Am I crazy or is this the coterie agent? Were they planned from the start?

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I completely disagree with Caius take on this card, Keen Eye is, without a doubt, the worst "Permanent: spend resources for stat boost" talent in the game by FAR. Not only it doesn't hold a candle against Scrapper, Streetwise and Higher Education (and the fact it's the only card out of these 4 not to get taboo should tell you a lot), but it's absolute ineffective on its own even without considering its class alternatives.

"Now why is that?" You may ask "Why is this card so bad? It gives a stat boost of +1 for and , two of the main game winning skills, for the rest of the turn for 2 resources, and you can even stack it if you have the cash"

And the end of that sentence is exactly the issue: Guardians do not have the cash for this kind of luxury, with possibly the exception of Zoey Samaras, Leo Anderson and Tommy Muldoon, they are constantly paying for assets, put allies in play, play events, they simply cannot afford the economy to leverage on the stat boost reliably. Nathaniel Cho can, given his playstyle is less asset heavy, but his is too low for the boost to matter, and his is high enough he doesn't need it

Second, +1 for 2 resources for all your skill checks in a round is a very bad deal in anything above easy, and very questionable on easy itself. By the time you can afford the exp for this permanent, the stat boost will probably not suffice for most skill checks you will have difficulties to complete. Sure you can spend 4 resources for a +2, but where you are gonna get enough money to do so?!

Third, and this is the reason what leaves Keen Eye completely dead in the water: boosting all of your skill checks in one turn by little is massively inneficent compared to boosting one skill check by a lot, because that means you are committing the rest of the round fighting and/or investigating. Most guardians aren't just gonna spend all of their actions investigating one location, even in multiplayer, they are very likely to want to take other actions in between, before or at the end of their turn, like moving to another location to investigate there. And even the most combat heavy guardian will struggle to do nothing but fight the whole round (unless you are playing a full 4 player game with heavy enemy spawning and high boss health), their turn will probably also be interspaced by moving and engaging. You sacrifice massive action flexibility to make use of this Permanent, which makes it very difficult to justify using. Sure the times it works (in location with lots of clues and enemies) can be pretty good, but remember you are spending 3 exp for a highly situational permanent and possibly adding to your deck and buying various economy cards just to make use of this

I cannot understate, for a 3 exp card, how bad Keen Eye is, it's almost worthless on its own and ridicolously situational if you have the economy for it. Ironically, if this was the Rogue permanent talent instead of Streetwise... It would still be absolute rubbish, but at least would fit a niche because rogues have various ways to grant themselves additional actions to make the most of the buff

Unless you have some kind of huge rube goldberg combo costing a million XP, this thing is a giant trap.

On one hand, a 3 cost weapon that can get you +4 to hit is great. Where the problem starts is that it only deals 2 damage and exhausts itself. 2 damage is not enough. There are somewhere around 100 enemies in the game with 2 or fewer health, and that number includes swarms and bosses that get +X per investigator health that I can't be bothered to count, because there are around 250 enemies in the game with 3 or more health.

An investigator dedicated to fighting needs to be able to deal at least 3 damage per round, full stop.

The best case scenario for the sickle is to deal 2 damage, evade the enemy, then finish it off next round with the secondary ability to clear the doom. For four xp you're doing in three actions, with three tests, across two rounds, what any other weapon/spell could do in 2 or less. All that 4xp gets you is an unnecessarily huge bonus on the first of your three tests, and it still requires outside boosts to seal the deal.

There are two cards that make the sickle work, and they're both expensive. The first is Elle Rubash, who makes sitting on the doom while you wait for the second attack less dangerous, and gives a small but appreciated bonus to make the secondary attack actually connect. If you dual-wield them you even have a relatively stable combo... for a bank-breaking 10xp minimum. The elephant in the room is that, if you're running Elle, Abyssal Tome does what the sickle does at half the cost. It lacks the extra boost for the first attack, but makes up for it with the ability to boost the damage output when you really need to. Unlike the sickle, it is appropriately costed for the limitations involved.

The second option is to spend a whopping six more xp on Sin-Eater. Sin Eater lets you double tap the sickle in a given turn, and gives an option to clear doom that doesn't involve using the terrible secondary ability. It's pretty good, as should be expected for a 10xp combo... ignoring the caveat that you can't use it at all in the last three rounds of any agenda. I wouldn't spend 10xp on a combo that still regularly requires a Moonlight Ritual, but you do you I guess.

The sickle is just worse in every way that matters compared to the Enchanted Blade, a card which already doesn't get much play because it's not a spell. It is laughably worse than every other 4xp weapon or spell. The only investigator in the game that would want to take the sickle over something else can't, because it's 4xp. You could argue it's less useful than a Kukri, a level 0 weapon which is cheaper, more flexible, and doesn't add doom to the field, and kukri is the worst card in the game.

This weakness would wreck a havoc on Patrice Hathaway. She can cycle through her deck twice per scenario! In only 2 or 3 scenarios, she'd be killed. Of course, you could try Short Supply and Scrying and such to help, but you can only do so much...

I'm not clear what the intent of the latest Taboo is on this one.

I can see it restricts the items you can deploy to level 0-3.

Does it also cancel the "At the end of your turn" effect? Or just restrict the items you can deploy?

If it cancels the return, that seems to be 9/10ths of the value of the card gone?