Like Dodge, but with a chance to hurt the enemy! What could go wrong?

Well, in my experience quite a bit. First of all it's much more expensive than dodge is, which can cause extreme opportunity cost as you have to choose between taking damage now, and having a better board setup next turn. Furthermore the reflected damage is not guaranteed, which kind of negates a huge amount of this card's benefit.

Now, in theory you can run a sadism run where (Slight campaign mechanic spoilers) ------ you intentionally fill the bag with these negative nancy tokens (... not as bad an idea as it sounds on Expert difficulty) ------ and I can't comment on the strength of this card then, but in a more vanilla run it can be pretty unlikely to trigger.

I think, like Song of the Dead without a better way to control the chaos bag, extremely swingy cards are going to remain cool in theory, but bad in practice.

Playing Weakness cards in agreement with the rules is no trivial task. In my review i will try to explain the peculiarity of Amnesia.

When a treachery card, like Amnesia, 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 Amnesia 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 and placed in its owner's discard pile, and the ability is considered resolved simultaneously with the completion of this step.

The text of the ability states to "Choose and discard all but 1 card from your hand." There is a special rule which prevents you from discarding Weakness-cards, it says literally: "A player may not optionally choose to discard a weakness card from hand, unless a card explicitly specifies otherwise."

So if you have any Weakness card on your hand when Amnesia resolves, you have to keep it and discard all other cards!

Creating the weakness card pool

Because Amnesia is such a hefty Weakness, i would want to include a few words about the correct setup of the weakness collection.

There's a paragraph in the rulebook that states that "To select a random basic weakness, take a set of the ten basic weaknesses in this core set, shuffle those weaknesses together, and draw one at random to add to the investigator’s deck. Some Arkham Horror: The Card Game products add additional basic weakness cards to a player’s collection. Simply add these cards to the ten cards found in the core set when selecting random basic weaknesses in the future. For example: Stephanie owns two copies of the core set, one copy of the first deluxe campaign expansion, and one copy of the first Mythos pack. To create a single set of basic weaknesses, she takes all of the basic weaknesses in one core set, in one copy of the first deluxe campaign box, and in one copy of the first Mythos pack, and shuffles them together. Her basic weakness is drawn at random from this pool."

Amnesia can be two times (2x) at the most in your pool of weaknesses at the start of a campaign!

Recommendations

If you are new to the game, bend the rules and redraw another weakness if you play Wendy Adams.

If you take a closer look at the popular decks here on Arkhamdb, you may notice that still most of them use a complete set of Guts, Perception, Overpower and Manual Dexterity. I omit Unexpected Courage here, because it functions a bit different.

These cards' popularity is based on their marginal cost and the high versatility they give you. Each of them occupies one deck slot, but there is (on Standard difficulty) a huge chance of drawing another card, so it feels as if they cost nothing. They kind of "replace themselves instantly". Whatever strategy you are running, tests over all four attributes will meet you at every corner (or in every Mythos phase) and you don't have to commit these skills to a particular kind of skill test. The above-mentioned reasons, as a sum, virtually "reduce" your deck size and enable you to draw your key cards much faster. In fact, playing them includes two slight risks:

• The test can fail and the skill does not replace itself.
• The skill succeeeds and the card you draw is your Weakness. Especially, this risk can hurt if you Weakness happens to be Amnesia.

Pros

• +2 on a test for (almost) no tempo hit is really, really good. If taking the test costs you an action, and you're even on the difficulty, then the resulting tempo bump is, on average, worth almost an entire action.
• Can be committed to another player's skill test.
• Zero play cost
• Card text has no trigger restriction (as in Vicious Blow e.g.)
• Combines perfectly with cards that have an additional effect if you overfulfill: List
• "Ashcan" Pete gets more value out of the skill card than the other investigators, since the extra card you draw also works as smelling salts to wake his dog up.
• On High/Expert difficulty you do not want to fail on skill tests, so the +2 bonus alone justifies the inclusion.

Cons

• "Max 1 committed per skill test" across all players.
• The skill succeeeds and the card you draw is a Weakness.

If you take a closer look at the popular decks here on Arkhamdb, you may notice that still most of them use a complete set of Guts, Perception, Overpower and Manual Dexterity. I omit Unexpected Courage here, because it functions a bit different.

These cards' popularity is based on their marginal cost and the high versatility they give you. Each of them occupies one deck slot, but there is (on Standard difficulty) a huge chance of drawing another card, so it feels as if they cost nothing. They kind of "replace themselves instantly". Whatever strategy you are running, tests over all four attributes will meet you at every corner (or in every Mythos phase) and you don't have to commit these skills to a particular kind of skill test. The above-mentioned reasons, as a sum, virtually "reduce" your deck size and enable you to draw your key cards much faster. In fact, playing them includes two slight risks:

• The test can fail and the skill does not replace itself.
• The skill succeeeds and the card you draw is your Weakness. Especially, this risk can hurt if you Weakness happens to be Amnesia.

Pros

• +2 on a test for (almost) no tempo hit is really, really good. If taking the test costs you an action, and you're even on the difficulty, then the resulting tempo bump is, on average, worth almost an entire action.
• Can be committed to another player's skill test.
• Zero play cost
• Card text has no trigger restriction (as in Vicious Blow e.g.)
• Combines perfectly with cards that have an additional effect if you overfulfill: List
• "Ashcan" Pete gets more value out of the skill card than the other investigators, since the extra card you draw also works as smelling salts to wake his dog up.
• On High/Expert difficulty you do not want to fail on skill tests, so the +2 bonus alone justifies the inclusion.

Cons

• "Max 1 committed per skill test" across all players.
• The skill succeeeds and the card you draw is a Weakness.

If you take a closer look at the popular decks here on Arkhamdb, you may notice that still most of them use a complete set of Guts, Perception, Overpower and Manual Dexterity. I omit Unexpected Courage here, because it functions a bit different.

These cards' popularity is based on their marginal cost and the high versatility they give you. Each of them occupies one deck slot, but there is (on Standard difficulty) a huge chance of drawing another card, so it feels as if they cost nothing. They kind of "replace themselves instantly". Whatever strategy you are running, tests over all four attributes will meet you at every corner (or in every Mythos phase) and you don't have to commit these skills to a particular kind of skill test. The above-mentioned reasons, as a sum, virtually "reduce" your deck size and enable you to draw your key cards much faster. In fact, playing them includes two slight risks:

• The test can fail and the skill does not replace itself.
• The skill succeeeds and the card you draw is your Weakness. Especially, this risk can hurt if you Weakness happens to be Amnesia.

Pros

• +2 on a test for (almost) no tempo hit is really, really good. If taking the test costs you an action, and you're even on the difficulty, then the resulting tempo bump is, on average, worth almost an entire action.
• Can be committed to another player's skill test.
• Zero play cost
• Card text has no trigger restriction (as in Vicious Blow e.g.)
• Combines perfectly with cards that have an additional effect if you overfulfill: List
• "Ashcan" Pete gets more value out of the skill card than the other investigators, since the extra card you draw also works as smelling salts to wake his dog up.
• On High/Expert difficulty you do not want to fail on skill tests, so the +2 bonus alone justifies the inclusion.

Cons

• "Max 1 committed per skill test" across all players.
• The skill succeeeds and the card you draw is a Weakness.