In this third installment of the Chapter 2 evergreen pool review, let’s put the Rogue class under the same lens we’ve applied to the Guardian and the Seeker. How does the Chapter 2 Core Manual characterize the class, and how does the card pool — across the Core Set and André Patel’s Evergreen deck — actually realize it?
What the Manual Says
The manual states that Rogues “make their own rules and find a way to continually tilt the odds in their favor.” They avoid enemies, take calculated risks for great rewards, and accumulate resources. The flavor is underworld chic — living outside the law, melting into the shadows, always running a score.
The listed class strengths are: Great Agility Value, Evasion, Resource Generation, Oversucceeding at Skill Tests, Additional Actions, and Movement.
The four named playstyles are: Big Money, Push Your Luck, Evasion Expert, and Showoff.
This playstyle list is a notable departure from Guardian and Seeker. Guardian playstyles map cleanly onto specific combat identities (Melee Fighter, Weapons Expert). Seeker playstyles map onto specific intellectual functions (Clue Gatherer, Head Librarian). The Rogue’s four playstyles are more about how you operate than what you accomplish: Big Money is an economy approach, Push Your Luck is a risk posture, Evasion Expert is an enemy-handling style, and Showoff is a style of test resolution. None of them directly answer “how do you win the scenario?” The Rogue class description defines an aesthetic and operational identity rather than a functional one. Clue gathering and enemy management happen through those lenses, not by themselves.
Most Rogue class strengths map to each playstyle, except Additional Actions, which is more of an enabler across the four playstyles.
How the Core Set Implements Rogue Identity
Trish Scarborough, the Former Spy, is the Core Rogue. Her stat line — 2 willpower, 4 intellect, 2 combat, 4 agility — shows a spy built for mobility and information, not confrontation. Eight health and six sanity are solid, but that 2 combat and 2 willpower means she can’t afford to endure in a fight, physical or metaphysical.
Like the other Core investigators, her ability is clear: she gets an additional action each turn, which can only be used to evade. She can cycle enemies through exhausted states almost automatically. Her elder sign underscores the Rogue identity: +0 to the test, but after it resolves she can disengage from every enemy and move to a connected location, allowing a full tactical repositioning.
Her signature card, Covert Ops (2 resources, Talent, Illicit), exhausts after every successful evade to either draw a card or move to a connected location. In practice, Covert Ops turns Trish’s free evade action into a deck-cycling or movement engine — two of the class’s listed strengths converted into a single card.
Her signature weakness, Black Chamber Operative, turns her signature evasion loop against her. The Operative is a Hunter that preys on Trish specifically. The sting is in the Forced ability: when Trish successfully evades the Operative, she has to drop a clue on her location. If she has no clue to give, it readies, re-engages, and immediately attacks. The whole card is engineered to make Trish’s main strength — free evasion — feel dangerous at the wrong moment, meaning she will have to either prepare a specific solution or get some help from her fellow investigators. Trish will learn to fear the Operative.
Deckbuilding gives Trish access to Rogue 0–5 and Seeker 0–2. The Seeker splash gives her immediate access to the investigation toolkit she needs, since her 4 intellect is already solid.
The economy engine. The Core Rogue pool has several resource generators that adapt to the investigator’s chosen role. Thieves’ Kit (3 resources, hand, Illicit, 6 supplies) enables clue gathering by allowing investigation using agility instead of intellect, and on success you gain 1 resource back. It pays for itself over time while sidestepping the intellect requirement entirely. Sticky Fingers (1 resource, Talent) generates 1 resource each time you successfully evade. With Trish it fires once per round for free. Decisive Strike yields revenue from fighting, and Paint the Town Red by summoning enemies. But what to do with that revenue? Silver Tongue converts money into oversuccess, which feeds Lucky Cigarette Case, which draws cards, which finds more money. This is the core Rogue loop in miniature. Another Day, Another Dollar (3xp) is a permanent that starts each scenario with 2 extra resources — which is exactly the kind of effect a Big Money build wants, since it removes the “dead turn 1 building income” problem.
The evasion engine. Olivier Bishop (4 resources, Criminal, Socialite, +1 agility, exhaust to move) is the Rogue’s premier Ally: a free move once per turn makes running around the map nearly free. Out of Sight (Practiced skill) commits for a conditional disengage-and-move effect if you succeed by 2 or more on any test — Rogue’s first explicit movement-via-oversuccess card. Breaking and Entering (2 resources, Trick event) adds your agility to your intellect for an investigation attempt, and on oversuccess (2+), automatically evades an enemy at the location. Clue gathering and an evasion in one action. On the combat side, M1903 Hammerless allows you to fight with agility and a +1 damage bonus.
