A Watchful Peace

Wendy Adams can easily ruin the game from scenario 2 with FOUR EXP. 1XP for 3* easy mark and 3XP for this card. Assuming you get two keep faith and an easy mark in your hand at the start of your round, and your deck consists of 2 easy marks on top and a watchful peace at bottom. Your amulet is in play. This situation can easily be reached by drawing 3 cards per round, and discard everything else at upkeep phase. The you rearrange your deck with your amulet when it's almost empty.

Action 0: Spend 4 resources, place both keep faith on the bottom, add 8 bless. Action 1: Play easy mark, get 6 resource and draw a peaceful watch, while placing 3 easy marks on the bottom. Action 2&3: Draw two cards, both being keep faith. Upkeep: Draw one card, which is easy mark. Mythos phase: Play a peaceful watch, and now your hand and deck is identical to the previous round, so you just loop forever. Plus: You can do something else if you get more actions from Leo or Haste, and more resources and cards from DT and take heart.

In fact, this card is rarely used in our group because it destroys the fun of playing AHLCG. The game is boring when you break it. This deck also requires no thinking at all while playing. Just drawing drawing and drawing and then looping looping and looping.

The ultimate boring game is to combine a Wendy skipping every encounter cards to a Baker removing every doom. That gives everyone else infinite actions and resources, lol.

Tzolkin1065 · 155
I don't think this card necessary needs tabboo, you can absolutely build a game breaking engine around it, but self regulation can come into play before that happens. You can put this card into a deck without insane recursion and it's just a powerful event that can give you a breather when you need it. It doesn't break the game or make the game boring if you don't allow it to, and it serves as a brief respite in scenarios such as The Secret Name where you the encounter deck can come hard and fast. — alp · 8
Self regulation is not a valid argument for a card to be taboo or not, because the taboo list is already optional. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
Liber Omnium Finium

A signature weakness tailored to the investigator. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Draw a card from underneath Gloria and play it as a peril and with disadvantages to dealing with it. Considering that you are unlikely to put cards under Gloria unless you have Ruth Westmacott in play (and that will require Charisma, since Alyssa Graham is so much better), this is almost certainly a dead draw, unless you are trying to keep encounter cards from a reshuffle.

The discard condition: Have it trigger an affect when drawn. Otherwise, it is getting shuffled back to provided more dead draw.

All in all, this is a way below average signature weakness, more annoying than dangerous.

You can put a harmless encounter card below Gloria, to avoid future dead draw. — Django · 5162
Fair point. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
Arrogance

Everyone seems to think that this is a weak-ass weakness, and everyone is right. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Winifred gets a -1 to all tests until she fails one. This might mess up some "succeed by 2 cards, but Winifred tends to over commit something fierce.

The discard condition: Fail a test with this committed.

All in all, this is a way below average signature weakness, maybe the weakest in the game. It's not all that likely to hurt her success, and every Arkham investigator fails now and again. It's pretty hard to imagine a less impactful signature weakness, a mere roadbump on the way to whatever Winifred wants to do.

There's no need to imagine a less impactful signature weakness when Whispers from the Deep exists. — suika · 9511
Commit it to your friendly survivor so they fail even on elder sign and fail by more to search farther with rabbits foot upgade? — Django · 5162
I've never played Amanda, so I can't speak to that. However, my play partner ran her in our recent RttFA game, and he found it "annoying." I've never found Arrogance more than a "nuisance." Anyway, the scale doesn't go below "Way Below Average," so it's kind of moot. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
Django, I am doing a facepalm. It never occurred to me that I could commit a signiture weakness to someone else's action. In fairness, I was running Lone Wolf, so I was very rarely in the same location as the other investigator, but it's a clever idea, especially with Survivors. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
@suika Since they errata'd (not taboo'd, errata'd) Amanda's reaction ability to a Forced ability, Whispers is now extremely annoying. It's basically this, but your stats are 2s and it doesn't go away until next round no matter what. — SGPrometheus · 847
@SGPrometheus Amanda can get rid of it exactly the same way Winifred can (commit to literally any test or someone elses's test) except easier (no need to fail) and her signature directly counters it... — suika · 9511
I hadn't considered that you could commit whispers before it goes underneath Amanda. You're right; as long as you don't get Whispers in your draw at the start of the round, you can just pitch it beforehand. — SGPrometheus · 847
Although 9 months past due, you can also use Amanda's signature asset to swap out whispers and then blow it. I would argue this weakness is only slightly more harmful. — drjones87 · 201
Terrible Secret

This is a very situational signature weakness. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Diana has to discard cards beneath her (reducing her and invalidating the Twilight Blade and her effect, otherwise, she has to take horror. The latter is somewhat fraught, as Diana is pretty average on Sanity, especially compared to other investigators. This can be bad, if you are playing a Diana who cares about or utterly irrelevant if you aren't. The horror cannot cancelled, but it can still be negated by Deny Existence.

