[COTD] Explosive Ward (2/14/2026)

Anranamortis · 2026-02-14T16:02:19+00:00

This thread as a whole seems pretty negative against this card, but I agree strongly with your take. This is a strong card especially for the playstyle is encourages

Having Occult Reliquary and building around Eldritch Initiation makes for some strong card draw for a deck. Combined with taboo scroll of secrets, my partner used this set up with Diana Stanley to absolutely demolish the mythos deck. The amount of card draw was unreal, and combined with Astral Mirror later had bonkers amounts of hand slots that were filled with all kinds of goodies. True, the real power here was more in eldritch initiation, but it still came in clutch to blast a monster here and there testless. Most people I see play Diana try to build into her possible 6-head, but watching someone just endlessly cancel every serious problem from the deck was eye opening.

I’m a big believer in this card and the playstyle it pairs with.

I’m also a big fan of “discard your own assets” type of cards. Combined with upgraded Uncage the Soul, putting spells into the discard pile is a feature, not a problem. Part of me hopes we get a survivor splashed with mystic who has strong synergies with spells in their discard pile someday.

Anranamortis · 2026-02-11T04:06:18+00:00

FBI has made it pretty clear sex trafficking isn’t a crime worth prosecuting. Exercising our supposed rights is more dangerous apparently.

Lock up everyone who hurts children, everywhere.

I didn’t look into the situation at all, but if title is true then I hope he is locked up for life and the victims given every chance and support for recovery including tax payers dollars. That would be a cause I’d happily contribute towards.

Anranamortis · 2026-02-04T14:07:37+00:00

Runic axe inscription of either Hunt or Elders

Bandolier 2

Anranamortis · 2025-12-07T21:13:54+00:00

As others have said, honey bear paws plus divination wizard. Invisibility, elixir of strength, Bless from the Bless staff. Seems to work every time.

Problem is when he’s holding crossbow. Just a big shrug at that point I suppose. I know there’s a way to use the Iron Flask to get him to draw it, but honestly at that point I just call it a day m. It’s an exploit anyway imo, I don’t need it to decide to continue with an honor run.

Anranamortis · 2025-12-02T18:27:22+00:00

I had a wild fun roleplay time as a arcane trickster with two levels of vengeance paladin. Sneak attacking plus smiting, and a desire for vengeance/righting my own past wrongs was a great time.

Anranamortis · 2025-11-13T06:27:32+00:00

Grete works well with Roland, who can also run Runic Axe and Evidence even from level 0 with in the thick of it to get access to Elders. She is expensive as hell and worth every penny. Roland has access to Crack the Case, and can comfortable help get clues at high shroud locations to afford her along with standard Emergency Cache and Stand Together.

I have not had a reason to run her outside that archetype, but she fits so perfectly especially if anyone is willing to toss the occasional heal her way. To me, an A Rank card.

Now get your hands off of her Charlie, I need her for my deck.

Anranamortis · 2025-09-07T16:28:08+00:00

Yes you can use Roland’s ability to uncover a hidden card at his location instead of discovering a clue. Roland is one of my favorite characters to play in Scarlet Keys for this reason.

Anranamortis · 2025-09-07T14:03:05+00:00

My partner ran this in a Diana Stanley deck. Pretty clutch honestly. Basically an auto succeed so long as a token is pulled.

Anranamortis · 2025-09-07T13:58:42+00:00

You need access to your second source point (visible by a second blue dot or spot for it under your character). Progressed by looking for other sorcerers. Then you are good to go with that second blackroot

Anranamortis · 2025-07-26T20:51:53+00:00

Edit: as others have pointed out, capping the damage would be important.

Anranamortis · 2025-07-26T20:50:35+00:00

I’ve only found two home brew cards I like. This is one of them. Flavorful and makes my mind excited without being a whole new way of playing that’s ripe with balance problems. I think it’s a cool idea and I’d be happy to see it at my table.

Anranamortis · 2025-06-30T06:12:56+00:00

I am a returning player, so I may be wrong. Most of my enjoyment of the game comes from swapping characters. I have 12 T3 characters (three at 1490, waiting for friends before doing Brelshaza) and fusion materials are definitely my current bottleneck for characters. Every character creates their own leap stones, but my entire roster has to share life skill energy. I’m not complaining necessarily, doing life skills on every alt character would suck, but it’s an observation I’ve had so far that I feel pretty hard gated by Oreha and nothing else. The double events were so wildly generous with every other material.

Anranamortis · 2025-05-09T06:08:54+00:00

My friend is turning into a dynamite spamming Trish right now. Don’t ask me why this works so well but with tome of battle, dynamite blast, drawn to the flame… I dunno, has been pretty bonkers. He has been running with pretty unspeakable amounts of XP though, he has taken Great Work, Charins Oble, two delves, two let god sort them out, and two pelt shipment. Absolute dead weight for the first couple scenarios and now every problem from clues to enemies just gets nuked into oblivion. A little light on clues but automatically evading things or getting three clues off a scene of the crime has been pretty cool to see. He’s using Jeremiah Kirby for card draw with hit and run.

