Thieves' Kit is a very deceptive card, and the natural card to compare it to is Lockpicks (1) due to both of them providing the ability to gain clues utilizing your agility as a handslot.

It is true you probably wouldn't run both, but this card has an almost entirely different use case than Lockpicks, and wants to be in a different kind of deck.

See, Lockpicks is an engine card. The 1 clue you gain is nice, it lets you make progress, but Lockpicks really exists as a card that makes your entire deck run smoother, more than being the thing your trying to do. You run it to enable large over success tests, which are a key component of rogue, through cards such as Lucky Cig Case and especially its upgrade. In most rogues, lockpick is granting you the ability to take a test at some odd 7 on an investigation, and while you need to oversucceed by 2 to keep the picks around forever, its also letting you, if you use it on a shroud 1-3 location, letting you tutor from the top 5 or so cards of your deck every turn, which lets you generally play the best card in your deck for your situation almost all of the time. This is why its really great in rogue combo decks that have way better clue gathering methods they can repeat. The clue is a (very good, you wouldn't run it without expecting a clue) side benefit to the ability to cheese out tests you can dunk on.

Thieves' kit doesn't do anything close to that. In most rogues its going to be sitting at a base skill of 4 or 5, and while it can get more than one clue a turn, it is unlikely to work on its own to actually get you 3 clues a turn on a lot of harder locations. So with the kit, your losing out on that strong tutor and now need to dump skills and resources into the test to consistently find clues with it, but if you can afford to do that, your now getting 6 clues off a card that cost you, in theory, -6 resources. That is a LOT of clues from one card, and if you combo it with Pilfer and Intel Report (which you can probably afford with this card) it makes a really attractive card to try to base a rogue cluever around.

Rogue cluevers always existed, rogues are exceptionally good at picking up a LOT of clues even, but this lets you go 'action by action' and take what you need to clear locations or pass acts, rather than trying to set up some absurd burst of clues that may not even make sense in your situation or even your player count because you need to get 2 clues off 3 locations rather than 6 off 1 location.

More critically, it actually changes the test to agility, which matters a lot for how rogues operate, because it enables a lot of powerful rogue skills that you can't use with lockpicks like nimble, upgraded manual dexterity,and "Watch This". As a bonus, these skills often benefit from being used on tests where you can sort of game a low difficulty value, or use them on demand, which is normally hard to do because agility, willpower, and combat tests sorta happen when they happen, but investigations can be done literally wherever (and are often high value to do whenever). It doesn't matter how much you over-succeed by lockpicks, it won't rocket you 3 locations away while giving you 4 resources.

So Thieves' kit is actually more a payoff card that your building an engine that can boost it consistently around, with either passive agility boosts, pay to pump cards, or skills, that also enables you to build more exclusively around agility, with a higher total potential payoff. You can compare your expected skill boost between Picks and Kit (If you have a very wide gap between your agility and intellect, Kit makes a lot more sense even if your trying to over-succeed), and that is an important dimension, but ultimately the differences are much more fundemental and you should generally 'know' which one you want from the get go, rather than just trying to cram the kit into a deck in place of Lockpicks (even at level 0 it may not make any sense for a given deck!).

The TL;DR?: Picks are selfless utility tools that happen to also get you a lot of clues over the game, rapidly accelerating your setup and increasing your overall consistency. Kit is selfish and build around that defines your ultimate plan in the scenario and gives you more raw value if you support it.

I really like this card with Agnes. At first I wasn't quite sure if it would be worth the slots as she can already be pretty strong with Shrivel and Spectral Razor (Scrounge for Supplies loop) ... so I took it out. I then realized that I relied on it a bit not for damage, but for healing horror, and I suppose saving charges or razors when for a tougher enemy. Put in some Fight or Flight and you can finish off an enemy with your meat cleaver and heal some of that horror.

Hello folks, this review is just another one that gives you insight into how my group changes some cards that never see play, because we realised we hate paying money to have cards sitting in binder from the moment they are pulled out of the pack, so here it goes.

