This started off as a traditional review and turned into more of a rant. Just... take that into consideration when you read this. I write my reviews front to back and seldom go back to revise or add additional pieces of text(This is one of the rare exceptions).

Ah, bad ol' Overzealous. Having this in your deck is like living in a surveillance state. You're never sure when you're going to get screwed but you are constantly living in paranoia of it coming if it ever comes. I'm not entirely sure why FFG decided to bundle this with the CH2 Sore Set. Maybe they're sadistic. Maybe they're making up for some of the weaker(hah) basic weaknesses in the set(Pursued and Wounded come to mind). But if that's the case then Paranoia and Amnesia are also bundled in this set and having all three of them is certainly a product design decision.

I think this is one of the very few weaknesses in the game that you can't really play around. When you draw this, you're essentially having two things happen at once:

1. You brick your draw. This is the same with every basic weakness, but it still happens.

2. You draw three encounter cards in one turn. Three. Technically two because they happen in different rounds but before you act again.

The first thing is fine, you're expected to draw basic weaknesses then and again and a lot of weaknesses both basic and investigator-specific actually revolve around this(the four from Drowned City, Caught Red-Handed, Dreams of the Flood, and plenty of others).

Obviously, horrifically, the three encounter cards are absolutely brutal. You could pull additional doom or take a big chunk of damage/horror. You could draw three enemies. Or you'll just get a mix of a clusterfuck of no good, evil stuff coming your way.

I think my biggest concern with this card is packaging both this and Paranoia into the Core Set for new players. When we think of basic weaknesses we think of the standard to remove treacheries that have various downsides or a one and done treachery. Most of the brutal weaknesses in the game fall under the latter. Paranoia, Overzealous, Dendromorphosis(which doesn't fit this but is still a very brutal weakness for most investigators), Amnesia, Offer You Cannot Refuse, and Indebted are in my opinion the worst weaknesses in the game. I'm sure I missed a few but those are the heavy hitters that come to mind.

Paranoia you can play around by playing more aggressive with your resources. Amnesia you can relatively do the same but with cards you play or commit. These are both very bad weaknesses, but there is still some counterplay and it changes up how you play your deck. Dendromorphosis is similar as well, putting you in a mindset that your hand slots are transient and that you'll want to be careful with how you manage them.

What is the counterplay for Overzealous? Get lucky on skill checks? Draw three nothing-burgers? Draw two enemies as an enemy-handler? I don't know! I don't think there is any. You draw it and your whole day is ruined. At least for Paranoia and Amnesia you can be careful and prepare for their respective arrivals!

My biggest concern is having these three of the most historically brutal weaknesses put in the very first release of Chapter 2. I understand that these are iconic. Veteran players are going to be familiar with them. I feel awful for the people who sleeve up the Joe Diamond starter decklist in the Core Set 2026 rulebook and are getting into AHLCG for the first time. They're almost certainly going to draw into it if they use his ability nearly every single turn and it's going to be a lesson in pain. What was the rationale for this? Joe Diamond draws a lot therefore he should be punished by drawing into Overzealous? He'd be punished for drawing into every weakness in that regard. It would be circular logic. Why not give him a different weakness instead so that new players can feel a bit more comfortable for their first time playing? What would happen when they're in their very first scenario and they draw into it? It would feel unfair. That they couldn't do anything to play around it. But that's not true! They could have played around it by using their ability less and leaning away of the theme of the investigator, which is just contradictory in how the investigator plays out. And don't even get me started on Dexter Drake getting Paranoia. It's like they want to punish those two investigators' starter decks for playing them as intended. It doesn't make any sense and it just pisses me off.

