Like a lot of cards from this set, it feels very underpowered, and not even in a way that can inspire creativity to make it work. The main character I can think that would want to use this is Mystic Agatha (Seeker Agatha presumably would not be using enough spell events to justify this card and also has the seeker pool for more cracked income generation), and Mystic Agatha can easily get by the entire scenario with Voice of Ra cast twice (once normally, once in discard). Resources are most valuable early on in the scenario when you need to get setup and get some momentum. This card maybe promises to generate enough income as a completely wiffed Voice of Ra/get a resource basic action after three turns. Weird.

Note: This card cannot be used to cancel "Peril" encounter cards drawn by other investigators (at least that is my understanding of the rules surrounding the keyword "Peril"). I'm learning the ins and outs of what Gloria can do.

Disclaimer: I have not yet played this card.

Let's analyse it from a purely mathematical perspective: It costs 2 resources, a card and an action to put to play. It comes in with 0 resources. Meaning you have to discover clues 2 separate times (since it gives you a resource for each time you discover clues, not each clue discovered) in two separate turns (it exhausts) to break even just for the resource cost. If we assume the usual "an action is roughly equal to a card which is roughly equal to a resource", you only break even after 4 turns of investigating.

Actually, not even that, since it only pays for Spells cards.

To paraphrase an artist: "there are builds, I'm sure", if you already have Geared Up in mind it saves you a resource and (potentially) an action. But it's kinda hard to see a deck that would need Spell economy whilst having so many Items to justify Geared Up.

I understand the designers were terrified of another Dr. Milan Christopher, but this seems far too niche to be useful for anybody. Maybe if it cost 0. Maaaaaybe if it was fast. Maybe if it used charges instead of resources.

If you play an Ally "at no cost", you don't pay the additional costs, right ?

I think a fun use for Motivational Speech is to play Summoned Hound: as you don't pay costs, you don't have to add Unbound Beast in your deck, and therefore you have only the advantages of the ally.

It allows you to simply play the Hound instead of trying a way to get it in play without playing it (for example discarding the Hound and then playing A Chance Encounter).

For Charlie Kane, you can even use the Hound twice:

• exhaust the Hound to start a Fight / Investigate action,
• exhaust Bonnie Walsh to get a +3 (so you have a skill value of 8),
• ready the Hound (with the on Bonnie),
• exhaust the Hound to use it a 2nd time.

This version of Hastur is a Massive punishment for 2 - 1player just for taking the doubt option. The scenario turns out a hell in that situation. The other two versions are waaaay softer compared to this. For such a good campaign as Carcosa is, I consider this card its only flaw: Nearly impossible to beat doubt mode in 1-2 players mode no matter how well you played the campaign. And you find that out at the end.