This card at base seems a little underwhelming until you follow their design philosophy.

If you're playing this as a straight guardian, you should note you'll get a free action when you play it and another when it leaves play. That alone is basically two free actions, which indeed seems worth the cost of 4 exp (after all, Ace in the Hole is 6 exp for 3 actions). You just need to make sure that both the entry and exit fight are used, and it will drop off in value if they aren't.

Where this card starts to become dumb is sleight of hand. Using sleight of hand to play this gives you five attacks in one round, and you get the gun back. That starts making the value of the card shine through.

Its overall a pretty good card. It appears underwhelming at first, but if you build around it and maximize its uses it does become a nifty weapon.

This is the workhorse survivability card rogues have been waiting for all these years; the green answer to the survivor's Cherished Keepsake and Leather Coat.

Forget about the option to save a friend for a minute. That's nice to have, but your friends don't necessarily have the money and they should have their own survival plans, anyway. This worth playing just as the green answer to Rotting Remains.

People were very happy with the red assets that cost only an action to put down, and then soaked 2 damage or horror. Sure, part of what made them great was looping them with Scavenging, William Yorick, or Resourceful. But spending a card and an action to eat 2 horror was perfectly good value.

Blocking 2 with I've Had Worse costs 2 resources but saves you an action, which I consider a perfectly fair trade in any class capable of making decent money, which rogues certainly are. You don't get the tutorability and Lonnie Ritter interactions of Leather Jacket, nor the option to soak two separate 1 point hits with this event, so in that sense it's worse than an asset would be.

But I've Had Worse gives you the option to block up to 3, and to stop damage or horror or both with just one card, and you still get the option to use it for a friend. Seems like something any low sanity rogue should strongly consider bringing.

The first two modes are by far the strongest ones, but you'll accept the healing if you're on the brink of death.

I was skeptical about this card until I played with it. I felt like it was too slow. But at lower player counts, one action for one clue is acceptable even in your dedicated cluever, and free testless discovery is delightful in your fighter.

Marion in particular rejoices. A big hurdle for her is ahead of her card draw engine, making sure you always have a second playable event. Too many events have conditional windows like reactions to encounter cards, or fights that need enemies. True Awakening is a perfect "just throw it out there" card.

This card is unreal in a Lucius deck with Ancestral Knowledge. If you keep your skill card count down to exactly 10, you will end up drawing at least one of them over 3/4 of the time, and you will draw both of them nearly 1/4 of the time!

Taken at face value this guy is playable but almost unbelievably weak for a 5 XP card. He's got good soak, +1 to a stat, and an ability that pays back his own play cost, if you have expensive insight events to play. But every color but green now has level 0 allies with +1 book, and some of them even generate resources. Compared to a Dr. Milan Christopher or Lawrence Carlisle, he gives a little more soak and a faster pay-back but little else for 5 XP.

But maybe we can make him worthwhile by really leaning in to that burst economy function. This guy is a good candidate for Calling in Favors, since you can spend all his money and then bounce him to hand to get another ally out and then bring him back in with a fresh set of secrets.

Speaking of secrets, the new Enraptured can generate crazy numbers of secrets as a free action, and this guy can turn that into resources.

I won't be surprised if there turns out to be some kind of weird infinite that involves cycling your deck to replay insights over and over that you pay for by enrapturing Archibald here repeatedly.

Still don't like him much if I'm playing fair, though.