.45 Thompson

.45 Thompson is, as another reviewer put it. The Dr. Milan Christopher of weapons. Talk about nailing it!

The thing that .45 Thompson does is create an extended capacity combat option with a large +, it is really good in the hands of dedicated fighters and 3 characters who grab it to keep their attack bonus high.

.45 Thompson is more of a niche, and it's a strong one!

As a weapon that pays for itself, it makes extended combat even easier! You can battle it out for rounds on end, you can use the extra cash to fuel hits via talent use like Physical Training or Keen Eye and/or the cash will let you keep the ball rolling by helping pay for the next gun. .45 Thompson is a good enough card in of itself to warrant a deck slot in dedicated fight builds, the kind of builds that shoulder the burden of taking on every single enemy that spawns.

In faction cards that synergize:

  • Extra Ammunition pays for itself and nets you 1 bonus resource from .45 Thompson.
  • Well-Maintained is a fine method to recurse the gun, it traverses the issue of cost thanks to the gun paying for itself.
  • Reliable, as a gun that has lots of ammo and begs for more, Reliable is a good option.
  • Other big guns! Weapons like Lightning Gun arent "banished" when you slot .45 Thompson, rather the self funding ability and great speed at which you spend ammo makes slotting other big guns a perfectly valid deckbuilding direction. All those ammo and gun-support cards you might slot alongside .45 Thompson will do the other big guns good too! Top it off with Bandolier to dual wield 2 big guns!
  • Vicious Blow gains priority in a build that is limiting itself to 2-damage attacks.
  • Venturer keeps the bullets flowing.

Out of faction:

One important bit: You dont actually need all of those other cards, .45 Thompson by itself is a grease card thank makes your deck run more smoothly in it's enemy killing role, it doesn't need any combos to actually be good on its own.

Tsuruki23 · 2584
Yeah, Mark using this plus Act of Desperation is crazy good. Honestly it’s so consistent that I can see many fighters taking it before Lightning Gun or anything like that. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Is it better than Lightning Gun or Flamethrower though? Perhaps if you play Solo it may be but in multiplayer (if you are the main enemy killer) the unmatched consistency and one-shot potential of the 3-4 damage per bullet weapons seems superior to me, specially on higher difficulties. Stil this is a fun card to play and build around. — Alogon · 1145
I think at least with AoD it’s a stronger choice than Lightning Gun. 5 shots at consistent 2 damage for Mark at 7 combat before any other boosts, then AoD for +6 and 2 damage and a bunch of resources. Play alongside expensive damage assets like Dynamite and Beat Cop. It sets up the economy you need when you do get Lightning Gun later, and soreading 5 shots at 2 is usually better than 3 shots at 3 in early scenarios. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
*so doing. That was a weird autocorrect. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Sure you can play it like that if you are using your big guns as dispensable 3-4 shot assets, but if you plan to run the infinite ammo synergy (which is the most efficient-economical build for the late campaign), namely (Venturer + Extra Ammunition + Stick to the Plan + Custom Ammunition (1 copy) + Contraband (if anyone has acces to it), then you usually can't run the Thompson(3) for XP reasons. If you get this early you are exchanging your late campaign potential for a slightly better deck for the 3rd and 4th scenario. — Alogon · 1145
Maybe, but I think it's worth noting that having a better gun earlier might also make your XP gain more consistent. Leo could also take Charon's Obol. And even as a non combo just having something like Contraband 1 and Venturer goes a long way, and Stick to the Plan is great but not essential in my honest opinion. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Excuse me, Contraband 2* — StyxTBeuford · 13052
The argument between upgraded .45 and Lightning gun is a moot argument, the 2 guns serve different roles. 1 is the butcherer gun, that makes short work of all the little things you need to mulch in a map. The other is the monster killer, there really isnt any comparison between them and frankly, having both in 1 deck is perfectly effective! — Tsuruki23 · 2584
Right, like I said, you can take the Thompson early for less XP and to deal with less horrible threats in beginning scenarios, then you can take Lightning Gun later alongside it. The Thompson is great because it keeps you refreshed (and with AoD actually makes you money) for other big guns like LG and Flamethrower. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Guidance

Funky.

