Five of Pentacles

I think this is the worst of all the tarot cards because health and sanity are not relevant if you survive and the survivor class arleady has lots of cheap soaks, like Leather Coat, Cherished Keepsake, Madame Labranche and Peter Sylvestre. At least FFG remains consitent in releasing the weakest cards for the survivor faction, most of the time (and the fact that there's no 4 or 5 XP cards for them).

However for Calvin Wright this card is pretty good, as it increases his max health and sanity. So it's like +1 to all his stats.

Django · 5154
Agnes will take this over Four of Cups every time — Adny · 1
Why would she? I'd rather have +1 will as mystic than +1 HP/sanity. Mystic also has Fearless and other sanity healing. — Django · 5154
As any other mystic, yes. But Agnes has already more will than (almost) any other mystic and that +1 sanity lets her use her special ability one more time. And that +1HP helps keep Peter(2) around longer — Adny · 1
Ashcan Pete has better utility out of these because it potentially keeps Duke alive longer, and he can pitch a second copy to ready an asset. Never having dead cards makes two copies fine for him (or if you get that annoying tarot weakness). — The_Wall · 287
I think it’s worth noting that for Wendy, Ashcan, or anyone running Cornered, the second tarot isn’t dead. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
@The_Wall Ashcan’s ability doesn’t help with the tarot weakness because you can never choose to discard a Weakness. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
@death by chocolate the rules state that you cannot optionally discard a weakness from hand. Once it has been played, I believe you could replace it with another card in that slot. — saintsaturn · 1
I think this is probably the best one just because of the synergy with Wendy, Pete, and Calvin. The first two being able to negate that dead card downside is huge. — housh · 171
If you think FFG releases the weakest cards for Survivor, you simply don't know how to play Survivor effectively. — Tilted Libra · 37
Steadfast

Together with Able Bodied, this is one of the better Circle Undone skills. All current investigators will get the full bonus early in the game, which helps enable successful skill tests before the investigator’s major assets are in play. A combination of this and Take the Initiative would be solid protection against enemies and treachery cards.

jmmeye3 · 630
Funnily enough, playing this on early treacheries will likely make the second copy better, since you'll be healthier than if you'd saved it. — SGPrometheus · 841
Song of the Dead

This card is an interesting one because how good it is depends heavily on so many factors it can be hard to evaluate. That said, I ran some initial statistics based on cards such as Olive McBride and Dark Prophecy.

I think aramhorror gave a solid analysis of the capabilities of Song of the Dead if you're not able to get those . It's not worth it. However, the is a part of the card and the ability to control the chaos bag has evolved. I wanted to flesh out the analysis of the probability of getting that in different scenarios.

Each campaign has slight variations in how many skulls are included, and these have a great effect on the default chance you'll draw a without any chaos manipulation. You'll usually find ~18% chance. If you're Jim Culver, you're looking at an extra 6% chance. Basically, 1 out of 5 times, you'll just do 1 damage.

But you are no bystander! You are a mystic will the power and skills to change probability to suit your whims!

The greatest ally to this card is obviously Olive McBride. She modifies your chances of a skull from ~20% to ~50%. This means, on average, you're dealing an extra 1 damage when you attack. This puts it on par with Shrivelling.

But that's not all. For those moments where you absolutely HAVE to get that token, you can use Dark Prophecy in conjunction with Olive McBride. You end up drawing 7 tokens and you have anywhere between 64%-85% chance of getting a skull result. By sealing some non-skull results, you can boost your probability for success slightly higher.

Then there's sealing with cards like The Chthonian Stone, Protective Incantation, and Seal of the Seventh Sign. Sealing provides a slight boost to success rates depending on what tokens are in your bag. By and large, sealing any non-skull token gets you about 1% improvement to base probability, but it compounds up to about a 5% improvement with both token drawing options active. Note that the The Chthonian Stone will have no effect for the first couple scenarios of Carcosa.

You can further affect the chaos bag by purchasing a Grotesque Statue which can further improve your odds.

The very best chances you'll ever get is up to a ~95% success rate with Jim Culver if you seal 3 non-skull tokens and the .

But at the end of the day, we have to look at the cost. Each of these cards costs resources, card space, and actions to play. To full support this card, it'd take 14 resources, 6 cards, and 6 actions to play those cards. That doesn't include the cost of Song of the Dead or the upkeep for Protective Incantation.

Ultimately, your greatest gains are going to be from cards that let you draw more than one token. Sealing tokens helps, but it's often too costly to be worth it in the long run.

The point is, this card isn't bad, but it's not exceptional either. With Olive McBride, it's on par with Shrivelling. It averages to the same damage with slightly less but no downside for drawing a bad token. With Dark Prophecy, it surpasses Shrivelling, but only for the two tests you use with it.

