Leadership's inclusion in your deck is entirely dependant on your deck-building philosophy:

Using myself as an example of a deck-building methodology that will likely never take Leadership, I do not build campaign specific or party specific decks. Instead I build investigator specific decks; decks that are a complete package of synergy with themselves and the special ability of the investigator they are paired with, and adhere to a full-combat roll, a full-cluever roll, a full-support, or a half-and-half of the aforementioned rolls.

This philosophy, while good for forming multi-purpose decks, lacks the foresight to include cards like Leadership. On a purely theoretical level, two investigators committing Leadership to each-others test is strictly better than two investigators committing Unexpected Courage to their own test. In that train of thought, you trade away flexibility for max potential performance, probably at too high an exchange rate to be considered a good card.

But the extra icon reveals the main use of this card; as a safety net for your fellow investigators with low . If you know you'll be hanging out with a Finn Edwards, a Silas Marsh, or a similarly stated investigator, Leadership will very likely see play in most scenarios you draw it in. One way to think about it is you save them from having to commit two cards to get the equivalent amount of protection.

This is why, when building a party-specific deck, you should always consider Leadership. It's efficacy increases with the more players in your game, as you'll be in a location with another investigator more frequently. Alongside low individuals, mystics might also appreciate the extra boost, particularly Diana Stanley while she's still stockpiling cards underneath her.

And technically, there is ONE synergistic relationship with another card; Liquid Courage. Liquid Courage is very finicky, as the investigators that probably need the horror healing the most are also the ones that are most likely to fail the test that comes with it. Leadership can thus be used to get one good Liquid Courage test and heal 2 horror off of a 5-6 sanity investigator reliably. Not a bad investment, and right up Carolyn Fern's alley, though Leo Anderson can also take those two cards.

Looking to the future, at some point we should be getting Vincent Lee. If he can take Survivor level 1 cards, and his ability does something good when healing - which I assume it will - then this could be a pretty big card for him. If he can’t take survivor cards, I suppose there’s always Teamwork!

This card has a lot of advantages that get overlooked. First, you are going to see a lot more play out of those icons than the ones on a Lightning Gun. Second, this really takes the teeth out of a lot of treacheries. You will start to see the likes of Crypt Chill as a blessing if they can take the Springfield away. Last but not least, the ammo conservation of never being able to fire the gun puts Shotgun and the BAR to shame.

Sadly the two hand slots compete with the Kukri, but with bandana you can now take them both.

Edit: shortened.

Great skill card for characters who have money and/or draw issues. characters take a lot of actions and resources to build a powerful combat engine and Daring will greatly help a Roland Banks or "Skids" O'Toole who are trying to branch out to do clues too still fight effectively despite empty pockets.

Note that the bonus applies to non-binary methods to fight and evade, making this card particularly interesting to characters that split their fighting capacity between and or or a character evading with . Case in point: Diana Stanley who might have Shrivelling in one hand and Enchanted Blade in the other or Finn Edwards who might have a Switchblade in hand and a Backstab in mind.

The Retaliate and Alert are rarely issues, since throwing a +3 at something is basicly a surefire way to pass a test.

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).