Good discussion about traits to name. Innate, practiced, gambit, fortune, item, illicit, talent, ally, spell can all be useful.
Apex Strangleweed always feels like it should be stronger in some way. It has retaliate and alert, but both tests are at a fairly low skill level, and you encounter this in the fourth scenario when you should be easily able to clear a 3 test. Losing all actions would be rough were it not for the fact that this is only AoOs. It's also perfectly situated to be killed with one turn of fight actions, with VP that stops it from going back in the deck.
This card would probably be more relevant if it had a per investigator health modifier that kept it around for multiple turns or was harder to cut down. As it stands, It's hard to justify ever grabbing pocketknife to help deal with this card.
So now that this has been Taboo'd, how good is it?
The answer is still very good - what's changed is that the maximum damage per round for a fully invested hammer has dropped to 7 damage (2+2+3) from 9 damage (3+3+3). 7 damage for a full round of attacks is still great. It still interacts with Enchant weapon for the same effect. It still has no ammo issues, it still only costs 10XP for the set.
What this taboo did do was give Lightning Gun a place in the meta again, as the 3/3/3 damage option.
This still requires a lot less overall deck-investment to make good than M1918 BAR, Lightning Gun, or even Chainsaw and with the nerf is probably at the level of a Contrabanded Chicago Typewriter for raw damage output, but has the benefit over the typewriter of being much easier to succeed with.
Did this taboo go far enough? I think it did, in the sense that it's no longer clearly the best 2-handed weapon available for any investigator that can take it. But I can also see the argument that, even if it's not clearly the best, it's still got by far the highest floor of the big 2-handed weapons, since the exhaust is optional and it'll never run out of ammo.
This one shines when Trish Scarborough is your companion. Helps triggering her ability. Upgraded version makes Trish Scarborough even happier.
Whenever my companion (guardian) had enemy engaged with him I tried triggering Trish ability by moving guardian along with me to a location with clue. So I could net 2 clues with Lockpicks in single action. Of course sometimes there was a cost to pay for keeping guardian engaged but I was able to successfully mitigate that using Girish Kadakia's self healing ability.
During my Innsmouth run I noticed that Safeguard helps staying away from flooded locations.
Can we please lift this 2 hundred length review constraint?
The 200 character limit is there for a reason, and that reason is to discourage low effort or spam posts. Annoyingly, people don't realise that and still post 'good in this character' reviews, random questions they could ask somewhere else, or stupid memes, and then just fill in extra characters on top of that.
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SSW
· 209
But what makes it good in combination with Trish? The enemy engage her and prevent so an investigation without an attack of opportunity. You move after the other player moves (not like the upgrade)
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Tharzax
· 1
@SSW: I don't think 200 characters prevents spamming, see no reason for that.
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bugiel_marek
· 21
@Tharzax: If you, as a Trish, are in the same location as your guardian, and he's already engaged with enemy, then you can move to location with clue and guardian can exhaust Safeguard to move along. If that new location has clue then you can use Trish's ability to pick up extra clue or automatically evade enemy.
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bugiel_marek
· 21
What we need is the possibility to remove these non-reviews.
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TheNameWasTaken
· 3
That combo is OK especially if the enemy has retaliate but the enemy readies in the next upkeep phase and you won't evade it for all time. In my eyes there are better way to capitalize of Trishs ability like handcuffs or the new existential riddle.
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Tharzax
· 1
"I don't think 200 characters prevents spamming": No, but some people might reflect, that their review is probably not really worth it to post, if they can't figure out more substantial things to say. And reviews like this onle will likely not gain you the hearts to post more reviews. So there is at least a little incentive to not spam with low efford reviews. You have a reputation of 2, you have written 2 reviews, so until you have posted a decklist, that gets at least a bit of recognition, you will likely not be able to write a third one. (Unless somebody rewardes a heart or star on something previously published by you.)
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Susumu
· 362
@Tharzax: it's not about evading him, but picking up extra clue (sometimes it may be evading, if that's what's best in a given moment). There may be better cards for leveraging Trish ability but this one you most likely want to have anyhow. It's a free move, potentially each turn. So it has much more wide usage than Handcuffs.
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bugiel_marek
· 21
@Susumu I think you're taking this way too serious. I had a very good experience during my last Innsmouth run on hard with Mark & Trish running this card. Thought I'd point this out, how Safeguard helped me getting more clues, passively. My intention wasn't to collect hearts or provide detailed review.
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bugiel_marek
· 21
I'm not going to argue, that "Safeguard" is not a great card. But that was not, what this review was about.
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Susumu
· 362
@Sasumu, I like to think about those reviews as building a wall. Some guys already laid few layers of bricks. But did not cover everything, as it's impossible (for example because new cards were released). Every now and then new brick or even a new layer of bricks can be laid. Not every review aims at building a new wall, sometimes only a new layer is added, other times that's just another single brick in the wall. And that's that.
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bugiel_marek
· 21
Some readers may wonder why Safeguard is good combo with Trash. I really happy that you also write thoes parts in the review to catch your good idea about the cards.
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elkeinkrad
· 485
Thinking about fun ways to play this card: Sister Mary/Diana play this card on a damage/horror tank. This card with paradoxical covenant & the favors lets you to auto-pass difficulty 8+ tests.
The tank can play the style of taking enemies onto themselves, maybe running survival knife to hit in enemy phase. Sounds fun!
Assuming you had an auto-success effect and this by scenario 1 (think 'in the thick of it' + stroke of luck), what would happen after Agenda 2 of Curtain Call (the first scenario of Carcosa) ?
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aurchen
· 1
I guess one would continue playing without Agenda
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Nenananas
· 251
My Agenda is to have fun.
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MrGoldbee
· 1443