Chapter 2 review

The Polished Cane allows Rogues to attack with a boost from their (typically strong) stat. Note this is still a Combat test so you need to commit or icons to these (and not icons). As you can evade the enemy with an over-success of 2, in some ways this allows you to target the weaker of an enemy's fight or evade value to exhaust them (either with an attack from the Cane, or a conventional evade action).

An unsung beneficial feature of the Cane is pinning Elusive enemies if you manage to trigger the auto-evade. "Succeed by" is checked during the test, while Elusive triggers after an attack resolves and only if the enemy is ready (which they no longer are). Chapter 2 seems to be leaning into Elusive being a common feature on enemies (especially in the Children of Blood campaign) and so the Polished Cane can be extremely useful in these situations.

In terms of how you want to use this, it's a nice means for Trish to kill Black Chamber Operative in a single card. You can lean into combat more with any Rogue if pairing to M1903 Hammerless (scoring the evade and damage with the Cane, and then continuing to shoot them with your gun) - and with André specifically this triggers your additional action allowing up to 7 damage in a turn (almost Guardian levels of damage, and with the enemy exhausted). While Rogues won't often want to run dual weapons, Prestidigitation makes it very easy to flit between Thieves' Kit and weapons on the fly - so it's not necessarily an either/or situation.

Overall I think the Cane is very good. The fact that it test is a necessary balancing feature, as most Rogues typically won't want to run many cards with combat icons in their decks (unless we get a high Rogue at some point in the future for Chapter 2).

Ask yourself whether you're losing to health or the doom clock more often and how polarized the defense on your team is. This might be good in your deck if your answers are "often" and "very".

You can save a lot of actions if you assign the enemy to the fighter every round for 3 rounds. If you have Monterey Jack, keeping will checks away from him can be a big deal.

Most of the time, I'd rather draw/spend xp on something that actually helps me deal with enemies or finish the scenario faster.

As someone who just finished a run through Hemlock with Wilson and Alessandra Zorsi, let me share a few takeaways.

• Don't fall for the Ad Hoc trap. Building your entire deck around the potential of this card will be pretty disappointing. It's cool if it shows up on time, but unless you have a powerful support seeker, it'll end up getting committed as a skill card more often than you'd like.

• You can get pretty rich off your discount, enough for the checkless Dynamite Blast to pay off really nicely.

• Having a strong dodge on the team was huge for the times he gets caught in "clue mode".

Cards stronger than expected: Jury-Rig, Chemistry Set, Dynamite Blast

Jury-Rig usually feels to action costly to me, but it really made the difference with Fingerprint Kit and Chemistry Set. Having the certainty of Dynamite Blast is so nice on someone who scrapes by on his checks so often.

Cards weaker than expected: Tinker, Pushed to the Limit, Gravedigger's Shovel

I realized that Pushed to the Limit would only have really shined if I had access to Short Supply. Tinker got used as a skill card pretty often, it just didn't give practical value despite getting drawn regularly.

This card has the exactly same illustration as Establish Motive and that's kinda lame. In order to reach 200 characters I'm just gonna say I'm not surprised there is not another review for this card. It is simple and efficient. His main effect is a modified version of Emergency Cache and sometimes will even draw 2 cards without even spending 1 action. Nothing much too say. You don't need to build an entire deck around it because of Joe's ability and even when the drawing requisite is not met it is still a modified version of Emergency Cache (in other words: very good).

This card's flavor is amazing! You are studying the nature of the entity you are facing/will face. By looking at the top 3 cards of the encounter deck you can understand what kind of menace this scenario may bring and through that insight you discover 1 clue. That's why it activates upon REVELATION: you never know or control when this insight will come.

The illustration is the cherry on top. One of your friends must suffer a little bit in order to achieve a greater comprehension of the beast.