In an old Fantasy Flight Games article on game design, the designer being interviewed mentioned that they tended to design cards to fit into one of two categories: "hits," small effects that are cheap or otherwise easy to trigger (for example, Scroll of Secrets), and "haymakers," large, expensive, often flashy effects (for example, Will to Survive). Torturous Chords is firmly in the "hit" camp, and helps show off how powerful a consistent "hit" effect can be.

First off, the way this synergizes with the for A Phantom of Truth shows how effective "hits" can be when paired together. Losing 1 resource per point you fail the test by? A bit painful, but nothing too horrid. Effectively increasing the cost of the next 1-5 cards you play by 1? Again, a bit troublesome, but manageable. Combine them, though, and suddenly your economy just got a lot more complicated; you need more resources to pay for cards, but you also just got hit by a pseudo-Paranoia. While on paper this might sound harsh, in reality it comes up quite infrequently, and those times it does it feels less like "The encounter deck is a sentient being, driven by hatred and malevolence" and more "Well played, encounter deck. Let me see how I can recover from this..."

Something that's a bit more common, and a fair bit harsher, is the fact that there's no "Limit 1 per investigator" on Torturous Chords; it's possible to get stuck with 2, even potentially 3 of them, and increasing the cost of the cards in your deck by 2 (or 3, poor Wini) has a much more noticeable effect on your economy than just increasing them by 1. Torturous Chords is still just a "hit," but by combining itself with other "hits" it can punch far above its weight. If A Phantom of Truth included Chilling Cold, or Filth and Decay, its power would go still higher, working in conjunction with those sets' asset destruction to further shred your economy.

Chords also shows the power of "hits" that are delivered consistently; it is possible to avoid it by passing a test, but at a difficulty of 5, even a might have to deal with 1 or 2 resources on this, and once those resources get on it, the only way to get them off is to eat the higher card costs. Even more than Swift Byakhee, this card will pursue you through the scenario, constantly threatening you with its "hit."

However, Chords also shows the weakness of "hits;" on their own, they lack the power to knock the opponent out of the game. It is very possible to work around Chords, even if you pull on the test; simply taking the higher cost on the chin, taking more resource actions, relying more on skills then assets or events, all of them are perfectly valid ways to deal with it. And, even if you do have to deal with it like that, you can take comfort in knowing that you don't have to deal with one of the encounter deck's "haymakers;" having to spend 5 resources for a turn without Spires of Carcosa or Screeching Byakhee sounds like a fair deal to me!