Art direction, flavour text, and just overall theming of a card is very important to me. I design custom cards and investigators and it's possibly my favourite part of doing so because each card is the option to tell a little story. The art compared to Overzealous (Path to Carcosa) is exactly the same except for the lighting. For some reason Overzealous (Core 2026) is lighter and detracts from the overall theming of the card. It seems more light-hearted and less seriousness as opposed to the dimmer and moodier lighter of the original. Furthermore, the flavour text just comes off as cheesy to me? Both of them are cheesy to be fair, but I feel like the original flavour text is better. I'm worried for the art direction as a whole for Chapter 2 onwards as cards like Hunting Dog, Perception, Hand-Crank Flashlight, and Studious concern me. That's not to say that there are some bangers out there like Bodyguard, Resilience, Sharp Rhetoric, Decisive Strike, Will of the Cosmos, Soul Link, Aleksey Saburov, and Guts (Core 2026) all look incredible and in my eyes, feel like Arkham. I think part of why this shift in art is happening is because they've nearly ran out of usable art from FFG's original Call of Cthulhu LCG. Many, many cards in both AHLCG's player and scenario cards, utilise art from CoC LCG. Jack "Brass" Brady / Steeped in Violence, Altar of the Blessed, Dabbler in the Unknown, Danny O'Bannion's Crony, Notebook Sketches, The Cornered Man, Hatchet Man, Antediluvian Dreams, The Spawn of Madness, Doctor Bancroft / Military Historian, Hamu IV 1:13 / "The heavens speak the Truth...", Displaced, Norman Blackwood, Sr. / Crafty Veteran, On the Lam, Jeff Harson / Manic Musician, Seven Cryptical Books of Hsaan / Secrets of the Outer Gods, Theosophist, Bending the Rules, Eschatologist... you get the point. A genuine large amount of art from this game was reused from CoC LCG, but they're running out of usable art because most of the art is dated and wouldn't fit the artstyle of AHLCG.

But yeah, that's that.

Can we just take a moment to parse how fucking cool this is? Like, Jesus Christ on a bicycle. This is like "I'll see you in hell!" and Ghastly Revelation which were thematically wonderful already and this just takes it up an extreme. "I'll see you in hell!" is possibly one of my favourite cards thematically(based on the art, title, flavour text, and effect all working together. I just wish I could find a high res art of it somewhere)... but Ultimate Sacrifice? It is what it says on the tin. It's The Ultimate Sacrifice.

What is even happening in the art? Are they ascending to the heavens? Are they getting hit by some particularly nasty vomit? A smite from god? I have no clue what is happening here but it looks badass.

But where is the flavour text????? FFG, there's space right there! And the creative team decided yeah, this is fine without flavour text, let's just ship it out. ???????

IF THERE WAS ANY CARD IN THE GAME THAT DESERVED FLAVOUR TEXT IT WAS THIS ONE

Rant aside, this card is hilarious. I have not played with it yet but I think it's really, really fun in theory. Who knows how this works in practice. It's so goofy I don't even know where to begin.

You could use this as a way to leave a scenario early and go home and have a beer or something if you're absolutely sick of playing Arkham in the year 2026. It's like Carolyn Fern with Sledgehammer and hitting rats for every single one of your turns.

You could take a sharpie and scribble away the Max once per game. text and go infinite with you or a friend or two friends if you're lucky or hell, even three friends if you somehow have three of those!

You could realistically use this like End of the Road but make sure you stick near the resign location so you don't tragically die like a martyr. Make sure you also have life insurance so your family is marginally better off.

I think the best use of this is genuinely "I'm outta here!", which is, another thematic card. We did it. We found a use for "I'm outta here!" aside from using it to cheese Doom of Eztli. Congratulations. Let's give ourselves a big pat on the back for this. This is probably the best combo out there for this card and lets you use the most of your actions and guarantee you survive without taking the trauma. You'll want to lean into fighting or support so you don't gather too many clues to screw your team over if you play it early. It would also be usable in Solo play. Dexter Drake, Dexter Drake with a cooler signature, ||Lola Hayes, or Jim Culver are all of the investigators capable of using this combo unless I missed one or two and look like a fool.

This is one of the best signature events in the game, and is not even close, only Bury Them Deep can even compare. Just being able to search your whole deck for an action for any spell or item you want in one action for free is incredible, being able to immediately play it with a cost reduction without worrying about enemies is even better.

