-Sometimes- better than Shortcut, usually worse.

The Truth Beckons is a bulk move card that might save you 3+ actions at once. It's the might that's the defining problem.

At the start of a scenario you'll probably stand faced with a middling map with many places to go, in singleplayer every location is unrevealed, so you're generally moving 1 unrevealed location at a time and never coming back to old spots, which is not what this card does at all. In multiplayer there's WAY more to work with, your buddies can clear the way a bit and open doors for you, as the cluever it's your job to get into the nooks and crannies anyway, that's what this card is for! bridge the gap on big moves in a big party of 3-4 players where it's one player's specific job to get as many clues as possible.

A big let-down is the "unrevealed" clause on a target location, but at least an inaccessible location is still a viable target, so if there's a closed path you can still take some shortcuts. But the unrevealed clause really gets you, because you'll inevitably draw this card once everything is revealed and you're in the endgame mad-dash with no unrevealed stuff remaining, and that's going to make you feel bad and never-ever slot this card again -instead- of Shortcut. In addition to shortcut? Now that's something I might consider!

Bonus clue and automatic dodge. That's pretty good, although it's rather costly at 3 resources and can be hard to slot, all traps are a bit wonky to play with and around.

The obvious goodness is written right on the card, so how to trigger it? An enemy spawning will trigger it, coming into play exhausted. Hunters running into it will cause a trigger. But here's the deal, you can manually get guys into the location too! On the Hunt can fetch a victim. Moving into it with an engaged enemy does the trick, you can even skip the opportunity attack with a Shortcut or Narrow Escape, "Get over here!" gets it done too! The action efficiency is'nt bad, not only are you getting around an enemy for two whole turns this way, you get a clue, which means that playing the card is not actually a tempo loss.

It's certainly better in multiplayer than singleplayer, where there's 2-4 times as many enemies spawning and gumming up actions for everybody.

It's a good card to reenforce the flighty cluever, playing it on top of themselves so they can work on a difficult location for a while, Finn Edwards and Mandy Thompson come to mind. A dedicated protector might take it to guard a big group of characters and contribute clues.

This card lets you experience that unique Wendy Adams feeling of drawing multiple tokens per test!

Anyway, this thing lets you play some games with the tokens you get in a test, it's rather similar to a Lucky! or Live and Learn as a means of guaranteeing success. But here's the deal, I generally like this card a bit less than I like those 0-xp alternatives for that purpose.

The key downside to Third Time's a Charm is that it's played preemtively rather than reflexively, which is a huge timing issue. You dont roll the dice, see something terrible, and reactively fix it, no, you're rolling into a really important test, something hugely impactful like a boosted attack or a life-or-death parlay, which is where you play Third Time's a Charm and pray the bag has mercy, that's where you play a Third Time's a Charm, and even then a Lucky!, Eucatastrophe or Live and Learn might have sufficed.

Of course, there is one really big distinctiong on there. Instead of "you", it's "an investigator". At the end of the day, you dont play Third Time's a Charm because you're about to do the riskiest test of the campaign, you play it before somebody else attempts the riskiest test of a campaign.

.

There is another use, something a little crazy, and this is the thing I'dd be looking into Third Time's a Charm for. I would'nt see this card as a test-beater, rather, a test-perfecter. For those skill tests with layered conditional riders that they really want to try and complete. A or specialist fishing for a combo trigger, they can draw the first token, or even the first two tokens, and reject them if theyre not the / they're looking for. it's a way to fish into a Paradoxical Covenant, a for Jim's .35 Winchester, an , a net +2 for triggers or a net +5 for the Sawed-Off Shotgun.

Third Time's a Charm is there for when you want to win beautifully, and that's why the card-art is about Tango dancers!

Cool card, what wins me over is the straigth flexibility.

• Do you want to beat a test? Dump out some real big tokens!

• Do you fear the token symbols? Use it like a faux-Defiance and remove the scary stuff.

• Are you playing a + combination? Mess with the chaos bag for the sake of cards that need to hit or avoid specific tokens.

• Do you really need card draw and think you can beat the worst the bag can throw at you? Dump out some beneficial stuff.

• Would a specific token brick a card you want to play? (+1 and "Look what I found!", worst pairing ever!).

So, yeah, that's actually a lot of viable strategic options, something skill cards dont typically have in such volume. usually it's just "Hurr, Durr, hit hard.". I'm real happy to see my favourite card type get some nuanced love!

On the note of the card draw bit, which will pull in the interest of many of you, make sure you can actually beat the test, trading a card and a failed action for 2 cards is rather weak, so either make sure youre failing upwards or beating the action.

Finally: The seal mechanic happens before a test, the release mechanic has been set into motion by committing the card, this means that Silas Marsh can commit the card, seal some tokens, draw a token, return the card, resolve the test, return the sealed tokens. If Silas didnt make you all hot and giggly before this card was released, he should now.

For the sake of clarity.

When Enchanted Armor "dies", the only reassinged pain, is the pain you just placed, so if you're playing with some buffs and youre running around with 5 or 6 total pain on there, and you take another point of pain that fails you the test and the armor breaks, you're only reassignigng that bit of pain that broke the camel's back, not the whole pile. This is how I read the card initially and it felt real bad.

So anyway, on the actual correctly read card:

There is'nt much to say. Buff your as high as you can, bring Arcane Studies and/or Physical Training to routinely buff yourself to high heaven, and just keep stacking those tokens high! Brother Xavier can help, so can Holy Rosary. I think you can reasonably expect to soak 4-6 total pain in this way before the dam breaks.

The best part is the straight and simple flexibility of soaking both horror and damage, as required at the time, most of you should be familiar with the bad bookkeeping feeling of loosing an ally because you're taking on too much of one kind of pain.

The downside of the card is the severe reduction in playability if you -dont- build into it, a Diana Stanley or Sister Mary will really make it shine, and so can anybody with Physical Training, but outside of those decks and builds, it's a dud card, especially on harder difficulties.