Now that Marksmanship is out, my group did a theoretical calculation of max damage possible in 1 attack, particually to kill Spoiler in one attack. The following assumes a party of 4 players and using Extra Ammunition, Venturer and Contraband to pump ammo into Shotgun equal to or higher than the amount of chaos tokens.

Thanks Caius and Jd90 for your tips

• 1 base damage
• 1 Lita Chantler
• 1 Zoey Samaras's , so zoey is the one shooting
• 2 from 2x Marksmanship (fast cards can only be played on your turn, so 8x is not possible)
• 4 from 4x Hatchet Man (comited by Zoey Samaras, Leo Anderson)
• 5 Shotgun
• 10 from 5x Vicious Blow 2, assuming all 4 characters have it (other players can only commit 1 card)
• Double or Nothing
• "Eat lead!" to guarantee

Sum: 48 Total Damage!

Newspaper is everything Newspaper was not, the ideal way to pull your weight in clues while your primary job is something else. Take it solo, take it in duo, leave it in larger player counts (except 3 player with "Ashcan" Pete, where the ability to grab 3 clues is astonishing).

The extra clue is all the difference. A 2 character can complete a moderate or easy location by committing a Perception or Unexpected Courage and even stand a decent chance without the extra cards, it's also great for those rounds where you've got your weapon out and some combat support assets so you've got nothing better to do than to try the easy clues. William Yorick and even Agnes Baker will suddenly have a pretty good way to fish clues from 1 and 2 difficulty location, and the added bonus can still contribute to a successful "Look what I found!".

Wendy Adams and "Ashcan" Pete can both put Newspaper to good use, although unlike William Yorick who only goes for clue's occasionally, they look for them all the time, which slightly diminishes the effect and priority of Newspaper in favor of more consistent cards like Flashlight. Take note of the 2 icons, those icons are a big number for an item, especially considering the fact that both of those characters are pretty good at Scavenging. A recursible +2 bonus is not to be ignored! Even if you never actually play the card as an asset.

The only real downside for Newspaper is the scenario factor. if you advance the act repeatedly and keep wiping off your clues then yes its good! So good! But when there's just two acts (One even?) Then you're straight out of luck, thankfully though there's still the Scavenging interaction.

Only take for a deck that has a superb effect.

Akachi Onyele and Father Mateo have super powerful effects so they are obvious benefactors. Father Mateo especially likes this since he has a choice of benefits in addition to an "Automatic success" result.

An incredible trump card to play against a key opponent, a game-stopping treachery like Locked Door or to gain tempo during crunch-time. This card is as varied as the important tests that may come up. In single player try to hold onto this for those tests that you just aren't geared for (Aforementioned Locked Door is a good example of something that just screws over a . In multiplayer the card also gains a new niche as a way to net easy, no-risk kills on enemies engaged with your friends.

Don't forget that you can boost a buddy, characters like "Skids" O'Toole, Finn Edwards, Silas Marsh or Zoey Samaras all get massive benefits, some of which really kick off with foreknowledge (Like Zoey's damage buff, which is incredibly powerful when you can plan and account for it, all of a sudden she can one-shot a major threat.).

An extremely fun and exciting addition to the game.

This card is kind of similar to Vicious Blow, in that it allows one of your attacks to deal +1 damage, provided that the attack hits. A very strong effect.

To flesh out the comparison a bit more:

--Compared to Vicious Blow, Marksmanship costs 2 more resources and 1 more XP;

--Marksmanship only works on Firearms or Ranged weapons;

--Marksmanship doesn't grant +1 to hit;

--Marksmanship can't grant bonus damage against enemies engaged to you.

However:

--Marksmanship can target enemies one space away, which is very nice and can often save you an action;

--Marksmanship ignores Aloof and Retaliate. In this case I don't think avoiding Retaliate is that significant. You probably wanted to heavily boost your Marksmanship attack anyway, such that your odds of hitting were very high; this means Retaliate is not a huge concern. (And of course some targets won't have this keyword anyway.) Avoiding Aloof is a nice action-saver when it comes up. But this is going to be relatively uncommon because not many enemies both have this keyword and are reasonable targets for Marksmanship. (It's a bit of a waste to snipe a Whippoorwill).

On the whole, I think Vicious Blow is the stronger card; its advantages will basically always be helpful. Marksmanship's advantages are much more situational, requiring specific enemy keywords and specific enemy placement, which you may or may not encounter in any given scenario.

With that said, Marksmanship is still a very welcome addition to the Guardian class and something I will gladly run in addition to Vicious Blow. +1 damage is extremely powerful. (This will be obvious to any veteran of Arkham Horror LCG, but if you want an explanation of why +1 damage is so good, read my review of Vicious Blow.) So Marksmanship will be well worth running, provided that you have a lot of Firearms in your deck. Ideally, these will be really strong firearms like Lightning Gun, because that increases the chance you can get maximum value from Marksmanship by sniping a powerful enemy one location away in only one shot. (The generous to-hit bonus on something like Lightning Gun or Shotgun will also reduce the chance that you miss and waste the card; this is particularly welcome since Marksmanship itself does not help your attack hit.)

It's interesting to consider whether this or Time Warp is better. They're both 2 XP Mystic spells. They both fulfill the same primary function by allowing you or a teammate at your location to overcome a bad chaos token pull.

In favor of Time Warp:

--Time Warp is one resource cheaper.

--Time Warp works against the autofail.

--Time Warp allows you to redraw bad pulls that aren't special tokens (e.g. the -6 and -8 on Expert.)

--Time Warp can occasionally help you outside of skill tests.

On the other hand:

--Counterspell doesn't have the risk of cancelling a bad token only to pull another bad token.

--Counterspell is much better at helping you avoid the negative effects of special tokens (particularly relevant for Shrivelling V.)

They're both decent cards, and it's really just going to come down to personal preference. I lean slightly towards Time Warp, most of the time, since the ability to redraw the very worst chaos tokens (which Counterspell unfortunately cannot touch) just seems a little more powerful to me. And if you're running a Paradox deck (and who isn't?), then you pretty much have to pick Time Warp.