First some numbers. If you combine this with Chthonian Stone and a reasonable bag, you might have 4 out of 15 tokens that cost a charge, meaning this will last around 26-27 draws on average.

On the plus side, this card provides a shield against the dreaded auto-fail token that no other card matches. You could potentially protect everyone in a 4-person party, no matter where they are located, from auto-fail for 3 full rounds. From that perspective, it seems like a pretty powerful effect.

The problem, and the reason I find this card hard to like, is the extreme cost for each failure you prevent. You are probably going to prevent 1-2 tentacle draws by playing this card, at a cost of an action, 4 resources, and a 5 XP cost card. That could be worth it to cancel tentacle draws at really bad times. But you can’t control which tentacle draws you are preventing; a lot of the time, the auto-fail you are preventing, would have come during an investigate check or some other task with no great penalty for failing other than losing an action (or worse, during a treachery skill check you end up failing anyway). And the benefit of not losing 1-2 actions is tiny compared to the heavy cost of this card. You really need to prevent an auto-fail with a heavy, heavy penalty for failure, in order to justify the cost of this card.

And while no other card quite does what this does, there are other ways to protect against auto-fail that are an awful lot cheaper. Such as Time Warp, for example. And while the comparison isn’t a direct one, it is worth mentioning that Father Mateo’s special power does a better job of stopping really important auto-fails than this card, yet it isn’t even that great of a power.

It seems like the time to use this card, would be when the party is about to perform a series of critical actions, every single one of which absolutely has to succeed, and the party is spending a ton of resources to make sure they all succeed, and needs to guard against the auto-fail. Kind of specialized in my book for a 5 XP card.

Hello. Hi. My name is Norman Withers and I will now expose to you why Seal of the Seventh Sign is good.

Circumstance: 2-4 players. Somebody else has promised me that I don't need Shrivelling, so I just focus on the clues! This means that I have 2 unused arcane slots.

Slot 1: Protective Incantation, sealing a , or .

Slot 2: Seal of the Seventh Sign.

I generate resources with Dr. Milan Christopher and my cards are cheap thanks to my ability, so money is not a problem for me, and even when the Seal of the Seventh Sign runs its course, ill have cash enough and the draw speed to play the other one right away, or just fill the slot with the other Protective Incantation.

P.S. Even if I'm not around I still think Seal of the Seventh Sign is quite good, it's great on easier difficulties where the largest penalties are lower and easier to cover, the freedom to just brute through every check with no chance is tremendous, the main question to ask before you add it is: how much do you need your arcane slots? For most characters the answer is "Dedicated to Shrivelling and Rite of Seeking exclusively".

P.S.P.S. Silly of me, I am becoming forgetful with age. I especially like to bring my Seal of the Seventh Sign in Dunwich, where we the investigators may affect the token pool!

This card will see very little use because of the high XP cost and the fact that it uses an arcane slot. It can be searched with Arcane Initiate, discounted by Uncage the Soul, gets a bonus charge from Akachi Onyele, and can be returned to play again with Spirit-Speaker. It synergizes with The Chthonian Stone but not with most of the other cards that refer to chaos tokens. I guess this card is best on easy mode where you don't need powerful cards like Shrivelling (which costs the same XP and arcane slot!) and you only fail skill tests when the auto-fail token comes up. But that's not a fun way to play, in my opinion.

Sealing specialist(s) - Can be splitted between two players, only the reloads should be combined on one player:

• Arcane Slot 1: Seal of the Seventh Sign (5). Seal the auto-fail token.

• Arcane Slot 2: Protective Incantation (1). Seal the worst non-auto-fail token.

• Hand Slot 1: The Chthonian Stone or The Chthonian Stone (3). Seal the second worst non-auto-fail token.

• Ally Slot 1: Twila Katherine Price. Return a charge to the Seal if it is triggered.

• Hand Slot 2: Book of Shadows (3). Use actions you don't need to the Seal. Get an additional arcane slot.

• Arcane Slot 3: 2nd Protective Incantation (1): Seal the fourth token.

• Accessory Slot: Shining Trapezohedron. Pay the costs of 1 protective incantation per round, because it's a resource cost on a spell.

Events:

• Recharge (2) or Recharge (4). Place new charges on the Seal.

Qualified investigators:

• Akachi Onyele: Extra charges.
• Jacqueline Fine: Cancel revelation effects.
• Jim Culver: Leave the skull with value 0.

Works well with:

• Ancient Covenant + Blessing Generator
• other mystics with spell assets and events with negative side effects on symbol tokens

Just an idea since it's hard to know just how useful Seal of the Seventh Sign is in any given run:

House rule it to change "Seal ()" to the following:

Forced - After a token is revealed during any skill test: ignore that chaos token and draw another chaos token. Do not trigger any abilities as a result of this effect.

By house-ruling it to leave the token in the bag and just drawing a second when you pull it, you'll get to know exactly just how many tentacles this card has saved you from. Happy brewing!

I think there is a simpler way to get enjoyment from this card than mathematically computing how many that should have been negated. Then you'll not want to purchase it, because you think it does nothing in most tests.

It can give you quite a special experience when you could declare "hah! auto win!" as soon as you have boosted to match the highest minus in the bag, not often what you can feel in this game. If you think of it this way, it always does something on every test that everyone could enjoy until the charge runs out.

My play group is obviously grinning when doing high advantage test with sealed here. I think the card does its job well and we were entertained.