So i think we can all agree that this card is underwhelming. Even in Sister Mary who "wants" to play this card as it is from her cycle and looks like it is made for her, this card just does not pull the weight. If it had +2 fight then maybe, but still would be pretty bad. So like with a lot of cards that are just sitting for years in my collection without ever seeing the light of the sun, we decided to change this card a bit and made the effect of exhaust to add 1 bless AFTER revealing the token. This changed it a bit so that you do not have to exhaust it and pray you kill the enemy if it has 2 health or something like that, or worry why did you not exhaust it in the first hit if you pull the bless one out on the first swing, and you can actually smack it once or twice and then when you see what you pulled you can exhaust it to add that 1 little bless inside the bag. It is a minor change, but now when we build Mary we actually take it, and in solo i was suprised to see myself actually not cutting it out after the first scenario like i did before. Idk, time will show, we may even change it even more and have it give you +2 combat instead of 1, time will show.

In my community, many application of Tool Belt are told and I introduce some of them.

Practical applications:

• Twice usage of sloted/exhausted tools in single slot: Put two tools, one in play area and the other attached in Tool Belts. After trigger first one, swap it with that in Tool Belt and use one more.
  • Example: Lockpicks, Mariner's Compass, Riot Whistle...
• Fight/Investigate flexiblity for tools: Unlike other classes, some of tool is (two-handed) weapon. When you need to fight, use tool weapon; when you need to investigate, use tool for investigator.
  • Tool weapon: Chainsaw, Sledgehammer...
  • Tool for investigation: Old Keyring, Flashlight, Mariner's Compass, Magnifying Glass ...
• Keeping sacrificial asset: After fully uses of supplies (or any other), attach that asset into Tool Belt and throw it away when you meet asset-hate encounter such as Crypt Chill.
  • Rule note: you still can choose the card attached into Tool Belt because 1) it is still asset 2) you still have the control of it 3) it is still in play. (not official ruling, but my interpretation)
  • Old Keyring: If you investigate using Old Keyring with 1 key, you can attach that at during the investigation test. Nevertheless, the test works normally and the last key is removed from that Old Keyring; however, attached Old Keyring is not discarded because the text box is alread blanked so that the effect "If there are no keys on Old Keyring, discard it" does not work. If you want to discard that Old Keyring for some reason, you simply detach it, and then that is discarded. (my rule interpretation)

Funny(?) applications:

• We can make charged Old Keyring with keys having some secrets (in the Tool Belt), since the "Uses (2 keys)" is blanked. Of course, we should distinguish them even if same resource tokens are placed. After that Old Keyring is detached, it's not clear that the charge and secret could remain on it :)
• Attaching Quickdraw Holster with .32 Colt: We could attach Quickdraw Holster thanks to the existance of the Devil from Observed. Then, .32 Colt in Quickdraw Holster now regain hand slot in the Tool Belt :)
• Discarding (non-slot?) tool card: The common way to discard the asset is using the slot limit, but we cannot do this for non-slot asset so that it's hard to discard non-slot asset. Now, if we want to discard non-slot tool, just attach Tool Belt and then discard (or Sleight of Hand) Tool Belt. Is it really useful? Not yet, because non-slot tool is Darrell's Kodak only when I write this review.

I think Caught Red-Handed is wrongly designed weakness. The effect commonly make the player angry. Why? This has two main effect:

1. Ready each enemy at your location or a connecting location.
2. Each hunter enemy at a connecting location moves 1 location toward you.

However, the discard condition only refers "second" condition. Even if the first condition met, Caught Red-Handed is returned to the deck after making all enemy ready. Notice that it's very easy to meet first condition; whereas it's rare to meet second condition.

Finn has free evade action. Thus, it's very common that he has Pickpocketing. After he evade an enemy, he trigger the Pickpocketing, and draw card. What if that card is Caught Red-Handed? Just evaded enemy is ready! In general, no hunter enemy moves so that Caught Red-Handed is returned into his deck. Now, Finn wasted evade, card. However, the weakness is still in deck.