Guidance isn't a card that generates anything, it just moves one action from you, to another player, and it costs a card. This is basically a card that lets you give the monster killer an extra attack action in place of your investigative actions. It's quite useful actually, when the going gets tough and your friend is just drowning in monster guts you can give them the leeway that can be the difference between dealing 6 damage in a round and dealing 8, or just more securely landing those first 6.

Guidance is a fight card, it's pretty cool because instead of having to equip a system of combat tools yourself, the booster talent and ally boosts and weapon and so on and on, you just tap into all the pent up power that someone else is working hard to foster.

So why don't people like it that much? Its a -low priority- use for a card slot, seriously between the "upgrade quests" which pretty much all the seekers take all the time and the clue tools, clue cheats and card draw and the few real good support cards, yeah you get it. SPACE, it's not infinite at all!

Let me tell you this: Guidance is not a bad card, in higher player counts actually I've got to say, it can be terrific! It can mean that a gets to move before emptying a whole clip of Lightning Gun at something! In 2 player its quite helpful when the team organisation is: Fighter & Cluever. It's definitely best in team comps where your friends can muster high-value actions, that mention of Lightning Gun is by no means an accident.

Tsuruki23 · 2584
Curiosity

Awful, awful card. Out of all the TCU skill cards, this one ranks dead last. (EDIT: See below)

The problem is that 3 icon trigger. To get 3 icons off this card and therefore make it trump Unexpected Courage, you need to both have 8 cards in hand and then only commit Curiosity. This demotivates you from playing skill effects like Deduction or Eureka! as you drop an icon as soon as you commit any card alongside this one. If you only commit this card, it becomes 3 for 1 card, but if you want to commit anything else with 1 , you drop to 3 for 2 cards, which is abysmal for a skill card that only gives icons and has no other effects. To add insult to injury, with 8 cards in hand you probably do have something like Deduction or Eureka!, in which case had you run Perception instead, you'd still effectively get 3 for 1 card, but you'd also get the trigger of the other card you committed. Situational cards that you run for icons most of the time like Ghastly Revelation or Connect the Dots become worse as well, as again you're demotivated from using them when they're useless.

All of that was just analyzing this card for when you get the most value out of it- at 8 cards. This effect get so much worse once we take ourselves out of being at 8 cards. At 5 and 6, you really don't want to use this card with anything else, and if you have a particularly hard test to pass and need to commit your whole hand, be ready for this to drop to 1 icon. To add insult to injury, the icons it gives are the most common across Seeker cards: and . It's incredibly rare you'll ever need the flexibility of Curiosity being able to commit to either test when your hand is already that full.

That said, I can think of exactly one investigator who could use it. Minh Thi Phan needs skill cards, and she could run a heavy card draw strategy with Grisly Totem, Laboratory Assistant, Cryptic Research, Glimpse the Unthinkable, etc. all of which help Curiosity's stock go up. She can even run Able Bodied alongside it, which covers all 4 icons, and Minh isn't particularly item hungry either. Outside of that specific build though, you as someone with access to Seeker cards are spoiled for choice: Inquiring Mind might as well be 3 (and occasionally even better than that), Eureka! is crazy good card filtering, and Deduction is almost an autorun skill card in multiplayer for the tests it saves you. I would take all of those, Perception, Guts, and Unexpected Courage before I took this card.

Avoid. If it helps, you probably are not the cat.

EDIT: Well fast forward six months and already we have a way of making this card work. Dream Diary has an upgrade that depends on you having 8 cards in hand (it also gives you Essence of the Dream automatically every turn to facilitate this); Dream-Enhancing Serum helps you maintain duplicates, which is particularly great for Myriad cards; and A Glimmer of Hope can, on demand, help fulfill the condition as well. Again, this suite seems to point to Minh Thi Phan as the best candidate for such a build. I'd still say outside of such a build you should avoid Curiosity, but in this build it could be an absolute cornerstone, much like Cunning in a big money build. I'm happy the card might have found a place.

