Актив. Союзник

Союзник. Преступник.

Цена: 4. Опыт: 3.

Ловкач
Здоровье: 2. Рассудок: 1.

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Allan Bednar
Алые ключи. Сыщики #76.
Исполнитель

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Reviews

This is an interesting card, and some ramifications are not quite apparent at first glance.

First : the Illicit asset does not cost any ressource to put into play from your hand (nor any action either), but once it's attached to the Trigger Man, you have to pay 1 ressource per use. Most Illicit guns have a cost that is either the same or higher than the number of ammo it comes with. So a gun with 3 ammo that normally costs 3 ressources to put into play will cost you 3 ressources to fully use with the Trigger Man. With "more expensive" guns like the .45 Thompson, you can actually save a ressource, and in all cases you have the advantage of paying only for the ammo you actually use.

Of course, you have to factor in the (non-negligible) cost of the Trigger Man himself. But you get what you pay for : "fast" actions with a base value of 4. Interesting for a low-Fight rogue who wants to use weapons. The lower your stat, the better value you get from this, so Kymani, Trish and Sefina seem like good candidates. Alternately, a low-Int rogue could use Damning Testimony or, with less benefit, Lockpicks for this. And for our good mayor Charlie Kane and his horrendous stat line, it's even better, for fighting or investigating ! (It would have been awesome for Preston Fairmont, but you can't get any Illicit cards in his deck, so barring any "card-sharing shenanigans" with teammates, it doesn't work.)

Second : Nothing says you can't use the "activate" action on the asset yourself, even once it's attached to Trigger Man. So you could decide to use the gun (that you put into play for free) yourself, without paying the Trigger Man's 1 ressource. Probably not a good strategy by itself just to save money, but could be useful in a pinch, if you need to attack again.

Third : Nothing says the asset stops using slots, so you have to "share hands" with the guy, both of you holding stuff together. Weird, but OK

Which brings me to : other interesting assets that don't use hand slots.

Burglary : For 1 ressource, Investigate as a "fast" action with a base value of 4 to gain 3 ressources. It becomes a money engine, especially if you can boost your investigation with Magnifying Glass (Finn, Kymani, Trish)

Liquid Courage : Heal without spending you precious actions, at the cost of paying more. For rich rogues.

Disguise : Tony Morgan could reliably evade at 6, if necessary.

DrOGM · 25
Yeah, I'm pretty sure RAI the attached card uses slots. Stops you having 2x2h big guns, for example. Sadly :) It is definitely an interesting card economy wise, but rogues are usually flush with cash? So it's the opportunity cost of using Trigger Man over another ally. Especially since he's XP3 and so locked from any off-class Rogues. I don't doubt he's cool and can do some cool things. — fiatluxia · 65
The asset is never played so it doesn't gain any "Uses" like ammor or lockpicks, so such assets can't be used outside trigger mans ability. Also does this mean lockpicks 1 is immediately discarded? — Django · 5070
Thx for the review. Wow, I was sure the attached asset doesn't take any slot, but you're definitely right, it does! — chrome · 57
@Django From rules: "When a card bearing [uses] keyword enters play, place a number of resource tokens equal to the value (X)..." I would assume that "enters play" is a word combination to cover all ways how the asset may happen to appear in your play area, including being played, being put into play and, most likely, being attached from hand to another asset upon the latter is played, etc. — chrome · 57
Quick fun fact: This card uses the art for Leo Anderson from Arkham Horror 2e. The fact that Leo can't take it is adding insult to injury! Great card though, excited to use it. — MiskatonicFrosh · 340
This card is so cool from a theme perspective, but really falls flat in execution. As noted above, you have to share the hand slot (if any) with the guy, you can still use it, basically holding hands with this dude to use it. And the art features Leo Anderson, who can’t even use the damn thing! And it would be really cool and thematic in Leo, too. So here’s my version of him I’m tempted to proxy: 1 cost, 2 xp. As an additional cost to play Trigger Man, play an Illicit Firearm asset from your hand and attach it to Trigger Man (it doesn’t take any slots and can only be activated with the below ability). Everything else about the card I’d leave unchanged. Cost reduced because now you have to pay for the weapon, and has to be a firearm because hiring a “trigger man”to hold your whiskey and pour it down your throat is too damn silly — rockmaninoff · 3

This guy really should have been called "Security Consultant" or "Locksmith" or something because he is far better with Lockpicks, Damning Testimony, or a Thieves' Kit than with weapons, generally.

Even with investigation tools, though, he is clunky as heck and suffers greatly from the fact that Leo De Luca, Delilah O'Rourke / Lola Santiago, and Hired Muscle / Treasure Hunter exist.

Theoretically Trigger Man offers a nice combo package of three benefits: he cheats an asset into play, he gives you bonus actions (that ignore attacks of opportunity), and he may give you a skill boost. Unfortunately, there are a few snags that end up making him less than the sum of his parts.

