This is another nifty combo with Luke Robinson. One of the big drawbacks of Call is that it triggers Attack of Opportunity. Well, Luke can use Gate Box to make sure that's not a problem, and Call also happens to refill your Box if you run out of charges.

I ran this in a Cursed Luke deck and it rapidly became a linchpin of the deck. The combo with Eye of Chaos is nothing to sneeze at. In addition to using the tokens and the charges, you can also use Luke's investigator ability to play Call the Beyond as though you were at an adjacent location, which includes the part where you resolve an ability on the card, meaning you can recharge your Eye and investigate for 2+ clues in an adjacent location for the low price of 1 and 0 resources. Beats the hell out of Recharge in my book.

Another nice interaction is with Close the Circle. Call the Beyond checks for its Uses number rather than the flat 3 of Recharge, and if you're already working with Synergy cards, Uses will often be 4 or 5, meaning you've traded 1 and $0 for 4-5 actions and 3. Sounds pretty good to me. Same logic applies for any other high-Uses card, like Brand of Cthugha or Earthly Serenity.

Some small Innsmouth spoilers below. For the context, it was three players going all-in on curse token plays.

I played this "can't move" Rot on turn one during Horror in High Gear, suddenly making the scenario a cakewalk. High chases aren't usually that thrilling when the chasers are several miles behind:) That felt pretty cheesy, especially as it was the fan-made Return to, which fixed some previously known cheesy plays like, for example, Luke+barricade, but could not handle the Rod. Previously in same campaign I've used the "can't attack" Rot on Deep One Bull in the Pit of Despair, which not only eliminated the threat, but also changed usually quite annoying Deep one assaults into very mild "choose and discard one card from your hand" - the Bull was never disengaged, so when the Assault was drawn, the Bull just disengaged and reengaged me. Still needed to clear the other enemies, of course, but all the other non-elites are much more reasonable for scenario 1. Now imagine the same "can't attack" Rot on any non-elite enemy in any campaign when playing alongside Trish. Even easier than the Handcuffs trick. Also, still in the same campaign, I felt like my Olive McBride underperformed, since her intended use was for Eye of Chaos/Armageddon tests, but tapping the Rod is much less risky, even when Olive was upgraded.

Now, my point is, in that campaign I tried the Rod for the first time and had no intentions of breaking or cheesing the game. After that experience I am afraid that there could be much more really broken stuff to be found with the Rod and its Rots.

Two interesting facts about this cards:

• you're picking up a clue from location but test is not against location shroud value, but it's just (1) (+ number of suspicions)
• you do not perform investigate action, but parley, so if locations can't be investigated (due to some Mythos cards, like Locked Door/Obscuring Fog) you can still pick a clue from it, ignoring obstacle.

For the F.A.Q.: How does it interact with cards like "Serpent Guardian" which have a condition that loses aloof? We used this card on it after it lost aloof, so it gained it back, but the Guardian is worded as a constant effect.

The Rod feels impossible to review, due to the complete disconnect between what the card says it does, and what it really does.

It says you get to apply Rot to non-elite enemies. In practice, it lets you trigger "whenever a symbol is revealed during a skill test" triggers on your cards far more often, and more reliably, than it ought to.

I have a feeling a taboo for this card is inevitable, what do we think it will be? I think the most elegant way to make sure the card is only used for its intended purpose would be to make it require an action to use - no more using it during skill tests.