Taken at face value this guy is playable but almost unbelievably weak for a 5 XP card. He's got good soak, +1 to a stat, and an ability that pays back his own play cost, if you have expensive insight events to play. But every color but green now has level 0 allies with +1 book, and some of them even generate resources. Compared to a Dr. Milan Christopher or Lawrence Carlisle, he gives a little more soak and a faster pay-back but little else for 5 XP.

But maybe we can make him worthwhile by really leaning in to that burst economy function. This guy is a good candidate for Calling in Favors, since you can spend all his money and then bounce him to hand to get another ally out and then bring him back in with a fresh set of secrets.

Speaking of secrets, the new Enraptured can generate crazy numbers of secrets as a free action, and this guy can turn that into resources.

I won't be surprised if there turns out to be some kind of weird infinite that involves cycling your deck to replay insights over and over that you pay for by enrapturing Archibald here repeatedly.

Still don't like him much if I'm playing fair, though.

Note that Handcuffs can potentially make this ally really effective by attaching to an enemy that also has the Humanoid trait.

This is very common in the Innsmouth Conspiracy campaign, and also weaknesses like Yorick’s Graveyard Ghouls can even put one in your player deck.

Fast, testless damage is really good. But is it so good that it's worth paying this much for? The resource, card slot, and XP costs here are individually reasonable, but collectively steep.

Assuming they were going to attack anyway, guardians can already get extra damage without spending additional actions or taking additional tests with tools like Vicious Blow, and the new Hunter's Mark. Dynamite Blast and Counterpunch offer testless fast damage without even attacking, though they may require taking some damage first. If you're willing to keep swinging away with a melee weapon, cards like Galvanize and Flurry of Blows can pump out a lot of damage.

The resource discount here relies on drawing cards while enemies are around, which implies that you either need fast or opportunity-attack-ignoring draw options, or that you're not the one actually engaged with the foe. That suggests this kind shines best for those rare characters with level 3 guardian access who aren't likely to be built as main fighters, or who need help passing tests. Especially if their off class or ability provides lots of resource generation or draw power.

So maybe this is a card that Carson Sinclair, Sister Mary, Carolyn Fern, and Marion Tavares want to look at. It's going to be especially strong against enemies who reduce all damage to 1 anyway, or 1 point pings have special value for other reasons (such as revealing concealed decoys).

Sadly, although Boxing Gloves can find these for you, it doesn't "draw" them, so you'd need to be rich to make it work. I guess you can pay for them with Prophetic if you really want.

The cutest combo: Be Tommy Muldoon. Stuff three Quick Shot in your Hunting Jacket. Go Toe to Toe with the boss. Profit.

This is cute, but I don't expect it to see much play except when there are special synergies involved.

If you play it with at the correct time, you turn a card, an action, and a resource into 2 cards and a horror heal. That's decent but not exceptional value and you have to jump through a surprising number of hoops to get there.

Most guardian builds tend to be set-up heavy. They're hideously hungry for both draw and resources early in the game because they need to find expensive weapons and allies and get them into play. Then, once they're set up, they tend to be able to coast through the game by relying on the strength of their asset board. They don't really need lots of extra cards in the late game.

If you have this in your opening hand it's pretty dead. Unless you took trauma there's no horror to heal, and until you draw an enemy this isn't getting you through your deck faster than basic draw actions. Even if you have a trauma, healing probably isn't your priority.

Late in a scenario you might need this for the horror heal. But at that point, actions are tight and you might not value the card draw that much. The play restriction could be a problem, especially if you're being hammered by horror treacheries instead of pulling enemies.

Maybe the card is supposed to shine midgame when you draw an enemy with no weapon, or after using up your ammo? Then you can play this to draw 2 and look for an answer, plus get the heal as a side benefit. But even though you ignore opportunity attacks on this action, you'll still take one if you play out an asset.

In conclusion: conventional guardians builds will probably be better off running either actionless draw like skill cantrips, a backup weapon or other redundancy for a key card, or a bigger heal/soak option like Something Worth Fighting For or Hallowed Mirror.

Boxing Gloves builds may run this just for spirit trait density, and Marion Tavares probably wants this too, but I don't see much other use.

When this card came out it was very difficult to make it work. There weren't very many rogues that were good at combat and the triggering condition was very unreliable.

Few scenarios have single enemies with 6+ health, other than elites who often ended the scenario when defeated. This meant that you needed to wait to draw multiple enemies and then kill two or more in the same turn, with an action left over to play the event.

In low player counts, you could wait a long time to spawn enough enemies all at once, especially if you needed them all to be in the same place. Then if you missed any attacks, you were likely to end up killing one or both but losing your chance to play the event. To make sure you got the event off, you often had to keep enemies alive intentionally through one or more rounds, which the old play patterns strongly discouraged.

But the game has changed, and I think this card may finally be ready for prime time. Rogues now have two events that let you pull enemies into play on purpose when you need them. Kicking the Hornet's Nest and "Where's the party?". The second one even exhausts the enemy, so you can spend one turn softening it up and then finish it off more easily on the next round. Evasion tech in general has gotten much better and made enemy juggling more feasible. Dirty Fighting builds mix evasion in to your damage plan without losing tempo. And green has picked up much better soak options, too, such as the Lonnie Ritter Leather Coat combo.

With the Drowned's City's release, consider breaking this card out of the binder. Michael McGlen want's to know "Where's the party?", while Lucius Galloway and Kymani Jones are probably happy to String Along some victims.