Laboratory Assistant

Laboratory Assistant

George Barnaby's new best friend, alongside Mr. Lawrence Carlisle! After some deck-testing, I found the influx of cards compounded with the increased maximum hand size to be a great boon for Mr. Barnaby, who is often grappling with being low on cards, both in hand and underneath him, due to his high turnover rate. Did you draw Cast Adrift at an unfortunate time? Fret not, you can hang onto two of the essentials in your hand thanks to this lovely companion!

Tsunami25 · 4
Agreed, also Arcane Enlightenment helps, if you plan to use Occult Lexicon or other Tomes. — ataniker · 17

Gravedigger's Shovel

Gravedigger's Shovel

How does the 2 clue getting ability of this interact with ad hoc. Ad hoc stats you can ignore all cost. According to the rulebook, everything before the colon is the cost. No technically the removing from game effect ist after the colon, but it also states "instead" impying that the removing from game is actually the cost. Does this mean I can actually simply discard this with ad hoc and get 2 clues?

Xetolosch · 3
It's still part of the cost, even if appended that way after the colon, so you ignore it. See also: https://arkhamdb.com/card/08080 — AlderSign · 423
For about a year we didn’t have an answer to that question, but the latest FAQ clarified that “ignoring all costs” can never ignore effects that remove cards from the game or exile them. — Eudaimonea · 6

Determined

Determined

I usually consider Determined to be a dead draw.

The majority of the events you're going to be playing don't have tests on them.

In a build where you're fighting exclusively with events they'll see a bit more play, but it's just +1 skill value (or +2 with both copies) that takes up space in your hand and that you might lose to an autofail.

There's no good skill card synergies in her current card pool to make playing around Determined interesting, like how Vincent has Grisly Totem for his On the Mends or Bestow Resolve for Carson's "As you wish" (both of which are much more less conditional skills anyways).

My hunch is that they inserted these into Marion's deck to deliberately hamper the power of her investigator ability, forcing you to draw crappy skills instead of keeping the event value train chugging.

mordequess · 96
I already played Marion and was immensely grateful for this cards. If you build your deck a bit around it (as you have to for some cards) this offers you a near constant +2. True, most cards this applies to are for the fighting role, but then again, what else are you going to do with an investigator whos highest stat is combat? — AlderSign · 423
Marion has a completely viable non-intellect cluever build with Scene of the Crime, Lesson Learned, Evidence!, Interrogate, On the Trail, even Shed a Light, Look What I Found with Breach the Door. Only two of those cards are enhanced by Determined — mordequess · 96
Yeah, but the cards you mention also push you pretty hard toward fighting (or how else are you going to trigger Evidence! without consciously circumventing her combat skill?), so I wonder what those other deck slots are filled with. Maybe just try it out, for me it worked wonders. — AlderSign · 423
I really like the idea of this card. It seems like they wanted her to be able to use those 3s in intellect and agility, or else they'd have given her more willpower, like most Guardians. But surprisingly, there are very few investigate or evade events she can even play. How odd. — OrionAnderson · 133

Transfiguration

Transfiguration

So what else can you do with this card? The first two things that come to my mind:

1) Get Lola Hayes's versatile and combo-enabling card pool access without being restricted by her roles.

2) Fun times - supercharge Diana Stanley or George Barnaby via staring out as Sefina Rousseau!

3) Norman Withers finally being able to play Yaotl!

( 4) Save yourself from the terrible statline of Lost Homunculus.)