StyxTBeuford · 13052
In truth, most of that suite of skill cards are pretty meh. I agree that this is the worst, but Cunning isn't great either, and neither is Prophesy. Able Bodied is awful. The only one that I use is Steadfast, which has a pretty reliable way of hitting 3 pips and doesn't require you to wait a number of turns before you use it. I suppose the only real saving grace with these cards is that most of the time they'll be fairly consistently hitting 2 pips for 2 different skills. This makes them more efficient than all of the neutral skills bar Unexpected Courage so in theory may save you deck space elsewhere. Still not great though. — Sassenach · 180
I think I'd rank them as Steadfast > Cunning > Prophesy > Able Bodied > Curiosity. Steadfast is actually useful in people who like having Will and Fist icons e.g. Diana, Zoey, and Leo to some extent and, like you said, is on three icons turn 1 with no set up. It's actually a good skill card, but even there it loses out to Take the Initiative and often Vicious Blow, so it's sort of the skill you take after taking those two. Cunning I like in big money builds while playing without Streetwise because of Taboo. In those builds (a la Jenny, Preston, and sometimes Sefina) it can stay online really easily and needs just a few turns to set up, but otherwise between 5-10 it's a worse Unexpected Courage. Prophesy at least runs wild icons, and 3 doom is not a big ask to get essentially UC 3 and 4 that occasionally grows bigger than that, plus Mystic skill cards are generally pretty bad anyway. Able Bodied is okay for some very specific builds that like Agility and only run Track Shoes as their one item (so an evasive dedicated Wendy or a Duke maximizing Ashcan), but even there it's usually not worth building without Flashlight and Fire Axe or Meat Cleaver in your back pocket, and the fists are completely useless since you should be running more weapons if you plan to use fists (again, Duke kind of helps here, but it's still mediocre). — StyxTBeuford · 13052
The main difference between Steadfast and Able Bodied is that Able Bodied also requires a deck built around it to be more useful than just an extra Unexpected Courage and that's not something all investigators can swing (right now mostly just Pete, Silas, and maybe Rita). I would put Able Bodied and Cunning on the same bar of needing the right deck environment to thrive (although with the right build Able Bodied can be good throughout though Cunning requires some significant setup), but definitely Steadfast is the best of the lot (pretty much generally useful for all Guardians) and Curiosity is really quite bad. Meanwhile, Prophesy is weird in that its value fluctuates a lot with the scenario and also because unlike the other cards it's spelled with an S instead of a C. — pneuma08 · 26
I think the issue with Able Bodied is as you said it needs the right deck. The difference is Cunning actually has viable decks it can fit in, particularly with Jenny and Preston. Able Bodied is just hard to use these days when ever Survivor is taking Track Shoes, so any other item drops it down to UC level. There might be a viable itemless archetype later on, but it doesn't really exist right now. — StyxTBeuford · 13052
I personally think that's just the meta right now. Track Shoes and big money Rogues are the hot new things, not because they're better but because they're new, and that syngergizes with Cunning but runs counter to Able Bodied. — pneuma08 · 26
I guess you could also say that there are a lot of obvious synergies with big money cards, and so far there aren't any that I know of for having fewer items. And the benefit for Able Bodied isn't good enough to justify making it the central mechanic of a deck (unlike, say Dark Horse, which is in a similar boat). That said, there are plenty of archetypes that could certainly build in that direction, as a secondary or even tertiary bonus, and neither Cunning nor Steadfast fit that bill either (they would be included as a bonus, not a combo piece). — pneuma08 · 26
Big Deck is now here! — MrGoldbee · 1495
Indeed! — StyxTBeuford · 13052
Well, we don't expect large hand deck is real and this card becomes a good skill card in early-scenario transition. The ranking has changed in reviewing again and again. — Ch1y0 · 9
Improvisation

This is a very strong signature card. It provides the equivalent of Emergency Cache L2 and it's Fast, and it has two wild icons. That's the equivalent of a figurative 4-5XP card, and Lola gets two of them!

mattastrophic · 3326
I have been thinking about this actually, as I tinker with Lola builds: much attention is payed to Crisis of Identity and how bad it can be, but it is worth remembering that Improvisation is super good. Lola can take an Eidetic Memeory as a psuedo third copy too; it is a bit less flexible as she needs to be in Seeker to play it, but still could easily be worth the xp. — Spritz · 69
Scroll of Prophecies

This is monstrously strong for Daisy. I had really hoped that the last couple tomes would offer significant build flexibility to my old favorite — that wasn't the case. It's just very hard to be better than Book of Old Lore. Here, I'm hoping we see the first inkling of a card that at least defines a solid shift in the viable archetypes.