Flamethrower is, in my opinion, the best Guardian XP card by a large margin. Of course, I'm hardly breaking any ground with that statement. But I can't resist writing down in just one more place how amazing this card is.

A while back, I wrote an enthusiastic review of Lightning Gun, saying that 3 damage per action and massive bonuses to Combat were some of the most important tools for success on Expert. Well, Flamethrower outclasses Lightning Gun in almost every way. 4 ammo over 3 ammo is very nice. Costing 4 resources instead of 6 makes a huge difference and really accelerates your opening setup. But 4 damage per action instead of 3 is the real win. There are a LOT of 4-health monsters out there, and this card makes them seem pathetic. These are the most powerful enemies the game has to throw at you, and with this card you trash them in one action and wonder what to do with the rest of your turn! Vicious Blows start to rot in your hand, unused and unneeded. It's ridiculous.

And I haven't mentioned the upside of sometimes roasting two or more monsters in an action. It won't happen every scenario, but it's very nice (and very fun) when it lines up.

You also get very good skill icons. I don't care that much--I would play this card if it had no skill icons at all--but it does make for a nice combo with Well Prepared.

You do lose out on some to-hit bonus compared to Lightning Gun, but +4 from Flamethrower is still awesome and will get results on Expert.

You also lose out on a body slot. This means you can't run Bandolier. But I didn't like Bandolier with Lightning Gun anyway, so that's no great loss to me. If you have a well-stocked Flamethrower, you really don't need other weapons. You lose the ability to run a Flashlight or the like. In solo, that does matter. In multiplayer, I don't care about that at all. You'll help your teammates far more by efficiently roasting all enemies with Flamethrower than you would by investing in some dinky investigation asset. (Of course, you do want to have some other assets in play, so you don't lose Flamethrower to some Crypt Chill effect. But there are plenty of good options that don't take up hand or body slots.)

As for the "must be engaged" requirement: not a huge deal. Most of your combat was against engaged enemies anyway, the massive action compression of Flamethrower more than makes up for the odd extra action you might have to spend, and Guardians even have some nice little events like Taunt and "Let me handle this!" that can help out if you feel it's needed.

A good way to build around Flamethrower is to get Stick to the Plan, and attach a Prepared for the Worst, an ammo card, and an economy card to it. Another very good support card is Beat Cop II, which not only helps your Flamethrower attacks land, but also saves ammo and actions by taking out small enemies for you. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Double or Nothing...

Move aside Lightning Gun the new king of weapons is here!

Comparing it directly to Lightning Gun, you save two resources, get one more ammo and do one more damage. Note the damage is multiplicative with the ammo so you get potentially 16 damage to Lightning Gun's 9.

The first drawback is the body slot. Notably this rules out Bandolier. Thus a flame wielding Guardian will have to fully commit to exclusively using the Flamethrower by using Venturer, Extra Ammunition and Custom Ammunition. Contraband is also interesting if it is available to you.

The other disadvantage is you must be engaged with the enemy. Normally you do not want to risk shooting your friends with your high powered guns so you would want to engage anyways but this weapon actively requires you to be engaged. This may mean a loss of an action for a harried investigator. Also you may want to engage multiple enemies so its a good idea to bring Taunt along as well to avoid attacks of opportunity.

It still has one less fight then Lightning Gun but both are usually sufficient to guarantee success on all but the tentacle and the super negative token you get on Hard and Expert.

Overall I think despite these weaknesses this is by far the most efficient purifier of xenos scum, err I mean mythos monsters available today.

The M1918 BAR is also a very fun weapon and may become more efficient against very low health enemies, but there are too few of those around to compete.

QUESTION: How does Flamethrower interact with Custom Ammunition's damage bonus when engaged with multiple enemies?

Here's my situation: Leo Anderson is engaged with a non-monster enemy with fight 3 and a monster enemy with fight 2. He has a Flamethrower with Custom Ammunition attached. Leo succeeds on his fight action and now wants to distribute damage. From my reading, when I distribute a point of damage to the monster enemy, an additional point of damage is dealt as well (Non-monster 3 pts, Monster 1pt + bonus 1pt). Correct?