AlderSign · 423
What is the combo with Lola? Everyone is all excited to play her with this card but I have yet to hear anyone suggest anything useful to do with Lola + Transfiguration. — Pseudo Nymh · 67
Lola has text on her front that prevents her from using abilities from more than one class at a time. If you use this to change to any other investigator she no longer has that text, so you can activate all your abilities freely. Lola is one of very few investigators whose investigator front card text is an active detriment, so getting rid of that detriment **and** adding another ability of your choose is pure goodness — NarkasisBroon · 13
So perhaps the reason you haven't heard any specific proposals is because there are so many. Turning into literally any investigator gets rid of her restriction, **and** gives her a new ability of your choice. For my part I'm most interested in transforming into Norman or Winifred. Norman because you get his look at the deck ability, and have a crazy deck to use it with. Winifred because you get her commit draw ability, but your deck can have astronomical atlas and almost any skill in the game. Any skill of level 3 or below, because of lolas deckbuilding — NarkasisBroon · 13
What I'm asking is WHY Lola's card pool makes this investigators better? What does Lola add to the equation? The way Transfiguration breaks the game is letting you get high level cards into decks that can't normally take them. What can Lola offer thats better than level 4-5 cards? — Pseudo Nymh · 67
@Pseudo Nymh: It's the fact that you get level 0-3 cards of 3 different classes. No other investigator offers that potential, at least not without additional restrictions (e.g. Charlie Kane, who can take level 0-5 Ally assets). They probably printed the disadvantage on Lola's investigator card to disallow strong synergies between those, and like NarkasisBroon suggested, there are many. If you're looking for examples I think that's better discussed on Lola's page itself. — AlderSign · 423
Since the review's first point is that Lola is great with Transfiguration I really don't think I'm out of line to discuss Lola's use of the card. I observe that I still haven't heard an example of a combo that Lola can set up better than another investigator, but I'll leave it at that. — Pseudo Nymh · 67
My mistake, the situation is even better, now that I remember Lola doesn't choose classes at all, she simply has access to all of them (corrected it in the review). Apart from that, here is more for you to observe, Pseudo "Tough Crowd" Nymh: Translolaration is the answer every time you ask yourself why you can't include this particular card in your deck, although it would synergize sooooo well with your investigator (e.g. having Guard Dog (2) in Daniela Reyes). So, if being Amanda Sharpe with access to an s-load amount of skills besides her Practiced ones and all kind of additional actions (e.g. Ace in the Hole) isn't enough to convince you I don't know what is. — AlderSign · 423
@Aldersign thanks for providing some examples. Thanks also for the sweet nickname, I may go by Tough Crowd Nymh from now on. :) Re-reading my comments this morning I feel that I've not done a very good job establishing where I'm coming from and why I’m having such a hard time seeing what everyone else is seeing in this combo. Perhaps I will clarify my position (and spin off this conversation) into its own review. Thanks everyone for your replies. — Pseudo Nymh · 67
@Tough Crowd Nymh: Happy to help! I too am a friend of skepticism, though, so I think I got your point (indeed, my review is quite minimalistic and thin). I bow my head to the maturity of your comment and am looking forward to a follow-up review :) — AlderSign · 423
A way to improve any deck without big combos would be permanent cards like 2x studious, 2x another dolar, stick to the plan and bewitching,.. — Django · 5171

Transfiguration

Transfiguration

Look at City of Archives...

"Body of a Yithian: During the setup for this scenario, each investigator is instructed to replace their investigator card with one of the Body of a Yithian investigator cards."

and then:

"Each investigator’s deck remains the same, but for the duration of this scenario, they must use a Body of a Yithian investigator card, and therefore cannot use any of their investigator’s abilities."

Does this card potentially break the scenario? Can you choose an investigator, with a normal stat line, that comes close to your original investigator or better suits your deck?

thakaris · 199
On the one hand the rules text "for the duration of this scenario they MUST use a Body Of A Yithian investigator card" prevents the playing of Transfiguration. On the other hand the card is explicitly intended to break the game, so who knows? — Pseudo Nymh · 67
Cannot should be absolute, so y — Tharzax · 1
Cannot is absolute, so I think you aren't allowed to use the investigator ability anyway. But you get the statline? — Tharzax · 1
But funnily enough Body of a Yithian is part of your collection, so you can be one in any scenario now (: — AlderSign · 423
Same goes for Shattered Self, of course. — AlderSign · 423
Transfiguration uses the ‘as if’ phrasing so it doesn’t replace the investigator card, Body of a Yithian in this case. It just changes the text on the investigator card. Therefore the second ‘must’ clause is not violated by using Transfiguration which would therefore work normally. — Sayre · 1
I think it's clear that when it says "cannot use any of their investigator's abilities" it refers specifically to the abilities of your original card, otherwise you wouldn't be able to use the abilities of the Yithian card. — Killbray · 12690
Therefore if you transfigurate into a completely different investigator, logically speaking you should be able to use those abilities. — Killbray · 12690
Another funny one: The TCU prologue investigators. — AlderSign · 423