The Push Your Luck pivot. Paint the Town Red (0 cost, Fortune, Gambit) is the most adventurous card in the Core Rogue pool. Search the top 9 cards of the encounter deck, pull out a non-Elite enemy, draw it — and gain resources equal to its printed health. You are intentionally spawning an enemy on yourself to get paid for it, but it also gives you a lot more control on when to trigger evasion-related tools, and depletes the enemy pool at the right time. The real deal is to use it on a blind play, but that’s too spicy for me, I must admit.
Expanding the Rogue Class
André Patel is the Evergreen Rogue investigator, and he builds the class in a very different direction from Trish. Where Trish is mobile and evasion-first, André goes for Oversuccess and leans hard into the economy and event-heavy side of the class.
The Evergreen Rogue deck has an explicit focus on resource manipulation and big-money payoffs. The headlining new cards:
Out the Door (Gambit skill, level 0 and 1) is the defining income card of the Evergreen pool. The level 1 version generates 4 resources in a single activation — without spending an action. That’s best-in-class tempo, and it immediately makes the “Big Money Hoarder” archetype viable from scenario 2 with a single XP investment.
Watch This (Gambit skill) is the oversuccess-as-income card, with a strong push-your-luck undertone: commit it, and if you succeed you generate 1–3 resources depending on margin. Both Watch This and Out the Door feed into a push-your-luck income stream — up to seven resources generated with no action cost, providing burst resource generation.
Well Connected (Talent Asset) is the Big Money payoff: your resource count converts directly into skill boosts. With enough resources stockpiled, a Rogue who normally has 2–3 combat can spike to 5–6 and handle threats that would normally be outside their range. This is the class’s answer to its combat weakness that doesn’t require external class splashing.
The Black Fan (Exceptional, level 3) is the capstone for the “Hoarder” version of Big Money. It’s genuinely powerful when it fires, but spending 6xp on an Exceptional card that might not surface until late in a campaign is a real tension. The investment-to-payoff window is narrow, especially in short campaigns.
Lockpicks (Hand asset, Illicit, level 0 and 1) continues the Thieves’ Kit tradition: investigate adding agility to intellect, and the level 1 upgrade softens the Autofail risk that plagues the base version, letting you freely use it over a full scenario without worrying about burning it.
Marcus Sengstacke (Ally, level 0 and 2) is… Bruno? And we don’t talk about Bruno…
Ok, let’s talk about Bruno: he’s a very demanding ally, putting a lot of stress on any skill test while he is around, and taking a third of a scenario to yield the equivalent of an Emergency Cache at level 0. Level 2 is fractionally better, but you then have to justify why you are not spending XP on something else. I’ll be very curious to see if any decks appear with Bruno, and if further expansions manage to save him from being binder fodder, perhaps by leveraging the Patron trait. As it stands it feels like Marcus is a bait-and-switch, inviting us to a nice-looking party, but then slamming the door.
Clean Sweep (event, level 0 and 2) and Quick Exit (event, level 0 and 2) are the action-and-movement events of the deck. Clean Sweep hits a clue with an agility-boosted investigate and can pull a bonus move on success. Quick Exit lets you evade and, on the upgrade, adds willpower to the test in place of a flat +2.
A Sudden Fall (event, level 0 and 2) lands in the same space as Decisive Strike — an all-in fight event that at level 2 deals 3 damage on success. It’s Rogue’s answer to not being able to fight normally: you can’t spam it, but when it lands it solves most non-Massive enemies efficiently.
The Grapevine (Asset, level 0 and 2) provides movement and engagement — a nice package to take another investigator out of a pickle and provide fuel to the evasion engine. With the upgrade it draws a card on activation.
The Red Clock (5xp, Exceptional) is a class-redefining capstone that doubles passive income, gives massive skill bonuses on oversuccess, and grants extra actions. At 10xp it’s a campaign commitment, but when it’s up and running it touches every Rogue strength simultaneously.