First, you have to wait on playing him until you have the desired asset in hand. He looks like a setup/efficiency/action-economy card, but punishes you for playing efficiently and getting value down on the table. If you play Leo De Luca and then .45 Thompson as your first two actions, you'll have only two actions left to shoot with. If you play Trigger Man instead, you get the Thompson out at the same time and can shoot three times right away : twice with normal actions and once with Trigger man. But, if you draw Leo De Luca before your gun you can play him immediately and collect an extra action per turn while you wait for the gun to show up and you'll still be on action-parity with the Trigger Man player when it finally does. Also, trigger Man's own base resource cost is a large as any illicit card's bar a couple of guns, and then you spend resources on the activations too, so although Leo De Luca + .45 Thompson takes more upfront resources to deploy it works out to be comparably resource efficient in the end.

If your collection is thin, you might run him alongside Leo or when Leo's uniqueness is a problem, or just for a change of pace. But Rogue has lots of ways to turn money and XP into actions and I feel that Haste, Ace in the Hole, Honed Instinct, Swift Reflexes and the like just do it better. Several rogue guns even grant bonus actions when upgraded, such as the .41 Derringer and .25 Automatic.

Thus, I think this guy only really makes sense when you get some value replacing your base skill with 4, which is a rough place to be because you can only use him once per turn. And you probably want whatever you plan to equip him with to be something that you could conceivably use for yourself if you draw it without him. The Rogues that consider toting guns already tend to have 3+ strength, and the 2 strength rogues usually plan to fight in other ways and or not at all, and are unlikely to have the stat boosts or icons to succeed even from a base 4. So this is usually going to be a +1 once per turn, maybe sometimes a +2.

The other problem with giving the Trigger Man a gun is that when you need a weapon you usually want to use it several times in the same round to put enemies away, so you may not want to rely on his strength after all. The Trigger Man also runs out of usefulness when his gun runs out of bullets, and while you can reload it with events you cannot play him a fresh gun from hand.

The ideal use case for Trigger Man, then would be to load him up with an asset that can only be used once per turn anyway (because it exhausts), that tests a stat tend to be weak on (will or investigation), for which they can easily stack bonuses, and perhaps one which would normally provoke AoOs.

Lockpicks fits the bill perfectly. You can only use it once per round in the first place, but with Trigger Man you can do it every turn even when engaged without spending your real actions. You still add your agility, so Kymani or Winifred can get the trigger man investigating at a base 9, and most other rogues on base 8, before any bonus from tarot, footwear, other allies, and so on. Charlie Kane unfortunately gains little from adding his base 1 agility unless he has passive boosts on that too, and may therefore prefer a single-stat cluever item that gives some additional rewards such as Thieves' Kit, Damning Testimony, or Fake Credentials.

It's still not great compared to just playing Lola, who soaks more and brings most rogues up to 8+ on lockpick tests by herself while providing a different way to turn resources into clues. But "worse than Lola and Delilah" is unfortunately where most reasonable ally designs are fated to end up.

Never compared him to Leo...rough trade. — MrGoldbee · 1449
I'm not sure why you think Kymani and Charlie would add their own agility values to a lockpick test with Trigger Man? The card says test with a base value of 4, I would assume that applies to both the stats you're adding meaning you're testing at 8 for every investigator. — Spamamdorf · 5
For the same reason you can't commit manual dexterity. — OrionAnderson · 67

Question about this card.

Does "without paying its -> cost” mean, we don't need to spend bullets/resources on cards with limited uses?

Also, does the attached card really take up my own slot? Where can I find such rule stated? Was really hoping to put a weapon on Trigger Man as my hands are already full with other tools.

castletime · 1
You just ignore the action cost to activate the ability. Each other cost like ammunition need to be payed additionally. — Tharzax · 1
Cards like Abigail Foreman and Elli Rubash state, that attached assets don't take up a slot, this card doesn't. Hence it's save to say, that it doesn't. — Susumu · 366
*Elli Horowitz of course. — Susumu · 366
I don't think you would pay and costs associated with the -> ability. If the card only removes the activate action, then it wouldn't need to say that at all because it's already triggering off of a free trigger. — Divitkid182 · 1
What about Sledgehammer with several actions cost to use? Is it also cost 0 actions with Trigger Man? — Pr1celess · 1
When they print multiple action arrows on a card it's shorthand for "as an additional cost to use this action, pay (extra actions); ignoring "the arrow cost" only ignores the first arrow, not the extras. "Ignoring all costs" will do it, though. — OrionAnderson · 67
It really is a bit ambiguous, because "resolving" is not the same as "triggering" an ability, but actually only the effect, i.e. the text after the ":". So unless they intentionally wanted to put redundant text on the card (and let you ignore all costs) I assume they meant in fact "trigger". This distinction is also important for cards like Colt Vest Pocket (2), which in my point of view demands a ruling regarding whether "resolving" counts as "triggering" in this case. — AlderSign · 269
is there an actual rules reference, if cards that refer to ignore the "arrow" cost don't ignore other costs like ammo? And in your opinions, is there a separate "arrow" cost to an action plus ammo cost, or is this viewed together? Then in theory, trigger man could shoot endless with no ammo, which just seems wrong to me. In my opinion, just the existence of "all costs" vs. "arrow costs" proves that they are different and therefore, ignoring "arrow" costs doesn't pay for ammo cost. — Khaleasi1110 · 1