vigilant, Scene of the Crime, On the Hunt, Prepared for the Worst.
• Connect the Dots, Working a Hunch, and Logical Reasoning can even pull double encounter mitigation duty.
• "Look what I found!", Live and Learn, and Act of Desperation for double .

Tony of course also has an easier time getting extra actions and fighting at a really high value, so triggering Lucky Cigarette Case is really easy for him. You'll have to build him very carefully to make Crystallizer worth it over LCC.

I'd suggest very broadly that this card is easier ran on lower counts. On higher counts specialization is easier and LCC activates more frequently, especially for Tony who will have lots to fight. On lower counts the weakness here is less meaningful as you can feasibly ignore it (it takes a while for it to even do anything once it shows up).

NB:

• The extra soak that a temporary ally gives is assumed and thus omitted from the entries below.
• Not all allies are represented below; many were omitted on a case to case basis, usually due to being too slow, too situational, or too minor an effect. If you feel like I unfairly left out a card, please let me know.
• All story-related assets are omitted to avoid spoilers.
• All allies included are up to The Search For Kadath.

Guardian allies:

• A Chance Encounter + Beat Cop = one round boost + a slightly worse Mano a Mano.
• A Chance Encounter + Venturer = one resource for one ammo or supply exchange.
• A Chance Encounter + Agency Backup = the effect of either Beat Cop's discard .or Art Student's enter play effect

Seeker allies:

• A Chance Encounter + Research Librarian = a cheap Tome tutor.
• A Chance Encounter + Laboratory Assistant = a better value Preposterous Sketches.
• A Chance Encounter + Art Student = a cheaper, slower Working a Hunch.
• A Chance Encounter + Charles Ross, Esq. = pay one resource now for a one resource discount on an Item asset later.
• A Chance Encounter + Mr. "Rook" = a cheaper, more flexible, riskier No Stone Unturned.

Rogue allies:

• A Chance Encounter + Leo De Luca = a net 0 action cost, 2/2 soak for one round.

Mystic allies:

• A Chance Encounter + Arcane Initiate = a single low chance tutor for a Spell.
• A Chance Encounter + Alyssa Graham = one round boost + encounter deck manipulation.
• A Chance Encounter + David Renfield = one round boost for a net 0 cost.

Survivor allies:

• A Chance Encounter + Stray Cat = a cheaper, slight worse version of the base effect of Decoy.

Neutral allies:

• A Chance Encounter + The Red-Gloved Man = a worse The Red-Gloved Man.

Final verdict? Helloooo Seeker! Unlike that other classes, A Chance Encounter seems to create better or equally good versions of event cards that already exist in the game. Combined with their allies' disposability and the fact that seekers are disinclined from ever being engaged with enemies, means the likes of Minh Thi Phan and Mandy Thompson could make great use of A Chance Encounter.

The other classes are really hampered by the non-fast nature of this card or the persistence of their allies. You'll really be avoiding putting Agency Backup or Leo De Luca in the discard pile, negating the ability to use A Chance Encounter, and Stray Cat and Beat Cop are more useful when engaged with an enemy, so you'll likely find yourself incurring an attack of opportunity. Mystic's allies are the standout, and one investigator in particular must be mentioned:

Marie Lambeau can take A Chance Encounter, and Chance Encounter gives an ally an inbuilt self-destruct button before the mythos phase. Yep, you can safely recur a doom laden ally, and gain an additional action for it. David Renfield stands out as the best candidate for this combo, as not only does he rebate the cost of A Chance Encounter, he also provides a boost to use on the additional Spell action.

Cards that heal, soak, or prevent damage become more valuable and more relevant the worse your campaign is going. The signature punishment of failing a scenario is trauma, whether by being defeated, or from a bad resolution after failing to achieve the set out objectives.

I don't think any card espouses this idea better than Moment of Respite, the card for the mentally traumatised. Three horror healing in one turn with free card replenishment is a great stabilisation tool, and until recently, represented the most healing for one action in the game (upgraded Logical Reasoning now holds that distinction). However, Moment of Respite suffers from a severe case of dead-draw-itis, paradoxically due to its enormous healing potential. Waiting around to take 3 horror, especially since you'll generally try to avoid horror in the first place, can see Moment of Respite sitting pretty in your hand for a long time. While it does have a respectable two icons which alleviate it's dead-draw nature, as anyone can attest, it is painful to commit a 3+ experience asset or event to a test, and lose the value that you were probably going for by including it in your deck.

