Perhaps someone can rule whether the following is a brilliant strategy, or a misreading of the rules:

You cuff some cultist, which, according to the rules of the scenario, sends him back to the shadows, now with cuffs attached. Now, if you leave all cultists alone, this guy will be tied for "nearest cultist enemy", which means you can choose him as the target for mysterious chanting, accosted, and shadowed, and prevent any of them from adding doom (and hence clues).

Does that work? The answer matters quite a bit whenever you're running handcuffs in a scenario with cards like mysterious chanting. Certainly if your cuffed cultist is the sole nearest cultist, the effect whiffs. But what if he's only tied for nearest cultist?

I just watched Justin from "Playing Board Games" in his Gauntlet Challenge with limited card pool facing this guy, and a question arouse, which neither he, nor people in chat could answer (correctly). So since I lost my password to comment on youTube, and can't recover it either, and more so, I feel, if a guy, who professionally plays Arkham all days and clearly knows more about the game than me, is uncertain about a thing, chances are, there are others, who didn't watch the video, yet would like an answer, I decided to answer it here.

The question was, if Brown would force to discard The Tower • XVI, if his Forced ability triggers, and the answer, they came up with was: "No, because only randomly discarded weaknesses can leave the hand", but that's not, what the rules say.

The relevant paragraph of the rules is: A player may not optionally choose to discard a weakness card from hand, unless a card explicitly specifies otherwise. So while cases, where a card is discarded randomly, like with Liquid Courage or some treacheries, are probably the most common and hence often used as example, they are not the only time, this can happen. The Forced ability on Brown Jenkin does not leave an optional choice, it simply gets rid of your whole hand, no matter what. (Unless you are Patrice, having the Watcher from Another Dimension in hand, because that is a hidden card, which cannot leave your hand by any means except those described on the card, so it trumps the general rules for weaknesses.)

I also think, this is intentionally. Both the weakness and the enemy came in the same cycle, the former can even be "earned" as a story asset, and they didn't went the way to fix it, neither in the errata, nor optionally in the "Return to". And it would have been an easy fix, if they wanted that. Just replace the text with: "Each investigator at his location discards each non-weakness card from their hand..."

There are other weird edge cases, I want to highlight, even though, they are unrelated to Brown Jenkin. It's fairly obvious, that if you draw Amnesia, while holding a weakness in hand, you have to "choose" all other cards. But what happens, lets say, if Winifred draws Amnesia while holding The Tower • XVI and Arrogance in her hand? My take would be, that in this case, she would have to keep both weaknesses, because she cannot choose, which one to get rid off, so she has to keep both, doing only as much as possible from Amnesia's revelation effect. But people might make a case, that that's where the otherwise redundant "optionally" from optionally choose to discard kicks in, saying that, there is no option to keep two cards with Amnesia. I'm not sure on that, but would go with my interpretation unless proven wrong. Even if you also hold a hidden card plus a weakness, Amnesia does not allow to choose even the weakness, you are obliged to do as much of Amnesia as possible, keeping both cards.

Let's revisit some old cards with years old reviews, for the benefit of new players.

Fight or Flight was released before Calvin Wright released, before Meat Cleaver released, and before In the Thick of It released. Survivor has also received a slew of self-horrifying cards, and ways to mitigate the risks of living on the edge of defeat. Before all that, Agnes Baker was the strongest contender for including this card, which speaks to mystics's propensity to take horror and thus it is the class that would like to splash this card the most.

I suspect that the soon to be released Hank Samson will also like this card, and it will pair well with the Sparrow Mask card that was spoiled. More contemporarily, it is an emergency button for non-fighters/evaders to get out of the death spiral that being engaged with an enemy can cause, while dedicated fighters/evaders can use it on a big turn of fighting a boss enemy or evading several enemies to get to the resign location. Lends itself to the desperate suite of cards, which I include Meat Cleaver with, and a fighting Carolyn Fern will make good use of it. Finally, Finn Edwards really needs the skill boosts, has incentives to both fight and evade, has a healthy 7 sanity to work with, and know that one day, he will draw Caught Red-Handed.

Let's revisit some old cards with years old reviews, for the benefit of new players.

A very common opening in Arkham Horror is play a three cost asset, gain a resource, then play a second 3 cost asset. It feels like an efficient use of the only turn you get without an encounter card draw, but most players can tell you that an action is worth more than a resource, and the only reason that such a turn feels deceptively valuable is that you have "setup" in time for the first mythos phase. More efficient would be play, Emergency Cache, play, but that is asking a lot of the random draw of your opening hand.

That is not to forget that turn 2 exists, and you quickly feel the squeeze of 1 resource at turn start where once you had 5. Your hand will have fewer cards than when you started too, and the demands of the encounter deck and the doom timer start to manifest. Many new players I've played with start drawing cards for answers to their lack of options, and once they have then, starting clicking for resources so that they can afford them. You may scoff at their lack of action, but pressing on without your key assets or defenses is it's own folly, making you ripe for action loss through failed actions, or prey for asset hate from treacheries or action hate from enemies.

Dario El-Amin is here to save you from yourself. Forget about his first printed sentence; it is a pie-in-the-sky demand (which makes it a crime that it is not the second sentence). Focus on the second line, and think about turn 1 and 2 with Dario in your hand; play Dario El-Amin, exhaust him to bring your resource pool back to 3 resources, then play a 3-cost asset. Next turn (enemies willing), exhaust again as your first action, play another 3-cost asset, then start working on the act with your final action. Repeat any turn you draw an expensive asset after ending last turn with 0 resources.

The exhaust is a feature, not a limitation. 2 resource actions in a turn is excessive, and Dario is here to gently remind you of that fact. Why spend 2 actions gaining resources when pacing yourself to once per turn nets you that most efficient use of your time? And once you start pacing yourself, you realise that your hand and resource pool are constantly replenishing, so you really should get a move on and let your options come to you.

I focus so much on the opening turns because Dario falls off in usefulness the later he shows up. This fact makes him a 'hard mulligan target' (Def - a card which if not in your opening hand, you mulligan your entire hand to maximise your odds of finding him, regardless of the cards you are giving away). He is universally useful, as all but the leanest decks need economy, and he bankrolls your strategy regardless of whether it is fighting/investigating/evading/supporting, or whether it is asset/event heavy. 0 exp means he is universally splashable too, and should always be a consideration if your investigator has access to rogue cards.

But falling off in usefulness doesn't mean completely useless. He actually has a use for excess resources, and while you shouldn't bend over backwards to activate his first clause as his design might suggest, he does ease another mistake new players make quite often; too much economy. I would say that any role, even fighter, will make good use of an early Dario, but there is no shortage of focused rogue investigators in recent expansions to take advantage of that additional , and extra is always appreciated.

In conclusion, there may be better allies, but you won't regret drawing Dario El-Amin in most cases, and he teaches restraint, which in a hard game with little room for error, is a benefit not written anywhere.

A neat combo that folks have missed is with Think on Your Feet, which grants fast, free movement and you avoid an enemy from the encounter deck.

Pocket Telescope solves the issue of stranded clues that are now "guarded" by an enemy.

I think that non-combat clue finders like Wendy, Trish and especially Jack love this combo, moreso at low player counts.