For "Ashcan" Pete, Finn Edwards, Wendy Adams, Jenny Barnes, Preston Fairmont, Tony Morgan and Rita Young:

Have some real money-making fun by using Sleight of Hand to cheat an expensive item into play, then use Act of Desperation for a whopping payout! It's like cashing in a refund for something you didn't buy!

Don't sleep on this card!

The real power here is in gaining back a bunch of resources from a spent item while also gaining tempo by dealing 2 damage for 0 resources. Cards that grant click compression tend to be among the best cards in the game. The "if you succeed" clause is also generally fine coming from the faction with both Lucky! and Live and Learn.

So what deck can use an Act of Desperation? Honestly, anything with Backpack, it has almost perfect synergy with that card and deckbuilding style. Mark Harrigan puts this under his Stick to the Plan to recoup the investment on his Lightning Gun or M1918 BAR. Survivors tend to be swimming in cheap items and card draw so it can act as a backup to Fire Axe (at least until they all upgrade to Ornate Bow or Timeworn Brand).

Then on top of all of this, the card has symbols like so much gravy.

There is a lot to this card because it gives you so many interesting options to work with.

• The asset you discard influences the power of the attack.
• The asset may be discarded from hand or play.
• It can be any hand item, including empty guns and flashlights.
• It may yield resources.
• It's a tactic.

Being a and tactic card, aimed at focused characters this card currently benefits mostly William Yorick, Silas Marsh and interestingly, Mark Harrigan.

First off, discarding stuff is usually negative, so it's a good idea to try and find ways to make the discard work with us instead of against us, use it on assets that you've finished using like an empty Flashlight or ammoless gun to recurse the cost, .45 Automatic is a good early target and later there's Old Hunting Rifle or Lightning Gun or whatever weapons Mark Harrigan went with. The discard mechanic has Yoricks name written all over it since he can discard the asset, then use the gained cash to replay it immediately, one trick is discarding a jammed rifle and replaying it immediately.

If that was the only thing this card did, why does it even allow discarding from hand? The option is there, so when do you use it? You might for example be in a circumstance where a shot from a gun would be wasted (like to kill a Ghoul Minion with a Shotgun blast). A Baseball Bat might break on the first hit and you need a +1 damage attack to finish the foe. It also means that you can get some use out of backup items that you don't need to get into play, like a Machete that you wont play because you already got the other one (also this bypasses the engagement requirement).

When all else fails to be useful you still sit on a nice boost.

That all sounds real good right? Well. Now have fun affording it a deckslot ;)

This card does so much good stuff for you. I feel like this was originally an upgraded version of a hypothetical "Act of Desperation [0]" that never got printed, because it has so much text on it, and all that text is awesome. It's a great way to get a little more value out of items that have overstayed their welcome, whether that be firearms or investigating tools. I have not used this extensively in-color, but it seems like it plays very well with the Survivor ethos of recurring cards from their discard.

I mainly wrote this review because I want to highlight one very specific combo I have been using that's probably not that good but feels absolutely hilarious. Play as Mark Harrigan, take this card since you get rank 0 tactics, and use the Remington Model 1858 as at least a backup weapon. You get a nice two for one since you can use all the ammo out of the Remington, then play Act of Desperation, and the weapon ability lets you get one more shot out of it before the Act of Desperation resolves.

If you really want to double down on a combo that is more cute than good you can add some stuff like Well-Maintained to let the gun bounce back into your hand after your BS gun-fu (which lets you play it again, maybe in the enemy's face, and get another free shot when it enters), or Custom Modifications to really lean into your sub-par weapon (and you still get to use it on the last shot when the gun is discarded, since the reaction happens just before it leaves play. Sadly it doesn't help you on the Act of Desperation attack).

Anyway, I think this card is really fun and potentially worth playing in any deck that gets value out of recurring their discard pile. It's not broken, and probably not even great, but it is a nice little extra value card to fill out your deck. We are at the point in the game where "cute value card" isn't really good enough unless you're building a more casual deck, but keep an eye out for this one just in case that's your thing.

This card seems to be worth one or two off-class slots in Jim Culver and Dr. Elli Horowitz relic-focused deck, for cracking monsters' heads with empty Flashlight, Enchanted Blade, Grotesque Statue, surplus The Chthonian Stone, or, of course, for maximum style points, the Jim's Trumpet itself, reenacting the "And now, the drum solo!" scene from Futurama: www.youtube.com