Powerful and flexible, Dexter gets my prizes for both most powerful and most potential for the 2026 core investigators. All of chapter one has shown us that five willpower and some spells to make use of it is already the makings of a top tier investigator. Combine that with the strongest signature card of the 2026 core and a fairly mild weakness (easy to deal with and won't even require an action on some board states) Dexter compares well to the top tier investigators from chapter one.

As a baseline his ability lets you play two assets at a time, which by itself is helpful to speed up setup. It may not trigger quite as much as someone like Joe, but it's going to give you some free actions every game regardless of what you do. It can start getting crazy if you add in assets with fast, or equivalent effects like Prestidigitation, which will let you "buy" actions on crucial turns.

The other part of the ability, to return an asset back to hand, is what really pushes his stock up and keep his deckbuilding and potential play patterns unique, fun and open ended. Being able to reset any asset means you can always reload a limited use asset if you need to, but it also means any card with an enter (or exit) play trigger gets very interesting. A unique effect like this is something you will always be able to revisit when new cards are added to the pool. I will really be on the look out for economy and draw effects attached to assets.

I want to sing the praises of this card after seeing it in four player. Our Skids was in a corner of the theater in Carcosa(1), three enemies on him... And instead of getting rescued, played this.

The enemies weren't hunters, and were very annoying to deal with. Unless you could just ignore them and then leave them in the corner, never reentering the encounter deck. That gave the clue Seekers more room to run away and handle the investigation. Wonderful card.

This is a surprisingly rough weakness and I think it's a competition between this and Breaking Point (Isabelle) for the worse investigator weakness in the 2026 core.

I've already seen it cause some very negative game states/experiences. You can (and should) obviously build your deck to prepare for this card, but there are plenty of common board states where you can draw this and end up completely stuck. In larger player counts with a proper fighter it's less of a problem, but it doesn't magically disappear. Trish can't do damage to this on a basic attack even if you draw a zero and evading just causes you to get attacked. It's also resistant to all the Rogue damage options which target or get boosts against exhausted enemies. In short if you have no clues and no weapon then you can't interact with this card and get action locked. So your best course of action is ... skipping your turn and hoping to be rescued.

Imagine drawing this end of T1 in true solo - I guess you either walk to the nearest location with clues and investigate or start drawing to try and find a way to damage this (taking opportunity attacks the whole way and likely being defeated in the next turn or so).

I understand why they didn't want to give this card a lower fight number, because it makes it trivial to deal with in multiplayer but I really wish the forced ability here was limited to once per round to give players ways to interact with this card with basic game actions (even if it's painful and inefficient).

Timely Intervention serves the exact same role as Lucky!, a dedicate that you play retroactively when you're about to fail a test, thereby freeing you to take multiple tests with less risk rather than overdedicating on a single test to make it less likely for you to fail. For the low cost of a card and no resources in your hand (or in Isabelle Barnes' case, a single point of sanity since you can retroactively dedicate Timely Intervention from your discard pile), you have a floating +2 on all Agility and Will tests, and a +1 for everything else.

Who would complain about a 3rd or 4th copy of Lucky! in your deck?

This card pairs extremely well with a Remington Model 1858. Play it cheaply and shoot with it three times, then shoot a fourth time when it reenters your hand (8 damage). Melt bosses with a combo that only needs two cards in hand to execute.

Even better, with the Remington Model 1858, shoot five times in a turn for 10 damage. And you get to keep your valuable 4 exp gun to play again next turn!