A tremendous card, way better than it looks.

First off John & Jessie Burke feature a beefy tank and they are very much expendable, this is one of those allies that you use twice or so and then are happy to tank damage and horror with before refilling the slot with a different ally. This of course gets expensive so the active ability better be good, which it is.

The ability deals automatic damage, auto-damage is always terrific, weakening enemies so that smaller weapons or just your fists might kill the enemy in one hit, not to mention the luxury of combining damage and movement. Furthermore, this ability allows you to bypass the Aloof keyword, that's a terrific bonus for certain scenarios (and campaigns, right dude?). Every campaign has Acolytes at some point and other 1-hp allies, John & Jessie Burke make a mess of these enemies.

If you want John & Jessie Burke in your deck and tend to do "full-campaigns" with the side scenarios added (as I do), consider doing their scenario before you do Rougarou, their ability to deal ping damage makes a variety of challenges in that scenario outright hilariously easy, not to mention to engage and kill the mutt easily.

In short, John & Jessie Burke boost survivability and your ability to react to enemies around the map.

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Obviously, like Monstrous Transformation, this card is best suited to specific deck types and my recommendation is to try and get this card into an ally based character who juggles Beat Cop, Venturer, Dr. Milan Christopher and other 4-cost characters with Calling in Favors. In this case John & Jessie Burke just become part of the rat-pack that you lug around.

In the absence of Calling in Favors John & Jessie Burke are still great in a deck that has just 1 ally in it, for example 2 copies of Beat Cop or 2 copies of Peter Sylvestre. John & Jessie Burkes's tendency to die away eventually means that they will greatly expand your survivability while you wait for your planned ally.

Finally, if you're a you'll probably consider Well Prepared at some point and John & Jessie Burke synergize wery well with it.

Just as Monstrous Transformation is the dream rewards of a few investigators (Calvin, Preston, and arguably Diana), this might be a side scenario reward that Tommy, Leo, Zoey, and Mark salivate over.

Mark adds "draw a card" to the activation of this ability, Leo massively reduces the cost of playing them and is likely playing them alongside a whole host of allies who have means of dealing one damage. Zoey can combine this with her cross to just smite enemies where they stand.

Though for Tommy, most allies do not have more damage+horror than they do initial cost. Brother Xavier and similar cards reach +1 on the total, meaning you eventually profit if you max them out perfectly. However, you usually break even. The Burkes break even fairly easily, and have the potential of 2 resources of profit. In my experience you often get to cash out an ally for -1 their max, which means the Burkes are capable of breaking even and loading Becky more often than not.

Just have to deal with Egypt being pretty spicy. At least unlike the other two rewards, it doesn't matter how bad dealing with the cultists goes as long as you managed to wake everyone up. No fighter hates the Khopesh of the Abyss either, so if you think you can take the heat, visit Egypt. If you do well on your first excursion you might be able to score a nice weapon for clearing generic monsters.