Analysis

Analysis

If you play a Minh Thi Phan blessed deck, Analysis helps Minh to get a bless token (which becomes a basic "+2" thanks to Ancient Covenant and to succeed.

BUT if you play her in a duo with a guardian using Blessing of Isis it's even better: Analysis can also helps to get the second bless token (either by spending more clues or because you used Favor of the Sun to be sure to get the 1st one), which triggers Minh's and allows her to get back Analysis after the end of the test.

And of course you can use Practice Makes Perfect to get more use of Analysis and take back to your hand an other skill when Practice Makes Perfect assures you to get back Analysis.

AlexP · 264

Signum Crucis

Signum Crucis

Playing off taboo list, this card reliably syncs with drawing thin.

Draw a hard test in mythos you have no chance of passing? Add +4 to it and play this. You end with a ton of money and a Good bit of bless generation to boot.

Unfortunately though this situation rarely happens, and most of the time you're better off just using Keep Faith.

Playing on taboo since drawing thin is nerfed and this is now level 0, it can still be useful for blessing generation... but ultimately keep faith still outperforms it.

drjones87 · 196
Dont forget quicklearner, it also increases difficulty of the first test each round by 1 (or 2 if you have 2 quicklearner). Still this is very situational and hard to use. — Django · 5142

The Red-Gloved Man

The Red-Gloved Man

A reminder...

This card cannot be selected if you're doing TSK. He's integral to the story and can't show up as an asset.

That being said, other than that consistency rule there is actually no gameplay reason why he can't be selected, so feel free to house rules it up.

drjones87 · 196
"The game rules can explicitly be ignored if you wish" is what this post boiled down to... was it really necessary to make? — fiatluxia · 68
He is a unique character, with an asterix. So let's say, he makes an appearence as an enemy in a scenario, you could not play him, should he be in your deck, because this enemy likely will also have an asterix. — Susumu · 380
Of course, if you go that far, you could easily just get rid of the unique rule as well. Two Dr. Milan Christopher on the table, why not? — Susumu · 380
And after that we can just keep revealing chaos tokens until we get the one we want. — Tinkorn · 1

Minh Thi Phan

Minh Thi Phan

Tried her again with the TSK card pool. She's still bad.

The problem is her weakness.

Let's compare Minh to the first seeker in the game everyone has access to: Daisy.

Stats (Winner: Daisy) Daisy has a 5 int, whereas Minh has 4. Daisy has a lower Will, but a higher sanity and can safely fail will checks easier.

Survivability (Winner: Tie) Minh is more durable with 7 health, whereas Daisy is quite squishy with only 5. Minh has access to survivor cards like leather coat and Jessica Hyde, but Daisy has deny existence. Overall, they can both stay on the board pretty well.

Card pool (Winner: Tie) Some really good survivor cards came into play with TSK. However, they both aren't really going to want to delve too deep into their offclass as the seeker cards themselves are still pretty nuts.

Weakness and Sig Asset: (Winner: Daisy, by light years)

Daisy and Minh both get assets that completely lock up a hand slot,and limit each character to one hand. Daisy's signature asset completely locks down her weakness though, and basically ends up netting her one hand at the cost of increasing the auto fails in the bag by 1. Minh's weakness on the other hand completely locks down Minh's signature asset to where she basically can't use it if King in Yellow is on the field. For Minh to clear the King, she's going to want to be draw heavy so she can over commit. Since she's draw heavy though, she's going to be drawing the King a lot too. If youre playing with more than one actove hand slot, you always have the threat of King bumping one of your slots. Compare that to a draw heavy Daisy. Once she has necronomicon safely tucked in her book bag, it's a non issue for the remainder of the game.

Investigator ability (Winner: Daisy, by light years).

Minh can boost each investigator by one each time. They're probably not attempting checks they couldn't innately pass anyway, and this ends up essentially being pretty useless. Daisy on the other hand gets a free action on tome abilities, which she will most likely use on Old Book Of Lore. Draw (and even free asset play) each turn, pretty much every turn, guaranteed.

