Flamethrower is, in my opinion, the best Guardian XP card by a large margin. Of course, I'm hardly breaking any ground with that statement. But I can't resist writing down in just one more place how amazing this card is.

A while back, I wrote an enthusiastic review of Lightning Gun, saying that 3 damage per action and massive bonuses to Combat were some of the most important tools for success on Expert. Well, Flamethrower outclasses Lightning Gun in almost every way. 4 ammo over 3 ammo is very nice. Costing 4 resources instead of 6 makes a huge difference and really accelerates your opening setup. But 4 damage per action instead of 3 is the real win. There are a LOT of 4-health monsters out there, and this card makes them seem pathetic. These are the most powerful enemies the game has to throw at you, and with this card you trash them in one action and wonder what to do with the rest of your turn! Vicious Blows start to rot in your hand, unused and unneeded. It's ridiculous.

And I haven't mentioned the upside of sometimes roasting two or more monsters in an action. It won't happen every scenario, but it's very nice (and very fun) when it lines up.

You also get very good skill icons. I don't care that much--I would play this card if it had no skill icons at all--but it does make for a nice combo with Well Prepared.

You do lose out on some to-hit bonus compared to Lightning Gun, but +4 from Flamethrower is still awesome and will get results on Expert.

You also lose out on a body slot. This means you can't run Bandolier. But I didn't like Bandolier with Lightning Gun anyway, so that's no great loss to me. If you have a well-stocked Flamethrower, you really don't need other weapons. You lose the ability to run a Flashlight or the like. In solo, that does matter. In multiplayer, I don't care about that at all. You'll help your teammates far more by efficiently roasting all enemies with Flamethrower than you would by investing in some dinky investigation asset. (Of course, you do want to have some other assets in play, so you don't lose Flamethrower to some Crypt Chill effect. But there are plenty of good options that don't take up hand or body slots.)

As for the "must be engaged" requirement: not a huge deal. Most of your combat was against engaged enemies anyway, the massive action compression of Flamethrower more than makes up for the odd extra action you might have to spend, and Guardians even have some nice little events like Taunt and "Let me handle this!" that can help out if you feel it's needed.

A good way to build around Flamethrower is to get Stick to the Plan, and attach a Prepared for the Worst, an ammo card, and an economy card to it. Another very good support card is Beat Cop II, which not only helps your Flamethrower attacks land, but also saves ammo and actions by taking out small enemies for you. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Double or Nothing...

I wanted to write a short but glowing review of my second-favorite Mystic card. I'm going to focus here on 3-and-4-player, because that's where Rite of Seeking really shines. (Though this card is certainly playable in 2-player, too.)

I think some people are scared off by the 5-resource and 4-XP commitment. I'm writing this to say: don't be, at least not in a high-player-count game. This card is expensive, yes, but it has a strong tendency to totally crush scenarios. Clues are how you win the game, and repeatedly clearing whole locations in a single action is amazingly powerful.

You can think of this card as turning 1 card, 5 resources, and 4 actions into 9 clues. That's really, really good. Of course, you need to pass 3 skill tests to get that result. But since most Mystics have naturally high Willpower, build their decks to crank that Willpower up even further, and get a further +2 from this card, passing those tests is rarely hard, even on Expert. Plus, Mystics have an abundance of cards that can eliminate the possibility for bad luck--Grotesque Statue and Time Warp are two particularly effective ways to combat the Autofail token and go great with this card.

Even if you only succeed on two out of three tests (and with proper precautions, you will usually do better than that), getting six clues from this card is still respectable.

It is important to play around that special token drawback, but it's usually not too hard to do that. Just investigate for your last action. The key here is planning your turns ahead of time so you can do useful things with your first two actions before you Rite of Seek. More often than not you need to move before you investigate, anyway, so that's one useful action accounted for there. I have rarely found this to be a significant drawback. If you find yourself urgently needing to investigate earlier in your turn, which is pretty rare, the aforementioned Grotesque Statue can help.

Arcane Research and Delve Too Deep are highly recommended. I think this card would still be worth it even if you weren't running those XP accelerants, but it's certainly better if you can purchase this card earlier in the campaign and support it with other XP cards. Uncage the Soul and Emergency Cache are good for helping you get both this and Shrivelling into play in a timely manner--should you be fortunate enough to draw both. Arcane Initiate is useful for making that happen.

As awesome as this card is, I don't think this is necessarily the highest XP priority for Mystics: if your party is light on combat, the upgraded Shrivelling is surely more important. But it's way up there for me, and in an investigation-light party I could see going for it very early.

And don't even get me started on this card in Akachi, where it naturally has 4 charges...

Im very surprised how good this card is. Yorrick and Ashcan Pete should always have it in their deck, especially in multiplayer. It really helps with tricky situations like moving on your second move to a location with an enemy you cant kill with one attack. It also helps avoiding accidental hits.

Unless it's the back end of a scenario, you're going to end up tanking the 2 horror at some point. It's usually too much tempo loss to constantly move and investigate, even for Ursula. And once you take that 2 horror, you can look forward to drawing this again. Really that's what you're trying to prevent by satisfying that Forced trigger every turn- card draw denial. It is incredibly annoying to top deck this several times in once scenario. That said, take Mr. "Rook" to soften the blow. Yes, the card will recur even after Rook takes the two horror, but at least you pulled two other cards while drawing this one. It's a very thematic and engaging weakness to play around. Just take care you don't get hit too many times.

Saying Jake Williams is bad because Dr. Milan Christopher exists seems incredibly unfair given the fact that Milan is basically the best Ally in the game. Even taking taboo out of the equation, Jake is still incredibly good with Milan in your deck even before grabbing Charisma. For one thing he can help you draw into your other Seeker allies (Milan, Rook, Horowitz). Revealing and putting locations into play is very easy thanks to Pathfinder and Shortcut. His soak and his AoO prevention is also HUGE for Ursula decks that aim to clean up a scenario quickly. It lets Ursula rely on her 4 more strongly, as she doesn't have to worry about losing as much tempo if the board gets cluttered. This is especially nice in true solo where one of the biggest issues a true solo deck can run into is being bogged down by too many enemies at once. Jake, alongside Ursula's free action, makes that so much less of a concern. Jake is incredibly good, and alongside the run of great Seeker allies Ursula can run makes Calling in Favors a very strong choice in Ursula decks.