TLDR: In a deck that's built for it, this is slightly better than Shrivelling. Otherwise, go for Shrivelling and it's successors because they upgrade into each other and are more reliable.

jblade · 19
I wonder if it would work to go Shards of the Void as a primary weapon and Song of the Dead as secondary? Shards can take some 0s out of the bag to improve the effectiveness of skull fishing — Zinjanthropus · 230
Looking at Olive McBride, while you are more likely to get +2 damage, isn't it also more likely that you'll miss entirely? If you pull a skull, a -6 and a -4 or a token with disastrous consequences, that's probably a miss. — shenaniganz11 · 40
@shenaniganz11 This is my experience as well on hard difficulty. I played this combo with jim in the hopes of more reliably triggering damage from SotD. But Jim kind of needs help to pass difficult tests, and the bonus from song isn't enough to cut it. Many times I didn't want to trigger Olive, since it meant reducing the chance of actually hitting the target. I might try it again in Carcosa, when the bag has more skull tokens in it, but in dunwich my deck was instantly made better by throwing Olive in the garbage bin. — flamebreak · 25
Handcuffs

I asked about handcuffs and other effects. The reply:

Rules Question: I am a bit confused as to how "Handcuffs" interact with some encounter cards. The Truth is Hidden says "flip" clues to doom, not "place" doom. Would it still flip the doom on Seekers of Carcosa? Mysterious Chanting and Dance of the Yellow King look for a cultist in play. If a cultist or lunatic is handcuffed they cannot ready, but they might be the only cultist or lunatic in play. Are those cards effectively negated?

Greetings,

1) Flipping clues to their doom side is not the same as placing them. In this instance, the token has already been placed on the card, so Handcuffs will not prevent the tokens from then being flipped over to their doom side. Note that the agendas in Echoes of the Past each read “After 1 or more clues are placed on an enemy in play: Flip those clues to their doom side,” meaning the flipping occurs after the tokens are already placed. 2) As for Mysterious Chanting and Dance of the Yellow King, the answer is… sort of. Mysterious Chanting simply adds doom to the nearest Cultist, so if the nearest Cultist is handcuffed, then yes, it will do nothing. Dance of the Yellow King is trickier. It reads: “… If you fail, the nearest Lunatic enemy readies, moves (one location at a time) until it reaches your location, engages you, and makes an immediately attack.” Technically, the movement, engagement and attack aspects of this effect are not dependent on the enemy readying. While typically only ready enemies can move, engage, or attack, there is no rule stopping them from doing so while exhausted if an effect explicitly instructs them to. So strange as it may seem, if the nearest Lunatic enemy is handcuffed, it won’t ready, but it will still move to you, engage you, and attack. (Note that this would be different if the effect used the word “then” somewhere in it, for example “readies, then moves…”)

I understand that both of these answers are tricky distinctions, so I apologize for any confusion.

Cheers, ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Matthew Newman Senior Card Game Developer Fantasy Flight Games

Tiktakkat · 38
Between those two answers, Handcuffs seem a lot useful than at first glance. — Tiktakkat · 38
"I've got a plan!"

Good card.

characters generally struggle with combat, mostly because of deckbuilding restrictions and class-wide scores of 2 or less. Any of them can mount respectable defense via toolbox cards like Knife but overall a will not be able to kill any sort of major enemy, ranging from Ravenous Ghoul and Hunting Nightgaunt to Umôrdhoth itself.

Typically you leave these enemies to someone else to kill or try to avoid them, but this kind of defenselessness isn't always viable even with a friendly face like Mark Harrigan in the party, there is an upper limit to how much damage a character can do in a round and sometimes you'll find yourself engaged with a big threat at a time where the other guy has something more important to do or is just outright busy with a danger of his own (such as having this carcosa dude and that other carcosa dude spawning simultaneously).

This is where "I've got a plan!" comes in. Hitting routine attacks is an issue for decks, even Shrivelling is only so accurate without something like Higher Education to boost it, but mounting one big attack by chucking all of those unused little icon cards that typically gather in your hand is a very reasonable bet. Boom, one hit and you've killed the 4-hp threat you just drew or contributed 4 points of damage to the boss.

"I've got a plan!" has it's weaknesses, your sustained combat ability is still not great, you need to draw it and you need the clues, but its a high-yield attack in a class thats otherwise bereft of good combat options. This is pretty much an autotake in every deck whose Investigator isn't the upcoming Joe Diamond.

Tsuruki23 · 2568
In a group with a dedicated combat character, I found this card to be dead weight in my hand more often than not. Expensive dead weight. In my last Carcosa run (playing clue focused Rex), I didn't even consider taking it, and I didn't miss it one bit. — cb42 · 38
There is also the risk that the moment when you need this is at the start of a new Act when you have little or no clues. I generally compare this card against Mind Over Matter - which takes more actions since individual attacks only deal 1, but is cheaper and much more versatile (can also be used for dealing with locked doors and other treacheries) or for evading enemies. On a high Agility seeker like Ursula though, I might be more inclined to take the reviewed card, but I definitely don’t see it as an auto include. Of course, team dynamics is a big factor. For example, I play almost exclusively three player with a dedicated monster fighter, dedicated clue getter, and a flex character. — Death by Chocolate · 1489
Mind over matter is more of a panic button, while this cards needs some time to prepare. As other said, it's useless if no clues are available. It's also rather expansive, compared to other seeker cards. I like it as additional combat option, but ususally "upgrade" it with the acidic strange solution. — Django · 5154