Easy to control. Upping and downing the bonus is mostly up to you. 1 item in play typically means a pair of Track Shoes or a weapon. Characters who depend on the 0-cost items, Leather Coat or Cherished Keepsake wont be able to use this at all.

The characters who really shine with just one item in play include:

• Anybody with a Fire Axe + Dark Horse build.
• "Ashcan" Pete runs with just his puppy, he rarely needs many items.
• Silas Marsh is often happy with just a weapon in hand, although Grisly Totem might have changed that.

Cautionary advice, the buff goes down to Unexpected Courage level as soon as you have just 2 items, so be exact with your deckbuilding when you decide to include Able Bodied, no unnecessary items!

If your deck has skills in it, this is not a bad one, it'll take some deckbuilding finesse to tell if you're better served by Manual Dexterity or Overpower though.

This skill is either good or terrible, depending on when you draw it. Tougher investigators who resist damage will like it better than the softer bunch, obviously it's the softer bunch that stands to gain the most by drawing Steadfast early.

• 3 icons is a godsend to many characters, treacheries and all that, Diana Stanley's early magic, you get the drift.

• 3 is something less interesting, the skill is often better saved for a treachery, but such a big attack boost can be the solution to a big problem.

If drawn early, the card can mount a defense for you against cards like Rotting Remains, which is great, but as time passes and your life goes down the defense weakens. You don't need to have taken too much hurt to be downed to just 2 icons per skill, in which case you're rocking a limited Unexpected Courage, further down the line it's just garbage.

In my honest opinion: If treacheries are your biggest worry as a , grab Guts and Take the Initiative, they are more consistent. If the icons excite you however, then by all means try Steadfast, even so, Unexpected Courage or Overpower might be more consistent.

Just to undercut my point though, choosing between Steadfast or Take the Initiative or Unexpected Courage is really just splitting hairs, if Steadfast floats your boat, then just enjoy!

This card is usually terrible, and needs support to be worthwhile. See the argument below to help understand why this is true. Support would be: campaigns/games with less of the negative tokens AND cards that can cheaply and repeatedly alter the outcome of a token draw (such as Wendy Adams).

The cumulative odds of continuing to draw favorable tokens, using the standard difficulty Night of the Zealot chaos token pool is:

1. 0.6875
2. 0.458333333
3. 0.294642857
4. 0.181318681
5. 0.105769231
6. 0.057692308
7. 0.028846154
8. 0.012820513

This suggests that on average, you will get slightly less than 2 tokens before failing. Assuming you pass each draw, the chance of not drawing a negative symbol on each token draw is:

1. 0.6875
2. 0.666666667
3. 0.642857143
4. 0.615384615
5. 0.583333333
6. 0.545454545
7. 0.5
8. 0.444444444
9. 0.375
10. 0.285714286

Strategies and outcomes:

A. If you always stop drawing after 1 token, you will succeed 69% of the time, which is terrible because you get less than one resource or card per action.

B. If you always stop drawing after 2 tokens, here is the likely distribution:

1. Around half the time, you will pass 2 tests in a row
2. Around 1/3 of the time, you will draw a fail token right away and get nothing.
3. Around 1/6 of the time, you will pass the first test and fail the second and get nothing This averages to little less than 1 resource per action, which is still awful.

C. If you always stop drawing after 3 tokens, here is the distribution:

1. Around 70% of the time, you get nothing because you fail either 1, 2 or 3, and the other 30% of the time you get 3 resources, a little less than 1 resource per action (terrible).

The most amazing thing about this card is that 5 point-blank shots to the skull deals only 1 damage. Who wants to pay 2 resources for an effect endowed in every investigator (to attack for 1)? And to top it off, your turn is now over. Terrible.

From the suit of favor cards (Decoy, Intel Report and Small Favor) Decoy is a relative step down from Intel Report.

Evading is not a typical issue for a , so that's already unfavourable, it also will not affect elites unlike Cunning Distraction. Finally, because the Evade text is Bolded it will not provoke attacks. So, a breakdown:

• 1 evade at the cost of 1 action, a card and 2 resources is iffy efficiency for a , a few characters will need/like the guaranteed nature of the event. The unique factor of the card shoots up a mile because you can use it in the name of a friend in trouble.
• 2 evades immediately makes the card more interesting, you can dig out a character that's in a heap of trouble or 2 separate friends who both drew enemies simultaneously, giving them breathing space, very strong in duo.
• Ranged evading is obviously mostly useful in multiplayer, you can dig out your friends or delay a stalking hunter, this is one of those cases where you'll often choose to just evade 1 enemy, it's still a great effect.

Not affecting elites and being printed in the specialised faction are negative points to this card, it's still good for Preston Fairmont and very helpful in multiplayer.