Big shiny guns, big scary price tags. Lightning Gun is for the discerning Guardian who wants to never worry about enemies ever again. Well, at least until it's ammunition runs dry.

Upsides: +5 allows you to ignore nearly any token for most fights, and for high enemies even half of the bag usually is success. An easily overlooked upside of this is that LG shots almost never miss, making them more efficient than other ammo weapons.

3 damage will kill most enemies, eat up bosses and allow you to save your vicious blows to kill 4 health enemies. No other weapon can do that. The Shotgun can do more total damage, but you can't tailor it to a specific number which means risk.

Downsides: 3 ammo is sparing, making Extra Ammunition a good investment.

6 money is a tempo hit. Not, mind you, that much worse than .45 Automatic or Machete, but it is a hit.

5 exp is expensive, not much else to really say about this.

2 hands means you either need to ditch your other items or fish for a Bandolier. This isn't as bad as it sounds, as the bandolier only has to be in play before you play LG and your Flashlight but it's still a deck slot and some actions to put that together.

Personally I think it's effective. The ability to know enemies are almost certainly dead in one action is wonderful peace of mind. Still, you can't just purchase this on a whim, a number of support cards are required to make it particularly effective. It's also just plain fun.

Zap

Song of the Dead - how I've tried to like you! When you came along I thought "Yes, another combat spell like Shrivelling, but with a more useful number of charges". But, here's the thing - you just don't do enough damage.

Just like Blackjack, this card has a major weakness in being very action-expensive to kill off most enemies. 1 damage just doesn't cut it next to Shrivelling (at any of it's various levels), and while there is a bonus for symbols, this is pretty unreliable.

The best investigator for this card is Jim Culver; with his abilities, he can get (slightly) more skulls, and he can make use of skulls that would be fails for other investigators. It does feel like it might fit with him.

However, for other spell users so far (Daisy Walker and Agnes Baker), it offers little. It does too little damage per action for Daisy, and Agnes already has other ways of dealing single points of damage.

It's only other use, as far as I can see, is that it does offer a way of doing an odd number of points of damage - thus potentially saving Shrivelling for the coup-de-grace.

So yes, I'm afraid I've more or less fallen out of love with Song of the Dead.

I've been surprised by just how much I enjoy using this weapon. Yes, you heard me correctly, please hear me out! (I promise I'm not completely insane... yet.) While certainly not to be considered action compression, this card will let you get in a "second" attack while avoiding the Chaos bag entirely. This is not that big of a deal when playing on Standard or Easy where you can whiff a few times without much consequence, but as the tokens get nastier and the negative modifiers get larger (and the pile of committed cards grows) I find myself wanting to avoid that bag like the plague. Because sometimes your second attack misses AND a ghoul spawns. And that's just no fun for anyone.

Playing Weakness cards in agreement with the rules is no trivial task. There are already some reviews regarding this especially complex card, Cover Up, but none so far that puts all pieces together to one whole image. In my review i will try to explain how this card is played according to the rules.

When a treachery card, like Cover Up, is drawn by an investigator, that investigator must resolve its effects. Please note the wording. Some cards only let you search or look at cards from your deck, in these cases the effect does not resolve!

The effect is initiated by the keyword Revelation, which means "When a weakness card enters an investigator's hand, that investigator must immediately resolve all revelation abilities on the card as if it were just drawn."

So you follow all the steps in the rulebook under "Appendix I: Initiation Sequence".

No play restriction, cost is zero.

Step 1. No modifier applicable.

Step 2. No cost to pay.

Step 3. The card commences being played, or the effects of the ability attempt to initiate. This means the card Cover Up leaves your hand at this point.

Step 4. The effects of the ability (if not canceled in step 3) complete their initiation, and resolve. The card is regarded as played, but not placed in its owner's discard pile, because the text states "Put Cover Up into play in your threat area, with 3 clues on it."

So Cover Up lands in it's bearer's threat area. But unlike other card types there, it is a treachery card, which is a subtype of of an encounter card. And because of that, other players can interact with it. You will find the corresponding rule under "Weaknesses": Weaknesses with an encounter cardtype are, like other encounter cards, not controlled by any player.

The text of the ability states to "When you would discover 1 or more clues at your location: Discard that many clues from Cover Up instead." This should be broken down into two parts. First, the "When"-clause. You can only trigger that reaction if the trigger condition is met, meaning there has to be at least one clue present at that location. (I continue to speak in the singular form, because the rules do not differ if multiple clues are gathered at once.) The way in which you aquired that clue, does not matter. Now the clue remains at the location, because of the keyword "instead", this interrupts the resolving process and the replacement resolves, "a clue from Cover Up is discarded." Second, the "you" keyword is important. As clarified in the FAQ [V1.0, section 2.1], the "you" and "at your location" within this triggered ability, refer to the investigator triggering the ability. And other investigators beside the bearer are allowed to trigger it, as already explained, because the card is not controlled by any player.

Irrespective of the clue count on Cover Up, the card stays in Roland's threat area until the end of the game(=scenario). It can not be discarded and luckily can not be reshuffled into the investigator's deck during the game. Of course it remains being a part of the deck for the rest of the campaign.

If Roland is eliminated (by being defeated or taking a resign action) while Cover Up is in play, Cover Up's Forced effect triggers, as per the FAQ [V1.0, section 'Rulebook errata', topic "Elimination"]: For the purpose of resolving weakness cards, the game has ended for the eliminated investigator. Trigger any “when the game ends” abilities on each weakness the eliminated investigator owns that is in play. Then, remove those weaknesses from the game.”

Recommendations

This weakness makes Roland the most difficult to play character from the Core Set. He has a low base Sanity value and a low Willpower, which makes him vulnerable to horrifying events from the Encounter deck. I would advise new players to put some means to prevent or heal horror from Roland into their deck.

Okay, the Parley bit is interesting ... but - just how many Parley actions are there in the game so far? Not many, so let's ignore that...

1 cost for 1 health and 1 horror. And it's an Item, so Scavenging might work well with it. Also, it's the first body slot card to offer some level of horror protection, which is interesting too.

On balance, it's probably not as good as Leather Coat, but it's not disappointing for the cost, and I find horror is often more of a problem than health. It's also much cheaper than Bulletproof Vest in terms of XP.

I could imagine using this with a Rex Murphy Scavenging build, or perhaps Jim Culver Scavenging with the right ally cards.

One down-side - this has the creepiest card art in the game. Is that a mannequin? Scary.