• Need to Investigate? This can get you Second Sight, Eyes of the Dreamer, Eye of Chaos Sixth Sense, Clairvoyance, or Rite of Seeking immediately and reduce their cost to a manageable amount

• There is an enemy on top of you? Fetch Shrivelling , Wither, Azure Flame. Armageddon, Breath of the Sleeper, Mists of R'lyeh, Ineffable Truth, Shroud of Shadows, Shadowmeld, Suggestion, Blur or whatever else you are running

• Have all the spells you need? You can still use it to find hand items like Scroll of Prophecies, Ceremonial Sickle, Onyx Pentacle, Dowsing Rod, Enchanted Blade or Sword Cane or accessories like Holy Rosary, Bloodstone or Crystal Pendulum

• Somehow have NOTHING left to search for? Just commit it! It has fantastic icons new Dexter very much cares about!

This a fantastic card for its own effect, but there yet again something else fantastic about it: its traits!

It's a Trick and Spell: now, being a Trick doesn't do much beside having synergy with Chuck Fergus, but being a Spell opens it up to a lot of combo pieces you were probably gonna run in the first place. I was planning myself to build around Speak to the Dead to resuse, but as Tharzax pointed out in the comments, that is only the tip of th iceberg: you can also fetch it with Arcane Initiate, sacrifice health to shuffle it into your deck wtih Ritual Dagger or get multipe uses of it with Dayana Esperence!

Overall, this is just a fantastic event in every single way, with not only only a great effect, but also a lot of synergy with Mystic tool: a worthy successor to Molly Maxwell and something that blows Showmanship out of the water!

Too many people are sleeping on this card. For 1 xp you get a powerful asset that requires a little bit of set-up. In order for this card to be really worth it I think you need at least 3 Classes for this to be a very good card, but that really isn't too difficult through multi-class cards, permanent cards, and several others, and when you get it for 4-5 it feels incredibly strong, usually allowing you to almost double a turn over, getting all the moves you want, and heck, sometimes even using the charges to just draw cards or gain resources is pretty good.

Yes the actions can't be used to play stuff or use the fancy weapons, but they can be used to investigate/evade/fight with Mind without spending actions which is honestly already beating most of the evade spell assets in the game.

Ive been playing it in Original Dexter Drake where it has felt insanely good.

Agnes?

When I first saw this card the thought of being able to put Agnes Baker in my deck sounded great.

When I got to play it, it did not disappoint. The cost of 3 feels quite expensive for most mystics, but the payoff feels great.

• being able to deal 3 damage with a lvl 0 shrivelling
• being able to nuke some 1HP enemy on a failed treachery
• killing annoying aloof enemies with 1HP (looking at you Whippoorwill)

The list could probably go on.

Now, this does seem harder to trigger than Agnes Baker for the sole reason that you most likely wouldn't run horror self inflicting cards like Painkillers or Forbidden Knowledge just to fuel this, like you would do with our dear waitress. Still, even without the ability to trigger this on command, it feels amazing and horror is usually dealt out quite freely anyway, so you will almost always find a way to use this, if you need to.

The new version of Dexter Drake will particularly like this, which makes sense seeing as both cards were released in Core2026.

• A cost of 3? No problem for Daddy Dexter as you want to have a solid money engine anyway to fuel your ability
• Only 3 uses? No problem for Daddy Dexter as you can simply bounce this before it dies if you feel the need to keep it running, more than likely no caring about the associated resource cost to re-play this.
• Body slot? Can't think of anything else that you would badly want as a mystic. Sure there are alternatives, but nothing comes to mind that is a staple and something you absolutely can no afford not to take. More often than not mystics simply don't use this slot at all (until now that is, all hail the cloak).

Plus, flavor wise, who doesn't love the thought of having a super cool aetheric energy cloak/shield type of thing in their arsenal, being able to absorb part of the mythos' powers and throwing them right back in its face!