Minh Thi Phan

All the reviews I read on Minh do her little justice. You can look at her ability and frown a bit, but it is not what makes her strong. Her stat line is not perfect, but it is perfectly reasonable - at 4 Will and easy access to +2 from comitting a single symbol she is very resilient to the nastier effects of the mythos deck. Her 2 foot is not stellar, but if she commit a symbol and someone else commits a symbol she is at 6 Agility. Plus her 7/7 health pool is a blessing, since Seeker allies tend to soak horror better.

She is ridiculously strong and among the best Seekers in the game after only 4xp. The reason? Scavenging 2 + Seeker 5. Its an unique combination that gives you the best of red plus the best of yellow. Scavenging in a Survivor deck is all nice, but most Survivors have trouble to pull it off easily out of the box and even when they can survivor has very few items worth scavenging. Darrel can, but he doesn't have access to good cards to scavenge aside from Old Keyring. Minh and Rex are unique in this regard, but Minh does it more consistently from Turn 1 and can play scavenged items without spending an action with Scavenging. Considering that Rex get a clue for free, but has to spend turns playing scavenged items almost evens the clue game all by itself.

Two cards make the core: Scavenging and Schoffner's Catalogue

Shoffner can pay for all of your AND your allies items. And it takes no slot. It's basically a 3 resource card (2 cost, 5 return) that auto-recurs. It is easy to over succeed after you play your seeker items. Even on tough shroud you only need to commit 1 symbol to reliably overshoot the check (on Standard difficulty. On higher difficulties Encyclopedia or Dream Diary should be considered.

Scavenging + ANY item with ? (Rabbit's Foot or Encyclopedia or Hyperphysical Shotcasterfor commit turns her ability into a mini-Darrel. You never actually play these items. You just commit them over and over again.

Scavenging + The Necronomicon. Minh is THE BEST Necronomicon user by none. Overstack on Hand slots, play cheap assets like Magnifying Glass to go over your hand slot and discard necronomicon. Recur, play for free with Schoffner. Trivialize every monster.

Scavenging + Scroll of Secrets. Scroll of Secrets is Gloria Goldberg in the form of 3xp 1cost seeker item, which you recur and play for free with Schoffner's Catalogue

Expensive Seeker assets like Fingerprint Kit and Fingerprint Kit or Grim Memoir are a joke to pay for Minh. With Research Librarian you can tutor either your Schoffner's Catalogue to load on resourced or The Necronomicon start the chain reaction depending on what you get in your starting hand. Put a single copy of Astounding Revelation makes Research Librarian pay for itself.

azmo · 4
I think there is one omission in your review: Ice Picks (3)! It is the best scavenging target in the game right now, and plays fast so it doesn't need Scavenging (2) (except for the catalogue recursion). With this in mind, I still agree that Minh is top tier with Scavenging alone! — Valentin1331 · 71606
Ice Pick (3) is the inferior option for Minh. She can do Fingerprint Kit (4) instead. In terms of XP, resource cost and actions to recur the kit is simply superior. — azmo · 4
Accidentally clicked post. Just to clarify: — azmo · 4
Fucking hell i hate this site. Must not CLICK press repeat to myself.... with that said... fingerprint (4) will get you 6 clues for 5 resources and one recursion. For the same 6 clues you'll have to recur Ice pick 6 times and pay 6 resources. For Minh recurring Necronomicon is simply superior. Darrel doesn't get Necronomicon and Rex doesn't get Scavenging(2) so they can save 4XP from Scavenging and recur Ice Picks isntead. Bonus points if you also run Hyperphysical Shortcaster or any of the seeker attack events. — azmo · 4
I think the nature of Arkham makes it hard to declare one card as always superior to another. There are several benefits to Ice Picks over Fingerprint Kit 4. At 2p FK4 is mostly wasted, and a flexy Minh that also fights can benefit from the damage aspect of Ice Picks. And per-clue economy isn't the only way to analyze costs; you can recur the Pick with the resource you generate each turn, whereas you need burst economy to replay Fingerprint Kit. FP4 can be a good choice for Minh to scavenge, but which card is superior depends a lot on player count, build, etc. — Pseudo Nymh · 54
Obviously it is not a one card fits all situations. Laregely depends on your build. If you are not recuring any other cards other than Ice Pick (3) then you can enjoy the flexibility it provides. But if you are recurring Necronomicon (or other expensive assets - like Grim Memoir), you'll also have to recur Schoffner more often. In this case you prefer an asset that you recur once and use over longer amount of time - like the Kit. Ice Pick (3) is a flexible, fire and forget item, but you — azmo · 4
... (hate this site) will have to commit to recur it every round instead of anything else. — azmo · 4
Unsolved Case

It comboes very bad with core set mythos card: Dissonant Voices, which prevents you from playing assets and ... events. This is an event, so if you drew Dissonant Voices and this on top of the Hunch deck, it's going to stay and there's nothing you can do about it (*you wound need to drop Dissonant Voices first to be able to play it). On the flip side, chances for that are really low.

