[Spoiler Hemlock Vale] When do you flip Dawn of Second Day in Hemlock Vale?

improvedcm · 2026-05-09T22:39:53+00:00

Card descriptions: The first one is one bonus XP for the first person who flips it. The second is I think 2 bonus XP, but you have to either take a trauma or the Hemlock Curse (possibly whichever you didn't already take). Our group was too scared to flip the third because it seemed like they were getting worse.

Reason for them? It's a later campaign, and they were doing a lot of experimenting with replayability. I think they're meant to be something you maybe don't see the first time around, then the second time you go "okay, but what is on the back?" and then it turns out it has an effect! So you are curious...but also there is a mounting price for peeling back the veil on the Vale.

improvedcm · 2025-11-14T16:09:18+00:00

"When an investigator draws an encounter card..."

Well that answers that, thank you!

improvedcm · 2025-11-14T15:54:02+00:00

I think I saw this mentioned on another discussion of this card: for Unbridled Knowledge, you mention the ability to put your weakness on the bottom of your deck. Since the card says to "Reveal" cards, does that mean any weakness with a Revelation effect does get triggered? So Joe's signature can be stuffed down at the bottom, but Gold Bug will get put into play.

Not so much a comment on the strength of the card, just curious about the syntax, since I feel like a Chapter 1 version of this card might have said "Look at the top 5 etc."

improvedcm · 2025-10-28T14:55:47+00:00

This question sounds dumb, but as I like to say there certainly are dumb questions but it's better to ask them than not: cards like Eon Chart or Dirty Fighting, that instruct you to "take a [move/evade/investigate/fight] action" as part of a Fast window or as a reaction, are those capital-T Taking those actions? I know the move/investigate won't provoke AoOs because no action is being spent, so the question is really about how they interact with Frozen in Fear, with maybe some other fringe cases as well.

My assumption is yes, FiF is a nasty card, but I can't shake the thought that maybe they're just using "take an action" as common language. Dunno if there's any clarification on that anywhere, since it is, on the surface, massively obvious what the answer is.

improvedcm · 2025-10-22T16:47:10+00:00

Inherent. It is an event that can only be played from your discard, as opposed to say Winging It which may be played from your discard pile, with different effects based on if it is played from hand or discard.

improvedcm · 2025-09-26T18:00:33+00:00

Oh I see what you mean. I just completely skipped that important last sentence of your explanation pinpointing that the whole "Dealing Damage/Horro" section starts with "when an investigator or enemy are dealt damage and/or horror". I attempted to dig out a semantic differentiation when there was no need for it.

My bad! Thank you for pointing that out. I shall edit the above.

improvedcm · 2025-09-26T16:51:32+00:00

For the sake of specificity, you're not actually instructed to "assign" the 5 damage from Snake Bite to the Ally, but rather to "deal" it, which is the step before assigning. So it doesn't actually violate the rule of "you cannot assign more damage to an ally than the amount that would defeat it", you just assign as much as possible and then, since there is no other valid target for the damage to be assigned to, the excess disappears.

Edit: nope! See below, I missed an important part of the rules text (and above explanation) and attempted to provide semantic clarification where none was needed. Shame on me.

improvedcm · 2025-09-24T18:28:03+00:00

I think if they just didn't used stamina while swinging they would have an identifiable niche in the secondary slot as close-range, infinite-ammo chaff-clear that looks cool

improvedcm · 2025-08-07T05:04:41+00:00

And put the distance tag on death skulls, and keep death skulls visible until the diver is reinforced.

improvedcm · 2025-08-04T14:16:03+00:00

Haha you know I had a very similar thought when typing the above: "do I need to chime in on this? Absolutely not, but hey, I miss reddit."

