Unfortunately, this is probably one of the worst cards in the game and on the same page as Kukri as that it will never ever see anybody play it if they want an optimal deck. It is a shame that this card has one of the most beautiful artworks i have seen but can never find space in any deck that i make.

If they changed it to something like "After this test ends : Add 2 bless tokens to the chaos bag and remove 2 curse tokens from the chaos bag" it would still not see much play, but atleast you could maybe squeeze it in somehow if you are having fun with bless and curse mechanics. We already have Tempt Fate that for fast action give you 3 of both, so maybe this card could have been something similar, but with it not having any icons and requiring you to fail a test so you can get 2 pesky curse tokens out or add just 2 bless ones in if that is what you need is just a complete nonsense!

Very sad, and in a way a complete waste of already limited space that was saved for player cards in The Innsmouth Conspiracy, i wish we have gotten something playable!

This thing was made for Yorrick to turn enemies into a thin red paste. It pairs very well with On the Hunt and Scene of the Crime (you can use the single attack feature to do two attacks on the enemy in the above scenario, or galvanize to do it all in the same turn). Throw on some overpowers and a vicious blow or two and it's basically a one and done weapon for all but the most spongy bosses.

Definitely a monster slayer and if your survivor is focused on that, great. If you aren't though, pretty expensive and action intensive.

Edit: As FHV launches this card also got a strange new use... throwing it away. Wilson is able to ad hoc this for hilarious damage, and can recur it fairly easily with Pushed to the Limit. Both of these attacks completely ignore the three action cost, enabling him to do it fairly regularly and surprisingly for big hits. It feels weird buying a card to throw it away, but it is surprisingly effective.

Out of all the resource dump/pay-to-win playable assets in its suite of cards (Hyperawareness, Arcane Studies, etc.), I think this upgrade should see the least play for two reasons:

1.) Resource economy. I saw this mentioned in passing in a comment on a Hard Knocks (2) review, but wanted to more strongly state it here since level 4 would be more of a commitment and restricts it to mainline Rogues (watch there be some investigator that takes Talent assets up to Lvl 4 or something): Rogues have the easiest access to resources; don't underestimate that. Not just in class cards, but even in investigator abilities for some of them. If you're so strapped for resources that you need a resource discount on this card, as a Rogue, then you'd be better off investing in something that gives you more resources or a greater effect than just a +2 each turn. After all, you have 4 XP to burn.

Sidebar: Personally, I would even posit that Hard Knocks (2) isn't worth the purchase. It does have much more off-class potential, but so do a lot of resource-gain Rogue cards. The argument could be made that you're buying resource discounting in the same card slot with (2), and when it comes to off-class uses of pay-to-win cards, you can be using them for any number of reasons depending on the economy and card slots of your deck; I don't want to be stringent on that, but honestly I really don't think it's worth the XP in my opinion. Not as strong an opinion as for Hard Knocks (4), though, which brings me to....

2.) The price tag. Having replenishing skill buff every round is really nice, but as a Rogue, you have much better and much more EXPENSIVE XP buys than this to consider. The vast majority of Exceptional cards are Rogue cards, and only two of them (standard disclaimer: "as of this review") offer multiple versions for incremental upgrading, so you'll be needing to save and ration XP if you're interested in their purchases. Even apart from spending XP for resource gain, there are many other (sometimes pricey) cards that utilize resource hoarding/spending better than a Lvl 4 card that gives you 2 extra "resources" per round. XP budgeting is important in general, but especially as a mainline Rogue.

I'd steer clear of this variation of Hard Knocks. The upgrades to this suite are meant to save you resources and make the card trigger more often as a result, but this is just the wrong class for this sort of an upgrade.

Heavily underrated card.

Partnering with a curse based Mystic, this card gives you testless free clues and fills the curse engine. It can be used to power a Tides of Fate to turn those into a bless and pull them out with favor of the sun. Or you can just deal with the curses and accept you can't pass tests, which on the higher difficulties you can't anyway.

Basically this card provides excellent curse generation, no additional mythos and two testless clues for only 1 exp.

I'm surprised nobody's written a review of this card. I suppose that's because we're all unified on our thoughts on it: it's... well, it's really fucking good.

Oh right, there's a 200 character limit. Let's talk about why it's so good.

Decks need resources. Whether that translates to literal cash or lines of communication to whatever you think resources are, you need them to play your shit. And while the rest of the group is starting with five, our good friend Preston here essentially starts with NINE - enough to pay for even the stingiest of friends to help out on turn one without wasting an action making a buck. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, since you have those four resources available to you EVERY TURN, to do whatever you want with - none of those silly type restrictions like the triple class EotE cards have. Wanna take all of them on your last action and hoard your cash for later? Go ahead. Wanna live the poor life while still feeding your hobbies from behind the scenes? You betcha. Late on payments? A trifle.

So... uh... yeah. Is good.