Ocula Obscura
Esoteric Eyepiece

Актив. Accessory

Item. Tool. Science.

Цена: 3.

Нейтральный

Agatha Crane deck only.

After you succeed at a skill test, if no tokens are sealed here: Seal a non-symbol token revealed during this skill test on Ocula Obscura. (Limit once per phase.)

Forced - When you would reveal a token from the chaos bag: Resolve the token sealed here instead, then release that token.

Rob Laskey
The Drowned City Investigator Expansion #9.
Ocula Obscura

FAQs

No faqs yet for this card.

Reviews

This card is absolutely ridiculous. It's not just a permanent Premonition, it's more like a permanent Will to Survive. Why it's only limited to "once per phase" I have no clue (pun not intended).

Here's why this thing is more than just Premonition. While Premonition can grab anything ─ Auto-fail, nasty symbols, "draw another token"-tokens like blurses ─ this thing will grab only good tokens. Not only that, once it has a good token, it's really not that hard to keep that good token... FOREVER.

Here's what a typical game looked like when I was playing Agatha Crane for the first time:

  1. Draw Ocula Obscura, make happy noises because you'll no longer have to deal with the chaos bag soon.
  2. Play Ocula Obscura, and use Eyes of the Dreamer to fish out a good token, let's say 0.
  3. Next mythos phase, draw any non-combat test, automatically succeed and immediately seal your 0 again.
  4. Investigate any 4 or lower shroud location, automatically succeed and immediately seal 0 once again.
  5. Keep yourself busy with any of the many (testless) events you're playing anyway because your name is Agatha like Preposterous Sketches, Deep Knowledge, Guidance, Cosmic Revelation, Extensive Research, Blood-Rite, Drawn to the Flame (probably do this one before no. 4 in case of a test)...
  6. Repeat from no. 3 next turn.

Heck, you don't even need to play any stat boosters or skills anymore (I sure didn't), because you can literally succeed at anything that's not combat! This leaves so much room to add many events to your deck which leads to incredibly flexiblity on top of your ability.

My team was astounded by how ridiculously easy the game suddenly became for me. "Oh no! We have to do this difficult Will test of 5, what do we do!" Oh, let me just hop over there and commit a single willpower icon from one of the many events, which I can immediately play anyway later with my ability, and re-seal that 0 for good measure.

Even if you lose that 0 because you just HAD to do 2 tests this phase (PHASE) or drew one of the extremely rare combat test encounters, it's laughably easy to get it back and repeat the cycle all over again next turn.

Nenananas · 271
Kohaku is back. — MrGoldbee · 1493
Oh my god, you are right. I didn't realize you can use the reaction ability for the token released by the forced effect. What were they thinking? — AlderSign · 407
Shards of the Void says hi, by the way. — AlderSign · 407
Admittedly, I can see two ways we might've misinterpreted this card (they better clear that up in the next FAQ): you can't reseal the token on this card because 1. resolve ≠ reveal, or 2. the token has not yet been released from this card in time to trigger the reaction ability — Nenananas · 271
If you go through the steps of the skill test timing from the framework it is really clear that you can. — AlderSign · 407
Here's one reason why it might not work - Ocula Obscura directs you to resolve the sealed token and then release it, which could mean it goes back into the bag right then, not at the end of the test. And then it's no longer around to be re-sealed after the test succeeds. — TheNameWasTaken · 3
You mean because of that ruling that says you can't access/find a card that goes into the deck (FAQ here: https://arkhamdb.com/card/60324)? — AlderSign · 407
(If so, then I don't see how that FAQ would be applicable here, because the released chaos token is certainly not "in a place where its position is impossible to determine". "Impossible" is a questionable formulation to begin with, but in opposition to a card deck, tokens in the chaos bag don't even have a sense of order or positioning. — AlderSign · 407
Scratch all of that, I see my error now: The "reveal" step is replaced, but no token is actually revealed. — AlderSign · 407
Seems this could also be valuable on Hard/Expert, combined with Olive McBride or Rod Of Carnemagos, to fish out and lock up the -6/-8 token forever. — HanoverFist · 755
"After you succeed at a skill test, _if no tokens are sealed here_" and "[r]esolve the token sealed here instead, _then_ release that token". I don't think you can reseal the token. — heikkip · 2
ugh you're right how did I miss that — HanoverFist · 755