Good card.

characters generally struggle with combat, mostly because of deckbuilding restrictions and class-wide scores of 2 or less. Any of them can mount respectable defense via toolbox cards like Knife but overall a will not be able to kill any sort of major enemy, ranging from Ravenous Ghoul and Hunting Nightgaunt to Umôrdhoth itself.

Typically you leave these enemies to someone else to kill or try to avoid them, but this kind of defenselessness isn't always viable even with a friendly face like Mark Harrigan in the party, there is an upper limit to how much damage a character can do in a round and sometimes you'll find yourself engaged with a big threat at a time where the other guy has something more important to do or is just outright busy with a danger of his own (such as having this carcosa dude and that other carcosa dude spawning simultaneously).

This is where "I've got a plan!" comes in. Hitting routine attacks is an issue for decks, even Shrivelling is only so accurate without something like Higher Education to boost it, but mounting one big attack by chucking all of those unused little icon cards that typically gather in your hand is a very reasonable bet. Boom, one hit and you've killed the 4-hp threat you just drew or contributed 4 points of damage to the boss.

"I've got a plan!" has it's weaknesses, your sustained combat ability is still not great, you need to draw it and you need the clues, but its a high-yield attack in a class thats otherwise bereft of good combat options. This is pretty much an autotake in every deck whose Investigator isn't the upcoming Joe Diamond.

This card allows you to replay the cards under Diana, at the expense of her willpower. There is also a trick with Olive McBride. When you play her, unlike events and skills, she goes back into play, from where she can be used to soak 2 horror, then through her power ignore a chaos token and go back under Diana for a card, a resource and +1 willpower! The net effect is unlimited recurrences of paying 2 resources and an action for 1 card, a resource, 2 horror and one or more uses of Olive McBride's power.

This. Card. Is. WILD. Like, legit actually for real wild. It's very very hard to see if it's good, but I think it's likely to be the card that takes Diana from good to killer. Why?

That third block of text? It seems to be a constant effect, rather than a contingent effect that turns on during fight actions.

Bandolier can be used by:

• All 5 guardians : Roland Banks, Zoey Samaras, Mark Harrigan, Leo Anderson and Carolyn Fern
• All Dunwich investigators: Rex Murphy, Jenny Barnes, Jim Culver, "Ashcan" Pete
• Joe Diamond
• "Skids" O'Toole
• William Yorick
• Diana Stanley
• Lola Hayes

I think this card has received inappropriate disdain and mostly overlooked, wrongly in my opinion. In fact, Bandolier (0) is a quite solid card.

When looking at this card, one would probably think "why would I want an additional hand slot? I already have my guns!". Well, guardians love spending their experience points in two-handed weapons such as the Lightning Gun, the Shotgun, or the M1918 BAR. The problem becomes quickly apparent when playing regularly with these weapons: you will either have to use your precious ammo on trash mobs (and be empty when the nasty guys spawn), or you will need to refrain from playing your big weapon as much as possible, meaning that the turn you will need it, you will:

• Need to spend 1 action to play it, reducing your number of attacks
• Face an attack of opportunity if the baddy has spawned on you
• Not be able to improve it right away (e.g. with Extra Ammunition)
• Have to discard your current cards in your hand slots

The more the player count, the more enemies will spawn, and the more you will need to use backup weapons to be able to keep up with the killing. Even if you keep your Shotgun for when the big baddy spawns, several scenarios throw so many hard enemies at you that you'd wish you didn't discard your Machete. On a side note for solo, though there are much less enemies, you probably want to keep running a Flashlight during the scenario, and Bandolier once again helps you for this.

In other words, Bandolier (0) will maybe not shine in your 0XP deck, but it is an investment that will pay off as soon as you upgrade a two handed weapon. Conversely, I don't think Bandolier (2) is that much of a good card because 2 additional hand slots is just overkill, though the +1 is nice.

One real issue is the severe indirect nerfed it received recently due to the introduction of the Flamethrower, arguably the best weapon in game. Though the body slot necessary for Bandolier (0) used to be mostly irrelevant due to the thin competition for that slot, Flamethrower changed this. Obviously, you may still prefer the Lightning Gun, with which Bandolier stays relevant.

As for non guardians as well as Carolyn Fern, Bandolier (0) is a more dubious card. Except "Skids" O'Toole, who may really like having an additionnal hand slot if he plays Chicago Typewriter or Ornate Bow, other investigators should probably skip this card.

This is a very interesting addition to the Strange Solution family of cards. At first glance, I think I like this variant, but we have to compare it to the three existing versions in addition to looking at it on its own.

By itself, it's a card and a resource (along with the setup required with the L0 Strange Solution card) and four actions for 6 resources and 3 cards. While trading six-for-nine may not seem like the best economy, the advantage here is that you can spread the resources and cards around in a multiplayer game. This could lend itself quite well in a Minh Thi Phan support deck.

Strange Solution and Strange Solution set aside, the version most people take is Strange Solution (the version). With fewer players, and at a lower difficulty, I think the combat version will still shine. But at higher difficulties, or in a team with one or more combat-focused characters, the ability to pass around cards and resources could trump the need for powerful attacks.

Something to think about before automatically reaching for Strange Solution...

(This review brought to you by the words Strange and Solution!)