Overall: Daisy.

The librarian will outperform the secretary in almost every scenario. Since they're both competing for the same role... I find it hard to ever really recommend Minh. I have yet to find a deck build for her that Daisy can't do better, and as such she's a C Tier investigator for me.

drjones87 · 196
I am no stranger to hot takes, but saying Minh is bad is a bold statement considering some of her decks were so strong they were a large reason cards were taboo'd. — dezzmont · 221
Seeker 5/Survivor 2 is probably the strongest card pool in the game. Minh doesn't even need an ability or signature to be good. But she does have a great sig - much better than Daisy's, which just lets you maybe play a couple of tomes you might not even need if you're just using Old Book of Lore every turn. Her weakness turns off her ability and signature, but is much, much easier to clear than Daisy's, and doesn't double the amount of autofails in the bag if you leave it in play. — SSW · 216
Please, show me a deck that this holds true. I know about twenty different ways to build Daisy. Every Minh build comes back around to the same problem. Build her for draw to combat King In Yellow and you just draw it more. Don't, and it completely shuts down her sig. As stated above. — drjones87 · 196
Drawing the King in Yellow isn't a problem if you also draw enough cards to trivially commit +6, which Minh can easily do. If your drawing lots of cards you 'hit your weakness faster' but it also literally doesn't matter. This means that in normal play Minh doesn't need to do anything special besides maybe discard an extra card on a skill test, while Daisy (who I think is quite good but is a very different character) has to give up using her character power for 3 turns while taking sanity loss to clear her weakness. As SSW said, Seeker 5/Survivor 2 is a ridiculously good combo as well due to scavenging, which allows Minh to do bonkers things like infinitely recur limited use researched cards, or utilize her insane skill synergy with ice picks to become a better killer than many guardians. — dezzmont · 221
Does having to build (slightly) around your sig weakness make a character bad? Especially when the thing you're building around - drawing cards - is generally just a net benefit to begin with? Also, Minh is absolutely a thousand times more versatile than Daisy in her deckbuilding, it's not even close. You could build a Minh deck with all survivor cards. You can absolutely not build a Daisy deck with all mystic cards. — SSW · 216
I found the best solution to address the King in Yellow to be "Archaic Glyphs: Guiding Stones". Suddenly, committing 6+ icons to a single test isn't a waste any more, as it gives you loads of clues, at least in higher player counts. I played her before the release of "Ice Pick", and still found her a very strong investigator. — Susumu · 380
A Glimmer of Hope solves her weakness. — MrGoldbee · 1481
Sometimes you may feel threatened when you have to overcommit cards to clear KiY at the risk of drawing the autofail. But now...Analysis just makes that a non-issue. TSK actually made Minh even stronger. — toastsushi · 74
Dream Eaters gave Minh Dream Diary, A Glimmer of Hope, and Sharp Vision and I've never had trouble clearing King in Yellow since. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but "still bad" is very different from my experience. — Pseudo Nymh · 67
News just in, an investigator that's not as strong as one of the very best investigators in their role is just bad. — jetjet96 · 1

Delve Too Deep

Delve Too Deep

Obviously loses potency in later scenarios, but a very powerful cars for a simple reason: Arkham often punishes early success and rewards early failure as a balance.

Most scenarios reward on average 3-5 experience. This let's you add a significant amount to that total by making your current game harder.

Even if you lose though, finishing with two extra experience is a huge gain for the investigators. Do that for a few early scenarios and it'll start becoming really hard to lose.

Tldr this is a classic card of lose the battle win the war.

drjones87 · 196
"Arkham often punishes early success and rewards early failure as a balance." This is just wrong. The opposite is true; Arkham Horror punishes early failure and rewards early success. Just look at the first two or three scenarios of, well, EVERY campaign. Failure brings less Xp, negative effects later in the campaign, fewer story assets and/or a worse chaos bag. — olahren · 3532
A better review of this card was written -five- years ago. Go read that instead. — olahren · 3532