At level 0

This card is great right from the bat at level 0. It's basically 1 action for 1 card in your deck and 1 resource. You will have the opportunity to play both copies almost every game as most scenario has at least 2 agendas and 2 acts ! And if it is not the case, Rogues tend to oversucceed anyway... To trigger this "play condition", you can play Winifred, Lockpicks or events thats add to of your skills together like Breaking and Entering, Slip Away, etc.

Honed Instinct is nice to :

• add more action to your ridiculous 5-8 actions turn in some Rogues (and maybe play Pay Day if you played it during your turn by oversucceeding).
• react to a bad "advance the Agenda" (or "advance the Act", like in TCU...) by evading the monster you now have to generate engaged with you !
• simply do more to win the scenario more quickly.

The main drawback of this card is that you don't want to have it in your opening hand (at least if you can't oversucceed on your turn 1) but you don't want to draw it too late either. So it might end up as a dead draw for sometimes. For this reason I think the more card draw you have in your deck, the better Honed Instinct is (like most cards, yes I know...).

It changes a bit when you unlock new ways to use this card obviously.

What upgrade(s) to take ?

• As a general rule, you should have at least 1 "play condition" for this card that you can hope to do almost every turn, or at least half of your turns. If you can easily oversucceed by 3, don't take any upgrade that adds new play condition. If you can't, find 1 that corresponds to your deck and/or campaign. You shouldn't take more than 1 of those "play condition" upgrades except if you have too much xp.

1 □ Reflex Response. Add the following play condition: "- You take damage or horror."

• Good if you are a Rogue with 1 or if you play a heavy damage and/or horror campaign (Carcosa, Innsmouth, TSK maybe considering all the healing ?) but not TFA as it gives you damage if you fail tests which you will usually less fail as a Rogue.
• You could make it very reliable with cards like Smoking Pipe, Painkillers, Forbidden Knowledge, etc.

2 □ Situational Awareness. Add the following play condition: "- A location enters play or is revealed."

• Overall not so great, there are scenarios with very few locations or where you don't really control when a location enters play or is revealed. If you know the scenario by heart it's nice but otherwise I think the other play conditions are easier.
• Might be good in EoTE though with that many locations !

3 □ Killer Instinct. Add the following play condition: "- An enemy engages you."

• The best one for a fighter/evader ! Just evade the enemy and deal with it when it reengages you or let a Hunter enemy catch up with you just to kill him (in 1 action though) before he attacks you.
• Also good when you draw an enemy card in the Mythos phase, which is quite frequent.
• Tony Morgan will love that.

4 □ Gut Reaction. Add the following play condition: "- A treachery enters your threat area."

• Situational... Might be okay in Carcosa (if I remember correctly) and mainly in TFA.
• Might also be useful if your weakness is an enemy (or can be solved in only 1 action) ! (Trish's Shadow Agents, Tony's Quarry, Kymani's Agent Fletcher)

5 □ Muscle Memory. Add the following play condition: "- You play an asset."

• Very good if you have an asset heavy deck. Just play something and use it immediately !
• This is the most reliable of the play conditions (with 1. Reflex Response + Smoking Pipe but it needs more cards).

6 □□ Sharpened Talent. During the action granted by Honed Instinct, you get +2 to each of your skills.

• Nice if you have a specific plan with your extra action (a fighter waiting for an enemy to appear, a cluever that reveals a location and immediately investigate).
• You become less flexible because it forces you to wait for an opportunity to make a test with your action but you're better at it and you generally do not take extra action just to draw a card so I guess it's pretty good !

7 □□□ Impulse Control. You may include up to three copies of Honed Instinct in your deck. Honed Instinct gets -1 cost.

• The basic card is good so this is gooder ! And free-er ! For 1xp per card :o
• A solid "play condition" is mandatory here, so most of the time this upgrade will actually be 4xp.

8 □□□□□ Force of Habit. When you play Honed Instinct, you may take 2 actions instead of 1 (one at a time). Then, remove it from the game.

• Unless you can easily cycle your deck completely twice in a game (very possible in Rogues but you need to work for it), this upgrade gives you twice as many actions. That changes a lot of things ! Now you can fight twice the enemy engaged with you (to manage those 3-health enemies), you can play a weapon then kill that cultist in time, you can take almost a turn when the agenda/act advances, giving you a lot of tempo in those sometimes critical moments, you can engage and evade an enemy on your friend, etc.

Upgrade combinations

• "I wanted to play Ursula... :/" : 2. Situational Awareness + 6. Sharpened Talent => 3xp Twice per game, enter a new location and Investigate with a +2. It's not really worth 3xp but hey, you should have played that Ursula deck !

