The basic version of Emergency Cache is included in a majority of decks. There must be a reason why the upgrade has to be searched with magnifying glasses, it is rarely included by Arkhamdb players.

Considerations about the value of this card are found under the basic version of Emergency Cache(0).

The cost of 2xp have to be put into relation to the additional effect that the upgraded version gives you.

Which is... "Draw 1 card." I still do not think that this effect is worth the additional 1xp. I just wonder about people who include Lucky!(2) during the course of a campaign but not Emergency Cache(2). Or why it is not found more frequently in Roland Banks decks. This investigator is so beggarly, he can use a cash injection at any time during a scenario and would be thankful for the extra card!

For Roland, Emergency Cache(2) has the same power level as Police Badge(2) or even Beat Cop(2).

Pros

• Saves one action, you gain another card.

Cons

• There is a small danger of drawing a Weakness from your deck which could meddle with your plans.

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver." Ayn Rand depicted the reasons for including Emergency Cache with few words, but you surely expect a longer explanation.

An event that gives you 3 resources for one action sounds like an auto-include in most decks. It speeds up your initial setup: play Emergency Cache, play Leo De Luca or Dr. Milan Christopher and still have 2 actions and resources to spend. Mid-game it can fuel the "pump" skills, like Dig Deep, for you. Late-game it probably sticks on your hand as a "dead draw". Emergency Cache has no alternative use, no icons to commit to skill tests. With a huge resource pool, you can buy anything, but you need expensive cards in the sale, too!

As a rule of thumb, i would offer you Spiryt's advise: If you can see yourself spending more than one action per scenario fishing for resources, then this card is a great way of ensuring you have the means to play your most powerful cards.

With more packs being released, the number of economy sources will raise. Right now, the slot for Emergency Cache mainly competes with Burglary and Dr. Milan Christopher (with 0 xp) and Hot Streak(4). Especially the guardian class runs low on resources, in-faction there's solely Stand Together(3). In solo play, Lone Wolf always is the better alternative to Emergency Cache.

Pros

• Feasible resource gain.
• Best economy card for Roland Banks.
• Wendy and Pete find cards without committment icons useful, they have innate abilities where they must discard cards.
• Jump start enabler: mulligan for Emergency Cache and Leo Di Luca.
• There's an upgraded version available: Emergency Cache(2)

Cons

• Card has no icons to commit to skill tests.
• One-time effect only. Supplement with drip economy for the long run.

Recommendations

• spoiler In The House Always Wins it is sometimes better to have a full wallet at your disposal than big brains.

A card for the min-maxer in all of us. Play this card in early scenarios to make your life more difficult, but reap the rewards of experience and upgraded cards in later scenarios.

Now the card seems deceptively simple, but there is a lot of nuance to playing it. Ideally you want to play it when you can afford extra actions, but not so early in the game that you aren't set up. Often this means holding on to your D2Ds until the last round of the game, triggering both and then ignoring the encounters you pulled (to the best of your ability) in order to finish the scenario. But there are other ways of mitigating this as well: a huge number of encounter cards are will tests and upgraded Mystics have access to Blood Pact which can be used as a freebee at the last doom in an agenda. Of course beware non-will tests and enemies that may pop out from the encounter deck instead.

The other nice thing about D2D is that it makes upgrading a little easier in the mid game. Because you get that experience as a permanent upgrade, in an 8-scenario campaign a D2D played in the first scenario is worth (1 exp 7 remaining games = 7 game-experience points) while one played in the penultimate scenario is worth (1 exp 1 game = 1 game-experience point) and a D2D played in the final scenario is just masochism (assuming you don't carry your experience through). For this reason you want to play your D2Ds early in a campaign, and swap them out when you have 3-4 scenarios remaining. This is especially important because they have no skill icons and as such are actually fully dead space in your deck unlike damn near every other card in the game (exceptions for Wendy and Ashcan Pete who can discard cards as part of their ability, of course).

So yes, get a little dangerous, plunge a few deeper mysteries and reap the benefits of playing on the wild side.

Like Dodge, but with a chance to hurt the enemy! What could go wrong?

Well, in my experience quite a bit. First of all it's much more expensive than dodge is, which can cause extreme opportunity cost as you have to choose between taking damage now, and having a better board setup next turn. Furthermore the reflected damage is not guaranteed, which kind of negates a huge amount of this card's benefit.

Now, in theory you can run a sadism run where (Slight campaign mechanic spoilers) ------ you intentionally fill the bag with these negative nancy tokens (... not as bad an idea as it sounds on Expert difficulty) ------ and I can't comment on the strength of this card then, but in a more vanilla run it can be pretty unlikely to trigger.

I think, like Song of the Dead without a better way to control the chaos bag, extremely swingy cards are going to remain cool in theory, but bad in practice.

Playing Weakness cards in agreement with the rules is no trivial task. In my review i will try to explain the peculiarity of Amnesia.

When a treachery card, like Amnesia, is drawn by an investigator, that investigator must resolve its effects. Please note the wording. Some cards only let you search or look at cards from your deck, in these cases the effect does not resolve!

The effect is initiated by the keyword Revelation, which means "When a weakness card enters an investigator's hand, that investigator must immediately resolve all revelation abilities on the card as if it were just drawn."

So you follow all the steps in the rulebook under "Appendix I: Initiation Sequence".

No play restriction, cost is zero.

Step 1. No modifier applicable.

Step 2. No cost to pay.

Step 3. The card commences being played, or the effects of the ability attempt to initiate. This means the card Amnesia leaves your hand at this point.

Step 4. The effects of the ability (if not canceled in step 3) complete their initiation, and resolve. The card is regarded as played and placed in its owner's discard pile, and the ability is considered resolved simultaneously with the completion of this step.

The text of the ability states to "Choose and discard all but 1 card from your hand." There is a special rule which prevents you from discarding Weakness-cards, it says literally: "A player may not optionally choose to discard a weakness card from hand, unless a card explicitly specifies otherwise."

So if you have any Weakness card on your hand when Amnesia resolves, you have to keep it and discard all other cards!

Creating the weakness card pool

Because Amnesia is such a hefty Weakness, i would want to include a few words about the correct setup of the weakness collection.

There's a paragraph in the rulebook that states that "To select a random basic weakness, take a set of the ten basic weaknesses in this core set, shuffle those weaknesses together, and draw one at random to add to the investigator’s deck. Some Arkham Horror: The Card Game products add additional basic weakness cards to a player’s collection. Simply add these cards to the ten cards found in the core set when selecting random basic weaknesses in the future. For example: Stephanie owns two copies of the core set, one copy of the first deluxe campaign expansion, and one copy of the first Mythos pack. To create a single set of basic weaknesses, she takes all of the basic weaknesses in one core set, in one copy of the first deluxe campaign box, and in one copy of the first Mythos pack, and shuffles them together. Her basic weakness is drawn at random from this pool."

Amnesia can be two times (2x) at the most in your pool of weaknesses at the start of a campaign!

Recommendations

If you are new to the game, bend the rules and redraw another weakness if you play Wendy Adams.