Another interesting thing about this card is that in the last scenario of a campaign, you simply don't care about it. You don't need any experience any more.

bugiel_marek · 22
How does this card interact with the prelude scenarios from Hemlock Vale? Since i don`t draw it it isn`t discarded. Does this card substract from the bonus Exp if i don`t play it? — Daxlow · 13
Schoffner's Catalogue

After reading the other reviews, I found it curious how so many good points were brought up, yet the logical comparisons between Catalogue and Emergency Cache didn't mention the factor of asset-hating treacheries, of which there are quite a few. One secret could be left on the Catalogue to effectively replace a Crypt Chill's "Discard an asset you control" effect with a more palatable "Lose 1 resource". Besides the asset-hating treacheries, one could also consider the asset-loving SU-21 investigator who can devour the Catalogue with the last secret left. Plus, unlike investigators who might have no use for the Catalogue once fully set up with all the items they want, SU-21 always hungers for more cards to eat including items the Catalogue will help pay for.

ftrkmrvdsr · 3
Subject 5U-21

My god get this travesty off of the Arkham page. What’s next laser blasters held by goblins? HP Lovecraft is rolling in his grave - all for modernisations and modern world sensibilities but this fanfic stuff brings the game down.

Krysmopompas · 359
HP Lovecraft was frightened by math, seafood, and miscegenation, and to my knowledge only recanted the latter. This is already a game where you can fistfight Cthulhu too. If you don’t like her don’t use her but that’s on you. — Lailah · 1
The subject is not 4U! — MrGoldbee · 1462
The lightning gun basically is a laser blaster and the blob basically is a Shoggoth, so I'm really not sure what Lovecraft would be objecting to more about Suzi than he would about a non-binary PoC beating mythos gods to death with baseball bats. — Gfo1979 · 1
@Gfo1979 Lightning Gun is "canon" for what that's worth - and agreed to not use her if anyone doesn't like her but for a game that started out so strong, things like this "Character", TSK's endless bad writing and so on, I'm looking forward to Hemlock Vale as a spiritual restart for the franchise. — Krysmopompas · 359
HP Lovecraft would definitely think this is sick as hell. — toastsushi · 74
Also mentioning that stuff like this is fan fiction when the Cthulhu mythos is a steady amalgamation of fan fiction from other writers over the years. — toastsushi · 74
There are a lot of things HP Lovecraft would oppose in this game and I do not care at all. Art is what we make it. — StyxTBeuford · 13026
the game fundamentally reduces lovecraft's setting to something more like a saturday morning cartoon, with the good guys finding and beating up the baddies. Tonally, the martial conflict that is centric to the plots in arkham LCG does not mesh well with the lovecraft universe I think. I'm also not sure a blob in the shape of a human being is particularly out of place either on arkham lcg or in lovecraft's original stories. — ragnarokio · 1
Magnifying Glass

The magnifying glass has one interesting interaction with recursive decks - it allows you to pop used up hand items to the discard for 0 cost.

It plays wonderfully with the The Necronomicon when you have an additional Hand item in play - like Fingerprint Kit or Grim Memoir.

One Necronomicon is drained of charges you slide the Magnifier in play for 0xp 0actions, discarding the Necronomicon. Then investigate at +1 and if you succeed with 2 difference immediately put Necro back into play via Scavenging

If you took the last clue you can take the magnifier back into your hand and free the slot. Alternatively you can get rid of the other hand asset if its out of charges. Or just discard the magnifier and dig it out later.

azmo · 4
Just FYI there's no player window during the test after you reveal the token but before triggering scavenging, so if you use the +1 intellect from the mag glass you can't return mag glass to hand and then trigger scavenging. It just sounded from your review like you might have thought that you could. Unless I misunderstood :) — NarkasisBroon · 10