Oh my god this card is amazing.

Whenever I draw this card I swear I can hear Samuel L. Jackson somewhere in the background saying "Motherfucker" with an approving tone.

The sheer amount of garbage that may pile up in any given scenario is crazy, literally like an ever growing headache. Alter Fate is the pill that makes the headache go away, or perhaps cures the cancer outright! In many scenarios this is the card you save Resourceful for in particular.

Admittedly, I don't think a solo player draws persistent gunk at a speed fast enough to warrant Alter Fate, it's a liability when you dont need it and your deck probably requires other, important, level upped mechanics. In two player or three player the amount of gunk goes up and the sheer usefulness of making the gunk go away is stupid good. I did a little check and every single scenario from the release up to the conclusion of Path to Carcosa and start of Forgotten age had at least a couple perfectly viable targets. Every scenario!

One of these days, if you haven't already, once you've slotted your first 8 XP worth of important XP upgrades, try spending you next 6 on a couple of these. They are great.

Edit, campaign evaluation:

Dunwich and Circle unbound in particular reward playing with Alter Fate.

Forgotten age it can be clutch, but there are less "GOTCHA!" persistent treacheries in this one.

Carcosa has a few good targets, but also an occasional dud scenario. Definitely lower priority due to the deckslot.

Baffling card, it's literally so bad that words can barely describe it. It's barely useful even if it were a 0-xp card, much less 3!!

So, what does it do exactly? It:

• Negates all non-elite attacks during the enemy phase.

For this to be useful, there needs to be an enemy phase where enemies are going to attack you, an unideal circumstance to start with, if there is a non-hunter enemy attacking you that means that you've gone a full round engaged with an enemy, failing to deal with it or ignoring it wholly, or ended your round for some reason with a ready enemy. The other case is if a hunter catches you, this might be more probable but still not ideal or common by any means (Not that hunters are uncommon, but the usual response to a nearby hunter is to go and deal with it, not stick around and wait for it!)

There is another card that harkens to this one, On the Lam, seing how this strength operates and gives you total freedom for a round sorta displays what they were thinking for Infighting, it's just not nearly as useful!

The biggest issue with Infighting is that its a niche card that does nothing but ease the pressure off you a LITTLE, but only when you're completely drowning in trouble. The non elite text is the real dealbreaker here because it's during battle with Elites where this particular effect would be good (or rather, the time where youre most likely to drown in enemies), Infighting is basically a fancy Dodge, in fact I think 3 Xp is just right an amount of XP to turn Dodge into an "AoE" effect, but it isn't, and it's just terrible.

P.S Oh, just to be fair, at least it has pretty great icons. Most of the time it'll be a 3-xp Unexpected courage with some rarely helpful text on it. I quite often use Eucatastrophe for the icons rather then text so i'm not kidding when I say that sometimes an Unexpected Courage with extra text on it is perfectly reasonable. Infighting is not one of those cases.

Wonderful card for certain investigators, namely those with decent investigative power and innate resilience.

Top of the list:

Wendy Adams with her high , and ability.

"Ashcan" Pete with his high and ready made soak from Duke.

Minh Thi Phan with great and high enough to really benefit.

Take note that Guiding Spirit only exiles if defeated, I.E killed. If you play over it's ally slot to discard it (for example: your other copy of Guiding Spirit) or it gets discarded by a mythos card, it will not be exiled. High willpower and secondary soaks (Lieutenant Pawterson and Peter Sylvestre ) will basically make it so that your spirits will never go away.

I think it’s worth mentioning that this (along with Hallowed Mirror) are Occult cards, meaning they can be taken by your favorite shaman and mine, Akachi Onyele! Blood-Rite is pretty versatile, the full suite netting you 6 cards over 4 actions (if you value such strict mathematical breakdowns) and can let you pitch cards you don’t need for resources that you probably do and some damage pings to boot.

Not saying it’s an automatic include or anything, but I think it’s got some good applications in her deck.

Man, this might be my favorite Mystic card. I expect it to get Taboo'd at some point, maybe with that replacement ruling reverted back to the original, because an essentially free 14 XP (because you always take two) is just too easy to take in this game. Even Agnes should consider it despite the anti synergy with her ability- her Mystic/Survivor card pool gives her decent access to horror soak, heal, and prevention (you can always try and infinitely recur St. Hubert's Key with Scavenging for example) which makes the 2 horror she starts with not too big of a problem. But let's check in now and see what spells we can upgrade to as of The Circle Undone wrapping up:

Blinding Light Blinding Light 2 for 0 XP

Clarity of Mind Clarity of Mind 3 for 1 XP

Deny Existence Deny Existence 5 for 3 XP

Mind Wipe 1 Mind Wipe 3 for 1 initial XP

Mists of R'lyeh Mists of R'lyeh 4 for 2 XP

Rite of Seeking Rite of Seeking 2 Rite of Seeking 4 for 0 XP

Scrying Scrying 3 for 1 XP

Shrivelling Shrivelling 3 Shrivelling 5 for 1 XP

Sixth Sense Sixth Sense 4 for 2 XP

Ward of Protection Ward of Protection 2 Ward of Protection 5 for 1 XP

Wither Wither 4 for 2 XP

Also in Return to Carcosa we're getting a lower level Suggestion, so look out for that Sefina Rousseau and Akachi Onyele.

So which of these upgrades do you shoot for? Remember that you only get the benefit on the first spell you buy, so a chain of three cards like Shrivelling to Shrivelling 5 is going to take 4 scenarios to reach if you want the full discount. In other words you'll get the benefit 7 times in a standard campaign (though side stories will help you out quite a bit). There's a few up there that stand out to me:

Obviously if you're going to be a fighty Mystic it's a good plan to move through the Shrivelling chain. However you might find you have XP to spare in which case it's probably better to spend the XP for the other upgrade sooner, making you more powerful more quickly (and increasing the liklihood of picking up enemy Victory points later). Instead, I recommend using AR's savings in other areas.

If your name is Diana Stanley or Agnes Baker then I strongly recommend Deny Existence 5. If you plan on running Diana with Dayana then I even more strongly-er recommend it.

Mists of R'lyeh upgrades into a big +3 bonus and an added charge. Particularly good for Jim who is just a bit lower in than anyone else, and also valuable for that one campaign we all know where evasion is super useful.

Ward of Protection 2 is usually considered superior to its overcosted counterpart upgrade Ward of Protection 5, so probably just go up the first step in this chain and then stop. This is especially true in higher count multiplayer, and especially extra super true for Diana in multiplayer. In solo with a less fight capable mystic you could eye 5 instead, or else skip the chain entirely.

Jim should probably always take Sixth Sense 4 since it becomes a very consistent multi clue gathering tool for him, assuming you're building him in the traditional manner of drawing more spooky tokens.