I'm not sure why the designers are so dedicated to making it difficult to get an extra arcane slot. An extra ally slot is more powerful, yet Charisma is way cheaper and more efficient than this card. It is true that a lot of characters would really like to have an extra arcane slot, but that is because the arcane slot limit is kind of an annoying inconvenience that would be cool to circumvent, not because it is some vital part of game balance that would be super powerful to overcome. Yes, it would often be worthwhile and convenient to play a third spell, but not at the cost of nearly doubling the cost of a spell (is that third spell you are playing really worthwhile when it costs an extra three resources and a card?). And on top of that this card still has a significant downside that it sits in your hand useless until you actually need to play a third spell. Again, Relic Hunter lets allows you to break the accessory limit as a permanent (!) for no cost other than 3 XP, so why does this card have to be so expensive? I’d think it was still a bit pricey, but more reasonable, if it had a resource cost of 2. A resource cost of 3 just seems mean for a card that does nothing but permit you to then pay for another card which is probably not even one of your best two spells (since those are in your first two slots).

This is not just a good card when played in a specialized way to maximize its benefits. I want to make it clear that this weapon is also very useful as just a general purpose weapon in the Survivor weapon pool. At the time of this writing, survivors without access to weapon-oriented classes have a very limited selection of weapons, and this can be the most reliable available weapon if you don't want to deal with the weird limitations of the other survivor weapons. The Fire Axe is a great weapon, but it forces you to give up all your money when you use it, which is really annoying if you don't want to play that type of character. And the Baseball Bat is also a great weapon, but aside from requiring two hands, it can suddenly disappear at any time and leave you without a weapon. The Meat Cleaver may look like a weird weapon because the way it manipulates sanity, but it really isn't that difficult for a normal character to use. You do not actually need to reduce your sanity to three to use the weapon as a + 1 bonus is still just as good as a machete, and while your sanity does tend to go down when using the weapon, it is not absolutely essential to play with Peter Sylvestre; it is pretty common that it gives you back the sanity you lose, so your overall sanity loss is usually pretty slow, and survivors have lots of other ways to soak some horror if necessary. In any case, the reality is that if you want to be serious about fighting you normally need more than one weapon in your deck so you can actually draw one when you need it, so even if Meat Cleaver is not your very favorite weapon, it is still available as a perfectly functional weapon to round out your deck.

Too bad you can't discard Dissonant Voices with this. Yeah, I know, you could do it on somebody else, but not on yourself. Bummer.

Where it would be great, though, is with Farsight. Healing damage and horror is usually a hard sell because of all the actions it costs you...but a FAST heal of up to 6 horror among the whole team? Yes, please!

Best combo with Olive McBride. Olive helps to find both and and Covenant prevents Olive's penalty, resolving 2 tokens. Note that after you trigger Paradoxical Covenant, you don't need to reveal additional tokens for revealed & . Of course, you could trigger Paradoxical after you reveal all tokens; but, Paradoxical is auto-fail.

Here is probability table for Paradoxical Covenant. This table assumes that the bag has 16 tokens and no reveal another token effect. Row is the number of bless tokens, and column is the number of curse tokens (or vice versa).

Normal case (16 tokens) (%)

Olive case (16 tokens) (%)

J-Fine case (16 tokens) (%)

Additional note: Unlike Olive, Jacqueline Fine has less effective. This is because both & have "reveal another token" effect, and Olive resolves two tokens, so that Olive could trigger Paradoxical if she reveal both from first 3 tokens, but Jacqueline doesnot.

Normally I think of Enchanted Blade as a weapon designed for guardians, since the additional cost of an arcane slot means nothing to them but is very painful for mystics. But since this version of the weapon can only be taken by mystics, I thought it was an interesting exercise to compare it to a spell instead, Shriveling (3) in particular, which has the same resource and XP cost, and compared to spending one charge on the blade, is the same number of uses for the same damage.

To make this comparison directly you have to pin down the relative willpower and combat ability of the mystic. I feel that a mystic whose combat is only two points below their willpower (for instance, Jim Culver with St. Hubert’s Key, or Akachi without a willpower bonus) is a relatively muscular Mystic who would be a good candidate to wield a blade, so I made the following comparisons assuming combat equals willpower minus 2:

Advantages of Enchanted Blade:

1. Allows you to spend two charges on a single attack for double the bonus. This is a huge advantage since it is actually very efficient to do so when fighting an enemy where the extra damage is useful.
2. Enchanted Blade can be used without spending charges, and is equal in combat ability to the Sword Cane for this purpose, without having to spend the extra card and resources to play the Sword Cane, and without the limitation of having to exhaust it.
3. Enchanted Blade does not have the risk of causing horror damage.

Advantages of Shriveling:

1. Compared to using the Enchanted Blade and only spending a single charge, Shriveling gives you +1 fight ability.
2. A Mystic is likely to have lots more ways to commit cards with willpower bonuses or otherwise boost willpower, fewer ways to commit cards with combat bonuses or otherwise do anything to boost the fight ability on Enchanted Blade.
3. This card can be upgraded to Shriveling (5), which is a very impressive upgrade and is much better than the blade if you frequently fight foes with 3 health or with 5+ health.
4. Some decks may find it helpful that this is a spell rather than an item (such as a deck using Arcane Initiate).
5. Does not require a hand slot. If you use your hand to hold a Sword Cane, you can use it to evade, which Enchanted Blade cannot do. Or you have the option of holding something else in that hand.
6. In order to keep using the Enchanted Blade’s ability to fight without charges, you have to keep it in play eating up a spell slot. If you play Shriveling and Sword Cane instead, you can replace the Shriveling with a new spell once you run out of charges, and the Sword Cane will stay in play.

After doing the comparison, I felt the Enchanted Blade is more impressive than I first thought. I don't think either the blade or the spell clearly wins the comparison, it depends on the character, but the blade looks like a perfectly reasonable choice for the deck of a Mystic with good combat ability, despite costing a spell slot.