I have missed the first season entirely – and for the good, it seems. After reading the thread, I feel like I owe you, all the people who have endured KT14-challenge, gaining preps by cp, and inescapably being drawn behind by the elusiveness build-up. Don’t hesitate to seek me out in London by the same name and send a calling card, in case you need a letter to receive, a speaker for your salon, or a kind soul for tending your menaces.
First and foremost: I enjoy the Game a great deal! Just started around a week ago, and got positively overwhelmed. Got the Hook, couple of Trophies, few high-value items, 200+ Exploits left, and lots, lots of excitement.
Here are some thoughts I have to share.
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The Game does seem a lategame activity. Not only for the Tier 2 POSI and 200 Dangerous threshold, but for the challenges hardly 100%-ed even with max stat caps and best-in-slot equipment. And yes, it requires a lot of actions, so one is better off with it when there’s no other pressing agenda.
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The activity has decent epa for a lategame grind. This means I can finally freely experiment without having to worry about screwing something important up or wasting tons of actions for gaining neither profit nor satisfaction. I still hurt for the experiences from the Polythremic Promenade (necessary for certain stories) with its truly distressing lack of progress, not even to mention the Fidgeting Writer. Here the player is guaranteed to get ~4E worth Exploit for each move, and free to undertake the wildest nonsense JUST FOR FUN.
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The Game is significantly RNG-dependent, all the way through card-based choice of Accomplices, accomplice-based strategy, card-based progress, non-100%-able challenges, and random Menace increase. I can see why some people get anxious over this. I do, in fact, enjoy this, though. Managing to get the most from given circumstances feels rewarding, and the baseline of guaranteed gain secures minimal return. Simply said, in the worst case I get some echo and experiment results, in the best case I get these, plus the feeling of being incredibly awesome 
In addition, this makes for a really high replayability: each Run is different even with the same team.
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The challenges are crazy. And I think it’s a good thing. Flavour-wise, it makes sense that there are no certain win moves in a game like this. Mechanic-wise, it adds significance to the choice of accomplices or outfits, and excitement to the process of the game. It encourages to try out different strategies instead of hitting one button for Trophies. Surely, the important thing here is that losing is not a painful loss, because winning is not that easy. Otherwise, the main difference is in the mind of the player.
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A word of strategies and Accomplices. Probably it’s trivial, but I find Moves being the main resource of the Round, since each Move poses increasing risk of target’s progress. This means looking to
– maximize progress gain per action, for prep-locked options including the actions to get necessary preps, and considering potential increase of Tolerance;
– maximize success chances and/or non-check options use, as failure is a major setback; given that one can hardly reach decent success chance in more than one skill, choosing Accomplices that check same skill is generally good; the use of Second Chances depends largely on their availability, potential progress gain, and current state of the Round;
– balance the Accomplices so that there are at least four cards (out of total six) of some use during any stage of the Round, which means having at least one useful card in your hand all the time.
For example, my dream-team to bring me 7/7 wins and the first Trophy was Skin+Lures+Roses. With other companions, Skin becomes completely useless after few draws. With the options of Lures to spend preps for progress boost and of Roses to boost progress based on the number of preps, this is a match made in heaven (or Hell, most likely)). Skin and Lures both check Watchful, which I maximize in the outfit, and for Roses occasionally spend the most available second chance at decisive points.
Queen works very poorly for these goals, as I’ve described in the post above. Tallow doesn’t look impressive either, since at least four actions is needed to start making use of his options, each action risking to add Tolerance and ruin their power. I’ve tried him only once, though, and may come to reconsider it later. Probably, it was a question of balance, as I took on the only possible one-skill team Roots+Talons+Tallow, and they don’t work well together despite 100% check, though Roots+Talons do. Teeth requires careful balancing, as their cards become completely useless after few points of Tolerance. Their antagonist Roots, who is mostly useful later on in the Round, is much more versatile.
I keep experimenting and probably will have more insights to share later.
I think that introduction of a Fate-locked Accomplice is unlikely, it’s quite enough that one needs Fate and lategame items to get good enough chances with some of them.
As for our targets, we know that
“They are all men of similar character and disposition; many are repeat customers.”
The text kind of hints that they participate by choice, and probably even pay for it. Their motives are unclear, as is their provenance.
Joke aside, it has great cards!