• "Everything is a Lupara !" : 5. Muscle Memory + 6. Sharpened Talent (+ 8. Force of Habit) => 3/8xp Play any gun/weapon, play Honed Instinct, fight twice with a +2 , hopefully kill the enemy ^^' It could be nice with the Colt Vest Pocket (0) or (2) to empty all 5 ammo in 1 turn. Also nice with Tony Morgan or Dirty Fighting (you would need a Fast weapon to not take an AoO though). Note, that it is viable with inly 3xp but the 8xp is more like a Lupara, that's all :)

• "How many actions do you want ? Yes." : 7. Impulse Control + 8. Force of Habit (+ 1/2/3/4/5 ?) => 8/9xp For roughly 3xp per card you can get 6 extra actions over the course of every scenario by just doing what you would already be doing (because you bought the correct play condition for your deck/campaign). This is obviously only relevant if you have good enough Skills or boosts to your skills to pass that many tests every turn but still ! (For this reason, I feel like Preston would fall a bit short on gas (or money !) with 5 actions, same for Jenny (without the 8/8/8/8 build ^^) or investigators that relies on assets that exhaust (Lockpicks, Mauser C96, etc.)

Final thoughts

I like this card. I think it's better for a fighter or flex than for a cluever as you might have guessed with the examples I gave. That's because, bursts of actions are generally more useful when there is an emergency like an enemy or two to kill ! But you can easily do the same thing with Investigate actions, it's just a bit too overpriced in xp for that in my opinion.

Bonus idea : Put Honed Instinct in a Sefina deck with 3. Killer Instinct + 7. Impulse Control (4xp, level 2) to play up to 6 copies of Honed Instinct per deck-cycle and nuke enemies with your spells when they approch you !

Good in Wendy?

I'm experimenting with this in Wendy Adams right now, and it's been OK when her Amulet is on the board.

Level 2:

• Sharpened Talent: +2 on whatever test I make with the action
• Situational Awareness: "" (I know it's not really a Free Action, which is why I put it in quotes) Investigate (+4 with Old Keyring: -2 Shroud and +2 skill)
• Killer Instinct: "" Fight (total of 5 with .18 Derringer (2) or 7 with Cheap Shot) or Evade
• I can also just take the free action on a 3+ success or when the Agenda or Act advance, but I look at this the same way I look at A Test of Will: I'll hold onto it for when it matters, and I think it matters most you can scoop up some easy clues or attack (or evade) an enemy that just engaged you. Unless it's REALLY important to Move, I'm not using this card for that.

Wendy's Amulet makes it interesting because I can commit it for or discard it for her ability and still play it while it's the topmost event.

Is this worth 4XP?

• Maybe (probably?) not, but Survivors are typically looking for ways to spend XP by the end of a campaign anyway.
• You can get an extra action every turn with two Leo De Luca (for consistency) for 0XP or two Leo De Luca (1) for 2XP, but you really want Peter Sylvestre (2) in your ally slot. So just buy Charisma and have both in play. This will cost 3XP (or 5XP if you've upgraded Leo) for an extra action every turn. This is also getting you some extra soak at the cost of 6 or 5 resources. That's probably a better use of the XP, but Leo is expensive, even at level 1.

_Almost_ a [Lucky!](/card/01080)

• For 1 resource it's an extra action and +2 to a skill test (with Sharpened Talent), so it's almost a pre-test Lucky!. Two Lucky! (2) will also cost you 4XP and they replace themselves, but you're probably running them anyway.
• You can also look at it as a (situational) "" test with an Unexpected Courage, which event-heavy Wendy decks might not include.

So is it good in Wendy?

I think it's ok+ to good- in Wendy as long as you have her Amulet out because of the event interaction. When Abandoned and Alone does inevitably hit, you'll start to see this card more often (as long as it wasn't in your discard pile) because your deck will be thinner.

Some extra details for □□□ Impulse Control : If you start the game with 2x Honed Instinct at first, when you spend 3 XP to check the boxes, the 3rd copy can come in and replace any card in the deck for free, with the special customizable rule that came with the Investigator Expansion box (see below).

This rule also allow not including any Honed Instinct at first, then spend 3 XP (or more, like one of the □ customization) to swap in all 3x Honed Instinct with the customization into the deck at once. (e.g. If you think 3 cards deck space should be for something better than a base Honed Instinct.)

An investigator may directly purchase one or more copies of a new customizable card with one or more upgrades by spending only the amount of experience points required to purchase those upgrades. (Doing so counts as purchasing a new card, not upgrading an existing card.)

If Leo Anderson can find space for it, this is really good for him with the Muscle Memory and Impulse Control upgrades. Now any of the allies he plays with his free action get to cosplay as Leo De Luca for a turn, which can be extremely clutch on some key turns (especially if you're playing the real Louisiana Lion as well).