It's pretty good, but not the best.

This gun looks good, with 3 damage and +3, then it looks bad, with that and effect.

Another thing that's easy to miss, this thing is -ridiculously- cheap for a 3-shot weapon with a large bonus and 3 damage. You can easily play this in an asset heavy deck full of 3 cost assets (of which there is a lot in ) or some out of faction options.

That much damage and bonus is great, also the great price, but isn't the gun just completely kneecapped by that effect? Not quite.

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Old Hunting Rifle is a weapon the rewards a flexible playstyle combining and , ideally when the gun jams you evade and fix it, the missed shot can be recursed with cards like Oops! or Live and Learn so the gun does get good support from the faction. Will to Survive is nice but not always needed (although recommended if you intend to kill a boss). Edit: Eucatastrophe circumvents the autofails pretty beautifully.

The two stat reliance means that a classical combat specialist like William Yorick probably wont want one unless he's got all the support cards too (also Bandolier and Act of Desperation), characters like Silas Marsh and Rita Young however love them some Rifles.

One problem for 3 damage weapons is 4 health foes, in this instance it's good to have a high base and perhaps a Lucky! and/or skill cards handy to try and land a basic punch, Rita Young has a little advantage here thanks to her ability, which lets her simultaneously get distance to fix a broken rifle and damages the enemy.

"But random person on the internet," You might say, "dont Silas Marsh and Rita Young prefer Ornate Bow?!" Yes, the bow has more ammo in the end, and it might very well be more dependable, but the reliance on reloading seriously dampens what you can accomplish in a round, it's much easier to get the rifle to do 6 or 9 damage in a round. Rita in particular has no access to bonus actions outside Ace in the Hole and even that's just a one off, so despite her higher she actually might prefer the Old Hunting Rifle a bit. The big difference between the Rifle and Bow boils down to a lot of splitting hairs, the really fun thing is that you can take them both!

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Old Hunting Rifle isn't the best weapon in the game, it's risky, but it is very destructive and extremely cheap.

The fun part is that when it jams, while shooting an enemy engaged with your partner, it still sort of "shoots" him :)

Dear FFG, this is a terribly Arkham-ish outcome :) C'mon, it jammed! It ain't gonna hurt my friend :)

But jokes aside. Is it any good? Well, it is very good at killing enemies with 3 hit points. Now this is of course great, since 3 is the new 2. And you're doing that with a bonkers bonus of +3 BUT:

• it takes 2 hand slots
• it is just so so bad, when it jams, with the enemy engaged

So not only you need an action to unjam it, that grants you a sucker punch from the enemy, but you also lost a precious shell and 2 actions. And recently enemies also like to Retaliate. So... it's a no-no in a lot of scenarios.

But let's find setups in which it may be good, I'm certainly not iterating through all possible options, but what I thought is:

• You're William Yorick in multiplayer, since your core ability let's you replenish ammo easily. Your company has to have options to help you out, when things go south. So advocate to go first on most occasions, which by the way plays nicely with Take the Initiative. Pack some options, for those corner cases, when your weapon will crap on you, like for example Stunning Blow, to shake off the enemy, or Dodge. You don't want to be that jerk damage dealer, that shouts "Mommy!", just because a mediocre mob got lucky
• You're Wendy Adams on a solo run and not really using hand slots a lot. Any weapon jams you can succesfully counter with her core ability. And all of a sudden you can deal with some enemies effectively, just like with your evade action. Only now it's for good.

Am I missing something?

The first ever interesting upgrade for survivors is...(drumroll)...not that good. Well it's good until it's not, then you're in a lot of trouble (barring a reliable self-eject button). I'm still holding out for a chainsaw. They have to make it eventually, right? And it would be for survivors. But that could jam too.

Rita Young + Old Hunting Rifle + Swift Reload + Stunning Blow = lots of fun and lots of hurt for the other guy...throw in Oops! if you wanna cover your butt!

Did I mention Easy Mark in there too, even to get to 200 characters?

You will never jam if you run this with Ancient Covenant and Favor of the Sun, though that only works once per round. The funny thing is that if you run this combo, .35 Winchester is a better gun if you can take it. It costs one more resource but has 5 ammo and is a level 0 card (plus 1 less but that shouldn't matter).