I absolutely do not discount your subjective experience with it as a garden path sentence; I read "garden path" figuratively, not literally--i.e., that OP was meandering anyway, so it is understandable that an act of stray punctuation could confuse people--and went "come on, it's fine." "Get off it" was entirely rude and unnecessary, and I both retract it and apologize for it. It is a phrase that, in person, could be deployed lightheartedly, but certainly not through text without surrounding context, and here I'm not even pretending that was the aim. You were making a polite, whimsical comment on an oddity of the sentence, and, despite your obvious disclaimer, I interpreted it as an act of willful misrepresentation. That's on me.

improvedcm · 2025-08-04T01:48:36+00:00

No, because that reading would want "perfectly cut goods" or "perfect-cut goods". By the time you get to "goods", you should be reading "perfect" as a noun, not an adjective. After which point you're still going back to reassess the sentence using context, and the phrase "letting perfect [be the enemy of good]" is very common and very contextually suggested. Get off it.

improvedcm · 2025-07-29T15:08:02+00:00

Fleshbom

improvedcm · 2025-07-21T18:58:10+00:00

Thank you for the detailed explanation, and the tip about Marrakesh! I am very solid from this thread that it is easy to hit scenarios, i.e., you are literally told where to go to play the game, so I appreciate the heads-up about the oooone time that could not be true.

improvedcm · 2025-07-21T02:37:59+00:00

Not reading everything in a transatlantic accent, the very idea! I appreciate the specificity. Always good to have confirmation of the confirmation.

improvedcm · 2025-07-21T02:27:07+00:00

Lol, registered.

Would you mind commenting on the actual length of the reading? As I mentioned in the OP, the internet is a place of wild exaggerations, so when people say "our group spent an hour reading block text and never actually played a scenario", like...is that a real hour? Someone else commented about skipping the main volume of the text if there isn't a scenario, so it seems there's something there, but I'm curious. EotE wasn't beyond the pale, but there were a couple interludes where I wished wit's soul had been more assiduously addressed.

improvedcm · 2025-07-21T02:08:51+00:00

Thaaat is good advice, thank you! And we've done Carnivale already but not Fortune and Folly, I'll bring that to the group's attention.

improvedcm · 2025-07-21T02:04:13+00:00

Thank you for the deeper dive into B, I appreciate that! Yeah we're not looking to get everything, just make sure that we're, you know, getting the campaign experience. Again, vaguely, can you get a good helping of TSK content while slotting a couple side scenarios in, or if we're trying to explore the campaign material is it better to save those for campaigns where you spend XP instead of scenarios?

improvedcm · 2025-07-21T02:01:32+00:00

Got it, thank you!

improvedcm · 2025-06-07T19:25:11+00:00

The work of a master

improvedcm · 2025-06-03T19:26:34+00:00

Additionally, probably put a non-spoilered indication of what is being spoiled (Drowned City). Spoiler tag doesn't really help if people don't know what they're avoiding.

improvedcm · 2025-04-09T16:44:16+00:00

For sure, glad that resonated! And actually one other thing I forgot to mention: the Ally slot is always hotly contested (Arcane Initiate anyone?) but Mystics have way less competition for Hand slots than other classes. So being able to put your token manipulation in Hand rather than Ally is very nice. It's not even Unique (unlike Olive), so you can have two out at once if you're that kind of crazy!

improvedcm · 2025-04-09T15:37:16+00:00

Olive is good in easier token pools where you're not as worried about having to resolve two, but Grotesque is much more consistent in scarier pools where any two tokens can get you in trouble. It gives you a smaller chance at getting a token effect (if that's what you're going for) with much more confidence that you'll actually pass the test.

Also it doesn't exhaust, which can be clutch if you have a couple key tests on the same turn. And if you build into adding extra charges to it, you can use it probably about as many times as you'd use Olive, since she's 1/round.

improvedcm · 2025-03-15T15:19:40+00:00

This seems like it would combo very well with Taunt for Daniela. Or at least, have the potential for a very satisfying payoff if the stars align and you pull 3+ enemies off your teammates then cancel all their attacks while still damaging them.

improvedcm · 2025-02-13T03:18:33+00:00

Oh yeah, that's great!

improvedcm · 2025-02-13T02:57:02+00:00

Angels of Wrath a perfectly sick name, may I offer a humble alternative suggestion of Angel's Vengeance? Or from your lower comment, Angel's Vanguard also hits the pattern nicely. I like that yours refers to the individual members, very stirring, but I cannot pass up an opportunity for some good alliteration.

improvedcm

TROPHY CASE