I tried to wrap my hand around this card for a while. This is a pseudo evasion+ attempt that ignores the alert keyword. But...

Who wants this? Alessandra Zorzi? Although saving the action, it's still very meh in itself. Maybe for having an enemy with her for stuff like Grift. Benefitting from the bonus skill value from Dirty Fighting? Trish Scarborough? Can't take it and has too low willpower, anyway. There might be some other obvious investigators who take this early in a campaign as a mid-tier pick, but what I find especially weird is that Patrice Hathaway, who is depicted in the card art, does not benefit from the fail-safe at all!

Then it came to me. Fail-safe...

POV: You are Stella Clark and are utilizing discard shenanigans, benefitting from having cards in your hand. Play this with Drawing Thin, return it to your hand and then simply keep it as fodder for e.g., Cornered, or... Live and Learn to get the evade+ effect and still have the card in your hand for using it again later.

Not sure if that interaction makes the card viable, but I honestly see it more in a fail deck than in a parley deck.

Sounds expensive, but okey-ish, if:

• You have high willpower and/or
• you are wearing Fine Clothes and/or
• you are Alessandra Zorzi and/or
• the enemy has no horror value

until you realize you can use String of Curses as a fail-safe! Granted, it's too inefficient to fail on the test purposely, but the fact that you still get what you wanted to do with playing one more card is pure ASMR to me.

This is pure gold for Alice Luxley.

When I am playing my Joe Luxley deck (yes, he took her name, very progressive and all), I always have to remind my group to leave some clues at my location if they want me to be the flex I claim to be. Because no clue -> no discovering clues -> no happy Alice -> no unhappy enemy.

With this at first sight mid-looking upgrade, my buddies can go through with their plans when I see it turning up at my Hunch deck - any clue from anywhere will suffice for Alice, and this is exactly what it does.

I know this is almost pointless to say, but Armor of Ardennes is even less appealing in the mordern card pool since the launch of Hunter's Armor...

For 3 less xp, you can buy 2 Hunter's Armor with the same resource cost, 2 more sanity soak each, and a whole lot of potential then this thing; for the same 5xp of a single suit of Ardennes, that's 2 pieces of 4/4 soak which occupies an even less contested slot (arcane).

So, yeah, unless this is tabooed to somewhere like 1 or 2 xp, I'm not gonna take it out of my binders...

I would like to preface this review with the context that I generally play Arkham at Hard/Expert. At the Expert level, besides taking as few tests as possible, we also need to make sure that whatever tests we do take are being boosted to at least +4 above the test on scenario 1 and +5 or +6 later on . For important elite enemies, we often want to boost to +6 or even +8 even on scenario 1. This means that the amount of stat boost a weapon gives is a crucial factor in judging the viability of the weapon on high difficulty. +2 fist weapons are oftentimes a lot stronger than +1 fist weapons on Hard/Expert. For +1 fist weapons, you typically need a fighter with a base fist of 5 to use them reliably.

We need to compare this gun to other relevant level 0 Guardian weapons to see what this gun does better.

The typical choices at Expert for level 0 Guardian weapons are:

• .45 Thompson: 6 bullets, each with +2 fist. Lasts long and gives a sizeable stat boost. Notably two-handed and costs 6.
• Enchanted Blade: 3 charges, each with +2 fist, then becomes a 1 damage sidearm. Notably one-handed (and takes up an arcane slot which is most of the time irrelevant), and costs 3.
• Runic Axe: recharging weapon that can push to +3 fist. Notably two-handed. Very strong weapon that can be upgraded across the campaign. On scenario 1, we often use the In the Thick of It experience to get the Saga upgrade which allows for two charges to be replenished every turn. This might not be a completely fair comparison to other level 0 weapons, but two copies of Saga-empowered Runic Axe for 3 EXP is one of the most efficient ways to spend In the Thick of It experience in my opinion.

The other situational picks are:

• .45 Automatic: 4 charges, each with +1 fist. Generally only the stronger fighters like Mark Harrigan can take this comfortably without gimping their tests.
• Machete: similar to a .45 Automatic, but is ammoless, at the cost of turning off if there are multiple enemies that spawn on top of you, as well as losing action economy if you need to take actions to engage enemies off other players (which is common at 3 - 4 players). Generally not recommended at this level unless playing solo or perhaps at 2 players.

The Remington Model 1858 has effectively 3 bullets at +1 fist. For the same cost, the Enchanted Blade has 3 charges at +2 fist. In general, even for Marion Tavares decks, I would try to pick Enchanted Blade and .45 Automatic first. Remington Model 1858 can be played in Marion Tavares as she doesn't have access to the good two-handed weapons, but not over Enchanted Blade.

For most other investigators with two handslots, there are much better options.