Which naturally leads to other questions: If I am engaged with two enemies both of which have the monster trait, do I add +1 damage to each monster enemy (3 and 3)? Or do I get 1pt of bonus damage added to the base 4 only to distribute across monster enemies? If one enemy has the monster trait and one enemy does not, do I not get the bonus damage at all, simply because a non-monster enemy will be receiving damage? Does it matter if the enemy with the highest fight is the one with the monster trait?

The 2 reasons this card is surprisingly bad (OK, OK at least not as good as first expected) are the same reasons that Bandolier is surprisingly good:

1. Two handed weapons make you forgo lots of great non-disposable assets like Machete and Magnifying Glass, among others.
2. Then, once the mighty Flamethrower is in play, a steady stream of mediocre enemies will make you debate whether to conserve your ammo and use your fists, or waste an ammo.

So how do we get around this and take advantage of the unmatched combat potential of the Flamethrower? As of this review, there is no way around the first problem so you’ll just have to build around the slot-hungry flamethrower. The best way to get around the second problem is to have alternative combat cards outside of hand and body slots. Best at this strategy is Zoey Samaras, who has her Zoey's Cross as well as access to Shrivelling and Mists of R'lyeh. Taunt is a nice addition to ensure all of the enemies are in range of the thrower’s blast.

The cost in the description is wrong guys (4 instead of 5) ;) Keep up the good work! These are the "Your review must be at least 200 characters," so ignore it :D These are the "Your review must be at least 200 characters," so ignore it :D These are the "Your review must be at least 200 characters," so ignore it :D These are the "Your review must be at least 200 characters," so ignore it :D

Although this card is powerful, one thing to note is that Flamethrower does not work on exhausted massive enemies, since massive enemies aren’t considered to be engaged to any investigators, as per the rules reference. So if your teammates have an evasion strategy going, it might be better to take a good old fashioned Lightning gun.

When I first saw this card I was excited to see a big weapon that wasn't horribly short on ammo, but after making a flame thrower character and playing him I find this weapon very effective but rather boring to use. It seemed to take away all the interesting choices my Guardian had to make in combat. The insanely high hit bonus removes the need to decide whether to commit extra cards to the combat test, I was only worried about drawing the auto fail. The insanely high damage removes the need to decide how to finish off a photo with only one health left, the enemy is just flat out dead. The big disadvantage of the flamethrower, being forced to engage the enemy in order to fire, only makes it more boring by removing the question of whether to risk firing at an enemy engaged with an ally. You just calculate what you can do with your actions, and then you do it, and then you try to make sure your flamethrower doesn't run out of ammo.

By comparison, while I find the shotgun to be an overly flawed weapon, if you actually go to the trouble to create an effective shotgun character, it is way more fun to play.

Ok here my review on this one:

• Pros

+4 fight

+4 dmg you may assign to every enemy engaged! with you.

+4 ammo which is a good number for a firearm

-Cons

This weapon makes standard dmg unless you 're engaged with a lot of enemies. So actually if you have only one enemy engaged with you make a total dmg of 1 against lightning gun that gives you +2 dmg.

In order to make a full potential of this weapon you need to be engaged with every monster. That means if another investigator has a monster on him you need to spend an action to engage that (-1 action if you dont have taunt in hand) but also the other monster will do attacks of opportunity. If you survive the attacks then you left with two actions remain to actually defeat the monsters and that is a normal scenario (there are worst out there)

It takes the slots of your hands and body and there are such great cards in there that takes place. Especially the new upgrade bandolier from Return to the Dunwich Legacy combined with Lightning Gun makes Roland a monster with 3 items and +1 willpower.

Now for the 5 xp and the 4 cost seems normal to me for a high end weapon. On solo if you 're engaged with more than 3 monsters usually you're dead. This weapon shines on multiplayer.

Final thought:

If i was going to pick i would prefer Lightning Gun over this any time because of its ability to kill a target in one action. Dont use it on Roland since the bandolier combo is better for him. Zoey can make a use of it (cause of her ability) but still only in multiplayer (as a chef first you burn them then you slice them ^^).