It's not a terrible card; 2 icons and a "return to hand" effect is a nice hedge against failure, but I am not sure how often this will get played, given that 2 XP in will get you a Peter Sylvestre (2), "Look what I found!" (2), .18 Derringer (2), or 2 copies of Brute Force or Sharp Vision. I suppose Silas might like a situation where he contributes this and something else for, say, a +4 to a skill test, draws badly, then pulls the second card back with his Reaction Ability and this back with its own ability. That would feel pretty good.

If we consider a weakness' strength based on how many actions it takes to get rid of, Tommy Malloy is pretty harsh. His ability basically requires your team to spend three actions, minimum, to off him, which is more than most weaknesses.

There's also very few ways to mitigate the action sink, especially at level 0: you can use one-two punch to get 2 damage in one action, but you just played an event that normally does 4 damage for 2. The other option is Beat Cop, who you'd rather keep around as long as possible. Combine both and you can do it in one action, but you just spent six resources, static +1 combat, some soak and your most damaging event to remove a weakness. I'd rather just blow a whole turn taking basic fight actions, since Tommy's crummy fight stat makes him easy to hit.

In multiplayer someone could evade him, but solo that's really not an option. Even then, someone has to deal with him eventually, eating up your team's actions.

In short, he's really annoying, and will probably take three or more actions to get rid of. At least you can play Glory when you kill him.

AquaDrehz is right that this third version and Parallel Skids's spicy Deckbuilding Options allows you to bring 6 copies of Lucky! (2x each of level 0, 2, and 3) for 10xp. But why stop there?

19 Clove Gar-luck Chicken:

Let's take a closer look at his Additional Options. "When you upgrade a Fortune or Gambit card, you may instead pay the full experience cost on the higher level version and leave the lower level version in your deck (it does not count towards your deck size or the number of copies of that card in your deck)."

So, we start off with a couple of Lucky! (0), and we spend 2xp to upgrade one to Lucky! (2) and leave a special Lucky! (0*) that doesn't count towards size or copies. Now we pay 3xp and upgrade again to Lucky! (3) and leave a second special Lucky! (2*) in our deck. Awesome. Here's where things take a turn. We spend 1xp to buy a NEW Lucky! (0), replacing Lucky! (3). We have to replace it since we can't fit three honest Lucky!'s in our deck.

Now, hold up - buying a level 0 to replace a higher level version of itself, can we do that? Yup. It's already fairly standard practice if you want to change what Strange Solution you got (refer to its FAQ entry) after you got greedy and careless.

So we're currently at 2x Lucky! (0), 1x Lucky! (0*) and 1x Lucky! (2*). Special upgrade it two more times and you have 1x Lucky! (0), 2x Lucky! (0*), 2x Lucky! (2*), and 1x Lucky! (3), for a total of 11xp. Ever 6xp past this adds another Lucky! (0*) and Lucky! (2*). The sky is the limit in campaign mode, so lets use the Standalone Deckbuilding XP cap of 49. Spending 6xp at a time six more times, leaves us with 2 left over, which we can use to special upgrade that other level 0 that's been patiently sitting there. Final tally at 49xp:

• 9x Lucky! (0*)
• 8x Lucky! (2*)
• 1x Lucky! (2)
• 1x Lucky! (3)

For a grand total of 19 Lucky!'s of various levels. 17 of which don't count towards your deck size or card limit. Worth it? Probably not. Tasty? Definitely.

Lucky Number 13:

Realistically though, you probably don't want that many copies of Lucky! (0) in your deck unless you have enough other draw because it doesn't cycle, so maybe just stick to the stronger versions. We start with 2x Lucky! (0) (because why not?) and special upgrade them up to level 2 and then 3, but this time we purchase new level 2's to replace the 3's and do an abridged loop costing 5xp per loop.

• 2 Lucky! (0*)
• 9x Lucky! (2*)
• 2x Lucky! (3)

Much less chaff, an extra level 3, and 4 xp left over to maybe buy yourself something nice.

(You could also pull this trick to get 10 copies of Hot Streak or 19 copies of any other Fortune/Gambit with level 0/2 versions. "Look what I found!", A Chance Encounter, Daredevil, Dumb Luck, Oops!, or Daring Maneuver. Daredevil deserves special mention because you can use it to get +19 on any skill test and turn your deck into a pile of 6 weaknesses!)

Note that unlike many abilities that are resolve when you reveal certain tokens during skill tests, Nihilism's Forced ability, as far as I understand it, occurs even if you reveal, cancel, or ignore tokens outside of skill tests.

This means that Nihilism's Forced ability would also occur when you reveal, cancel, or ignore 's during play of cards like Hypnotic Gaze, Voice of Ra, and also during certain location/agenda/treachery effects that don't involve tests (example: Clover Club Cardroom).

The Level-0 version of this card fills a weird, uncomfortable space, because, unlike its siblings Oops! and "Look what I found!", not every investigator wants to Evade. You either lean into it (like, say, Rita) or you just don't bother (most Guardians, but Leo for sure), and, while the last few cycles have made Evade a much more attractive option than in Core Set days, it's a "sometimes snack" for most investigators, so jankery around failing isn't so attractive. Besides, the effect, a one turn escape, was really situational, especially in Solo.

But... this card. The "fail within 3" makes it suddenly much more attractive as a clutch card for eligible low investigators. Outside of Patrice, who can't hold onto it for the perfect time, any other Survivor might want it for that annoying enemy which is hard to either Evade or Kill (I am looking at you, Conglomeration of Spheres. Moving the Enemy to the bottom of the Encounter Deck is a huge upgrade, since you are likely to avoid the Enemy for the rest of the scenario (although shuffling the Encounter Discard Pile into the Encounter Deck reduces the effectiveness a bit, and seems a bit more common in recent scenarios).

Outside of Survivor, who might like this? Agnes has better options for XP, while Tommy probably wants to hit (or get hit) rather than Evade, and I'm not sure Preston can land this often enough to be worth the XP. I think Minh might like it as a safety card, although she has a lot of other options.