The discard condition: One and done, unless the weakness will have no effect, in which case it gets reshuffled.

All in all, this is a below average signature weakness, way below if you have a Deny Existence in hand or don't care all that much about Diana's . Edit: if you really care about Diana's , this weakness's threat gets upgraded, although, as long as you can keep a Deny Existence in hand, it's extremely manageable.

In general, I would care more about Diana's willpower than her sanity. Although, she has only 5, she doesn't take that much horror from the game with all her other cancel and ignore effects. On the other hand, if you have several cards in your hand to restock her ability, it is easier to let some cards under her go to avoid some horror. And of course, I would always spare a DE for that card, once I'm at 4 or 5 cards below her. This weakness ist most annoying, if you draw it in first upkeep phase and have to reshuffle it in your deck. — Susumu · 381
This can be a great enabler for her ability, if you have 5 cards below her and several counters in hand but didn't get the blade. If your deck is built around fight instead of will this is also less of an issue. — Django · 5162
I confess my experience with Diana has been in non-willpower builds where, if she gets cards under her, that's great, but, if she doesn't, it's not a crisis. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1084
I rather focus on her willpower and ability, for two reasons: 1) A 6 willpower mystic is infinite stronger than a 3 combat mystic. 2) She has a deck size of 35. That means, her deck is much more inconsistent, if you don't trigger her ability, that is also a cantrip. But even in willpower-builds, I found her weakness rather easy to come around. In particular after the release of the Jaqueline Starter Deck with "Azur Flame". She can get squishy with "Shrivelling", since you shouldn't forfeit "Arcane Research" either, imho. The horror, that comes from the encounter deck will hurt her only very rarely, if you pack enough cancel and ignore cards for it. — Susumu · 381
I mean, does anyone ever not just Deny Existence this? I honestly think the build doesn’t matter- you want cards under Diana to be able to reuse them with her signature anyway, so there’s no instance I know of where you electively take either side of this card. DE destroys it entirely, might as well save 1 for it. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
Yeah, DE destroys it, and you will normally save a copy for it. (Or a secret on Dayana, if you have her and the level 5 spell.) But even in the circumstance, when both copies are at the bottom of your deck and you don't get them before TS, you can normally handle it easily. — Susumu · 381
Man I don't think I've ever had that happen, but it sounds like a bad time unless the scenario is about to end, in which case sure, dump all the cards and keep moving. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
It's not that bad, because you can choose for each card individually, if you keep it below her or discard it. So you can ponder, based on how much horror you can take or how fast you can recover her willpower with the cards in your hand, how many you let go. — Susumu · 381
Just a quick follow up on Deny Existence. With this weakness, is the discard/horror sequential or all at once? If she has 5 cards under her, do you pick through and say discard 2 and take 3 horror, or do you look at card A, keep, take horror; look at card B, discard; card C, keep, horror, etc? If the latter, wouldn’t deny existence only ignore Horror once? — BroodyGambit · 9
@BroodyGambit It's sequential. This is because of the "for each" text - it instructs you to make a separate decision for each card under her. — snacc · 1020
Caught Red-Handed

A flavorful signature weakness. Looking at the two elements, the effect and the discard condition, we get:

The effect: Ready enemies at Finn's location or a connecting location. Hunters within one location move towards Finn. Note that they do not engage or attack at this time, so, if it gets drawn in upkeep, Finn has a whole turn to deal with the fallout. Mostly, this gets reshuffled, which is annoying, but hardly scenario-ending. Once in a while, it can trigger in-turn and leave Finn vulnerable to a lot of attacks in the Enemy Phase, but it mostly sets him up to do more evading, which is Finn's bread and butter. Heck, if he has Pickpocketing (2), Finn might welcome this.

The discard condition: One and done, unless it has no effect, in which case it goes back into the deck to try again.

All in all, this is a below average signature weakness, mostly because it keeps getting reshuffled until it hurts you. It might even be way below, in scenarios without many hunters. Edit: This weakness probably gets upgraded in 4-player, as more enemies mean more trouble for Finn.

Disagree on this one. CRH is actually a weakness that tends to hurt substantially somehow. It punishes Finn for draw pretty hard since it usually gets reshuffled (the weakness comes back and denies several draws). In the instance it isn't reshuffled, you might actually be put into a horrible situation (one of those weaknesses that can catch someone off guard in solo especially). This isn't the worst Rogue weakness, but it's not the tamest either. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
In fact the more common scenario is you Pickpocketing into this, not the other way around. If it hits beginning of round, it's easier to deal with, but often it hits mid round which is usually much worse. — StyxTBeuford · 13049
Wouldn't hunters who move to Finn's location as a result of this card engage at that time, since they are readied and now at Finn's location? — Signum · 14
I feel that shuffling the cards again is a bad thing, because it will come back and lose 1 draw action. — h2ovn · 1