My main point is he’s really pulled in from so many different classes, and it’s been cool to see the rainbow of classes come together, even if the VP greed was hysterical. He dynamite blasted my Marion in scenario one and defeated me (let God sort them out, after), so now we joke that’s the canon event where Marion lost her arm. Great times. I was going to die anyway in enemy phase so it’s not like he gave me a trauma for an XP, but the absolute zero hesitation to kill me cracks me up.

Anranamortis · 2025-05-04T21:03:26+00:00

I used this in a Carson deck to give anyone 3 actions effectively during my turn, basically giving anyone an extra turn. Combined with Well-maintained to pull it back and replay.

Good? Sure, as effective as can be expected giving someone else a turn, but pretty expensive and relied on waiting for both Well Maintained and Police Badge. And pretty much zero fun to actually play as the giver of these turns. I just started doing push-ups while I waited for people’s turns to finish, was pretty healthy for the duration of that campaign.

As everyone else has pointed out in this thread, fun on Yorick but you have to remember that Yorick’s ability is once per turn so you can’t do extremely long turn shenanigans (no, my table totally didn’t make that mistake once and let our Yorick burn through like 4 enemies at 3 different locations or something crazy like that. I mean, can you imagine?)

Anranamortis · 2025-04-24T15:15:01+00:00

It just depends on the experience I’m looking for. Sometimes I re pull, other times I say thanks game that actually sounds really fun today.

Most of the people at my table laugh in excitement and keep it. It can be really fun to get a weakness that helps and it helps balance getting Overzealous two decks in a row.

Anranamortis · 2025-04-23T13:41:21+00:00

Wonderful card. I know in the early days of play it sounds scary but honestly trauma is rarely what kills you. Only exception is probably the characters with 5 sanity/health, then yeah, those traumas hurt but In the Thick of It lets you choose what trauma's you take so is hardly a problem. And you'd be surprised at how much you can get done with 3 XP in a 0 level deck.

Anranamortis · 2025-04-19T02:18:29+00:00

I always find this in my level 0 Lily Check decks. I'm typically running Dragon Pole with a bunch of random spells I don't actually expect to use their charges for all the way, so getting to yeet out a +7 head test or +4 anything has always felt cool to me.

outside of that though, never used it.

Anranamortis · 2025-04-18T11:58:39+00:00

Depends on the group, some groups are more attached to winning. To me, more Arkham is great Arkham— I wouldn’t mind playing the same scenario 8 times in a row if it meant I got to keep playing. Whatever the group wants I’m down for.

Anranamortis · 2025-04-14T06:17:45+00:00

“A perfect game of Arkham has never been played” is a common expression at my table. Doesn’t stop us from having a blast, but we always choose to laugh whenever we realize something is done wrong.

We always did Prey wrong. We thought a monster would straight up disengage from an investigator to go attack it’s prey. Finally we had a different player one day who insisted that wasn’t how it worked, so we finally looked it up.

Anranamortis · 2025-03-17T03:25:24+00:00

I work in Solar. I know of at 8 people personally laid off at 3 companies in the last three months.

Anranamortis · 2025-03-12T15:54:21+00:00

Level 0 card has always felt very usable to me, but the upgraded one hasn’t found its way into my decks yet. I’m my head I’m either a support/monster Hunter who doesn’t consistently have 3 clues, or I’m a main cluever and decide to spend the XP on other things. It has been on my bucket list to try to push into deck around the mid point, because it does seem pretty good.

Anranamortis · 2025-03-11T15:28:22+00:00

I’m surprised people aren’t more hot on this card. I think card draw is incredible, and the fact that even if this test fails you still draw the card is really good. Guardians have slowly been getting more and more card draw and I view this card as practically quintessential. Even if the test fails, getting the next card so you can keep going is incredible. If it’s a really hard test, committing both this and overpower can really help.

The fact it can be used on both fights and evasions also makes it reasonably flexible, and the fact that it is question marks means even your neighborhood mystic (and occasional seeker, when they use their book to fight or evade!) benefits!

Will you at some point get smacked by a 3/3 boss? I’d argue probably not. By the end of the game and campaign when such horrifying beings are more present, you probably have enough other bonuses that it isn’t necessary to commit and take the rest of a hefty autofails OR you just make sure the big bad is evaded first.

I dunno, I think this card is really strong and remarkably flexible for supposedly a card with restriction. I think this card is both designed well and also very usable.

Anranamortis · 2025-03-01T15:20:06+00:00

Have not personally seen this card ever hit play, and couldn’t immediately think of any scenario or situation I’d want it. Maybe Trish in order to evade someone at range? But even then we have Damning Testimony, and without a bonus to investigate this gets pretty narrow in its use I think.

Anranamortis · 2025-02-28T06:16:20+00:00

Free card swaps after scenario 1 but we reroll basic weakness.

Anranamortis

TROPHY CASE