There are only so and so many enemies that will come your way per scenario, and Vicious Blow is one of those major tech cards that can bridge the gap and turn a risky fight into a trivial one, and keep you ahead of the enemy curve.

Picture this: You've got a .45 Thompson in play with 2 shots left on it and Vicious Blow in hand and a 4 hp enemy shows up, you could shoot it twice with the Thompson, or you could save the ammo and the action and try to kill it outright. The saved bullet then goes towards killing a (probably) smaller 2 or 3 health enemy later.

While the +2 prerequisite can be risky, the added + tick offsets that quite a bit.

The power of your main weapon directly affects Vicious Blow, a Lightning Gun lands that +2 damage more routinely then a Machete, in a pinch a simple buffed punch to deal 3 damage can solve a LOT of problems. Especially in Forgotten age where 3 health foes with reasonably low fight stats are all over the place.

I highly recommend you get Vicious Blow in your deck when you're in the mid-campaign, once you've put in the key tech at 10-15 XP it's probably time to upgrade this one.

Good example how Daisy Walker existing makes for some pretty wonky card design.

Tome's for her are so outright powerful that if they make tomes with triggers at all the book has to suck for everybody, only to be viable on her. An irksome thing.

This card is an outright terrible variant on Pathfinder, both cards can routinely get you 2 locations of move in one action, this one requires a revealed location, a slot, and has 4 uses. What??? WHY??? Also, Pathfinder moves you for totally free if you're moving just 1 location anyway.

This thing is easier to tutor, there being some tutors that target items and tomes specifically, but really. WHY??? Sure, Pathfinder is above curve, I'dd still be looking at it if it cost 2 XP, possibly 3, but I don't really think Pathfinder is OP enough to warrant that, just to incite excitement for this cruddy thing. Personally I'dd mutate Pathfinder to be 1 / Investigator but that's just me.

Binder fodder.

Edit: In case you're thinking this might get you past enemies.

In solo, the revelation requirement can be a hard-shutdown of this tactic, leaving you just as stuck and down 3 resources and this card that's not helping you at all. Besides, often when an enemy is barring your way, the Pathfinder trigger to engage it as a free action gives you 3 tries to evade it. In multiplayer if you're the sort of person who is avoiding enemies hard enough to consider this use of this card, there's probably a person who is chasing after them just as hard, I.E, them moving in to engage and kill the enemy leaves you free to move past and do your thing.

One of the good tarots.

Compared to Dr. Milan Christopher and Alice Luxley costing 4 resources, paying 3 for +1 is very feasible. The fact that the card is worth the cost, even if you dont luck out and get it in the opening hand, that's a good tarot.

You can swap from Dr. Milan Christopher to Death • XIII to leave your ally slot free for other characters, for example Mr. "Rook", Leo De Luca, Beat Cop.

Obviously, you can stack Death • XIII and Dr. Milan Christopher, especially seeing as how Dr. Milan Christopher can pay for Death • XIII. This may or may not be too expensive in many decks, especially flex decks that are supposed to fight and clue even handedly.

This is generally one of the better tarots.

Beat Cop costing 4 resources means that 3 for +1 is perfectly feasible, if the tarot is worth the expense even if you didn't get it for free, that's a good tarot.

A flex build might straight up upgrade beat cop to Ace of Swords and leave the ally slot for something else (Mr. "Rook", Dr. Milan Christopher, Art Student, Jessica Hyde, Alice Luxley, Leo De Luca, Agency Backup, all these come to mind). Meanwhile a full-on fighter might decide to have both Beat Cop and Ace of Swords for a persistent +2, which is obviously very strong but costly dedication to nothing but combat for the rest of the scenario.

Do get 2 copies, even if the second copy is dud the chance at getting it in the opening hand is worth 2 xp.

Edit 3/4/2020: Rewritten to represent a much changed selection of spell events.

Dayana Esperence is a crazy powerful card, but she is expensive to run. The trick is to have a strong money engine or cheap enough cards to keep her up and running.

• First off, Dayana is beefy, 3 health will keep her alive through some ally-killing mythos cards and help you outlast the mythos deck in general.

More importantly than her health however is the tripled spell event ability. Many events are strong enough to warrant playing by themselves, Ward of Protection, Deny Existence and their upgrades are among the most useful cards in the game and getting triple the amount of cancelling from them is outrageously good, especially Ward of Protection which can blanket protect the team and Deny Existence which is, for obvious reasons, incredible. Be mindful about using a tripled Ward of Protection though, that's 3 horror on top of whatever the scenario throws at you.

Because Dayana and the repeat casting of a spell will often be very expensive, absolutely make sure to bring methods to fund the combos, cards/combos like Forbidden Knowledge+Peter or Alchemical Transmutation might be needed to keep this build rolling. Absolutely make sure to pick up whatever out of faction resource cards are available to you, including Crack the Case, Easy Mark or Take Heart as appropriate.

Aside from the cancels, many other spells are good enough to want to play them repeatedly and there's a few spells that start off weak but being able to play them 3 times makes the mechanics much more interesting. Here is a list of every spell Dayana can triple:

• Astral Travel is simply too expensive to use in this manner, there is a small handful of scenarios where being a master of movement can be very useful but usually the benefit of multiple Astral Travels is marginal and unnecessary.

• Evade spells like Banish, Ethereal Form, Blinding Light and the upgrade are weird options because cards like Mists of R'lyeh and Ineffable Truth exist. Using Dayana for this is a way to have a routine spell for all three major actions but frankly, you probably dont need to play these spells more then once or twice per scenario, especially given their cost.

• Counterspell gets expensive fast but undeniably powerful. Good combo if you've got money generation.

• Eldritch Inspiration is great with an asset in play that you want the token trigger on repeatedly. A workhorse combo if your deck is using the upgraded Sixth Sense and/or Wither cards to clue and/or fight.

• Read the Signs and Spectral Razor are very powerful cards because of their often huge skill bonuses. You do need to be able to fund them, but the end result is most likely worthwhile.

• Hypnotic Gaze, just too expensive, the mechanic is nice but the card is already so expensive that people arent playing it -once-, much less three times!

• Mind Wipe, this one actually takes flight on Dayana. Playing the spell just once to negathe the threat of one enemy for a round is useful but, MEH. Playing it 3 times to completely ignore something for a good while, THAT is a very cool mechanic. Campaign conditional but absolutely useful most of the time, especially for a clue-focused .

• Moonlight Ritual is very specific but having it around for repeated use can unlock a lot of extra actions via doom on Blood Pact for Marie or enable the use of De Vermis Mysteriis or David Renfield.

• Recharge and Recharge on Dayana basically gives you endless use of a good spell asset (if your token pulls are lucky). Rather good actually, especially with the upgrade.

• Using Storm of Spirits in this manner is just too expensive, by all means go ahead though if you want to pretend you're this anime character www.youtube.com

• Repeat rewinding via Time Warp can be very, very useful. It's not overly strong but being able to play it three times makes you a lot less stingy with it.

• Word of Command is a spell you really only need to play the one time, tripling it is overkill.

• As of the yet only characters capable of this are Marie and Lola but Blood Eclipse is cheap enough to repeat-play, it's a surefire way to get yourself killed though.

• Alter Fate is probably one of the best spells to repeat-play, especially in the right campaigns where persistent treacheries are common. A top-notch use of Dayanas abilities.