Suffer three mental trauma however, and this card is another story altogether. It's dead-draw nature evaporates, and now having it in your starting hand is a blessing, not a curse.

I wonder how many people have played Mark Harrigan early in their Arkham Horror LCG career and ended up forced to include this card thanks to Shell Shock. Roland Banks and Zoey Samaras also have low sanity thresholds and weaknesses that incur mental trauma that practically beg for a quick solution. Really any low , low sanity investigator is susceptible to mental trauma, and thus are more inclined to take that card.

Of course, there are, as of Dream-eaters, three investigators that manipulate horror in some respect or other that may take a look at this card: Agnes Baker, Calvin Wright, and Carolyn Fern. Including it in a Calvin deck is dubious, but could possibly be justified as an emergency play if he's playing too close to the edge. While Carolyn does see synergy from the card, she would much prefer more incremental healing to maximise the value of her special ability; still, if you're running a HEAVY horror incursion deck, then you'll need all the horror healing you can get.

And then there's Agnes Baker. I think only she would include this card in her deck even when things are going well, as not only will she likely be deliberately taking horror through the likes of Forbidden Knowledge, but she also very much never wants to take mental trauma in the first place, a scenario Moment of Respite is very good at preventing.

Daring Maneuver’s stock is going up as the succeed by X archetype is getting more defined. Momentum in particular works really well with Daring Maneuver, allowing you to turn any success into at least a -2 difficulty on the next test, which in turn can further enable more oversuccess. Tony Morgan with fight tests, "Skids" O'Toole, Wendy Adams and Finn Edwards with Lockpicks or Slip Away, Sefina Rousseau with Suggestion, or Jenny Barnes or even Preston Fairmont with Well Connected. Although the interaction with Lucky Cigarette Case is clear, this also works well with Crystallizer of Dreams as a way to be up 1 on a later test. I’m starting to run this card in most of my Rogue decks to good success.

Oof. What a card. Cripplingly over-specialized, and subpar soak and skill icons to boot. It is unlikely that you would seriously consider this card in a blind run of any campaign, and even on a re-run, you have so many more all-purpose options to deal with the enemies with parley actions.

...That being said, I am what you might call, a maniac who makes it his business to include EVERY card that exists in this game at least once in one deck or another, even the bad ones. And to my surprise, I have found a niche for Fine Clothes, in a Joe Diamond deck no less:

Astute players may realise where I'm coming from in volunterring Joe to include this sub-par card; it turns out that Fine Clothes synergises with exactly two cards in the game right now (as of The Search for Kadath): Persuasion and Interrogate. That's right, injecting parley actions into your deck provides insurance against the dead-draw nature of Fine Clothes in the wrong scenario, providing it with the opportunity to always be useful. Granted Persuasion and Interrogate aren't exactly great cards either, but their badness comes from a hard test to pass, rather than a mediocre effect. In that regard, Fine Clothes elevates them to a decent level of power, and Joe Diamond fits the bill for this combo, due to having both the ability to take both and cards, and a hefty 4 in both attributes, which combined with the reduction of difficulty that Fine Clothes provides, all but ensures the success of the parley tests.

That's not to say this is a good combo by any means. It is however a thought experiment in how to maximise the potential of Fine Clothes, and I don't think it gets better than that for our tuxedo wearing mannequin... save for one last possible combo; Adaptable. With Adaptable, and proper knowledge of the scenarios that you'll be facing, you can elect to include Fine Clothes on the missions where it's actually useful, and swap them out when they won't be. This absolves them of their downside of ultra-specialisation, and a -2 difficulty on tests that may be a major part of a mission can turn a scenario one difficulty down for all intents and purposes. As to which ones you should consider swapping in Fine Clothes for, that would be spoilers, so I leave it to you to imagine when dressing in your Sunday's best would be appropiate.