Class Archetype Breakdown
Big Money is the best-realized archetype in the combined pool. Between Thieves’ Kit, Sticky Fingers, Out the Door, Watch This, Another Day Another Dollar, and The Red Clock, there’s a genuine economic ladder from level 0 setup through mid-campaign payoffs to an XP capstone. Well Connected yields dividends, and Black Fan is the late-game payoff. The “Hoarder” variant of Big Money — accumulate resources as a permanent buffer — has a coherent identity. “Big Spender” is of course present too, with Silver Tongue and Contingency allowing you to escape the Autofail on critical tests. You will always have reasons to spend your money.
Evasion Expert is the most thematically distinctive Rogue archetype. The evasion support (Sticky Fingers, Silver Tongue, Quick Exit, Out of Sight, Breaking and Entering) forms a complete engine, with Polished Cane as a great enabler, and Right Under Their Noses, M1903 Hammerless, and A Sudden Fall as payoffs for exhausting enemies.
Showoff maps to Oversucceeding, and is best understood as a supporting engine for the other archetypes rather than a standalone game plan. Lucky Cigarette Case (draw on oversuccess by 2+), Silver Tongue (converts resources into oversuccess margin), Breaking and Entering and Polished Cane (oversuccess triggers evasion) — these cards reward oversucceeding, but they don’t define a win condition from it. Watch This is the most “Showoff” card in the Evergreen deck: you’re wagering money for resources through pure bravado. But even Watch This feeds the Big Money pile, not a Showoff destination. Showoff is a style of play that amplifies whichever archetype you’re running, not an archetype of its own. Extravagant Ring, a great oversucceed enabler, is in competition with Lucky Cigarette Case, creating some tension around this playstyle in the Evergreen pool.
Additional Actions is more clearly present in individual investigators (Trish’s free evade, Covert Ops’ movement trigger) rather than the card pool itself. There are no Rogue events or assets in the current pool that grant additional actions unconditionally — The Red Clock (5xp Exceptional) does at the very top of the XP ladder, which is understandable. In practice, additional actions are realized in a more situational manner to keep the game balanced. Polished Cane, The Grapevine, Breaking and Entering, Clean Sweep, Decisive Strike, Paint the Town Red, Pay Your Dues, and Out of Sight are all great examples of this.
Movement as an explicit class strength is well represented in the Evergreen pool: Olivier Bishop, Out of Sight, The Grapevine, Clean Sweep, and The Red Clock all provide movement, and suggest a much larger focus on movement in Chapter 2 scenario design.
The Evasion Expert archetype is particularly interesting because for a long time evasion was pretty weak in Chapter 1, so it was worth watching how they would reposition that action. In Rogue’s Evergreen pool, evasion — like movement — is combined with actions that make you progress the game. Breaking and Entering grants you evasion while investigating, whereas Polished Cane does the same while fighting. Other cards reward a successful evasion: Sticky Fingers provides resources, Right Under Their Noses yields clues, Quick Exit prolongs enemy exhaustion. Others capitalize on the exhaustion state: M1903 Hammerless and A Sudden Fall provide increased damage.
Underrealized Playstyles and Class Strengths
Push Your Luck is the least-realized named archetype in the current pool. Paint the Town Red is the clearest representative and it’s a genuinely interesting design, with Out of the Door, Watch This, and Lockpicks 0 also providing a taste of risk. The Evergreen pool doesn’t build a meaningful subgame around risk management. The playstyle label in the manual promises a Gambit-heavy identity, but right now “Push Your Luck” is mostly a description of how Paint the Town Red feels to play, not a coherent archetype.
Implicit Archetypes and Traits
Looking at the full card pool, a few patterns emerge that the manual doesn’t name.
Agility-as-Intellect is a coherent design thread. Thieves’ Kit investigates using agility instead of intellect. Breaking and Entering adds agility to intellect for an investigation. Lockpicks investigates using agility. Clean Sweep is an agility-boosted investigation event. The Rogue pool is consistently developing an alternative clue-gathering identity: the spy who doesn’t read dusty tomes but picks the lock and slips inside.
The Illicit/Criminal trait economy is already sketched. Thieves’ Kit is tagged Illicit. Covert Ops is tagged Illicit. Lockpicks is Illicit. Prestidigitation carries the Trick trait. Olivier Bishop and the Black Chamber Operative are both tagged Criminal. The overlap between Rogue class identity and Illicit/Criminal cards is consistent and persistent across both Core and Evergreen decks. This suggests that future expansions will likely introduce Illicit or Criminal trait payoffs — cards that get better when you control Illicit assets, or that synergize with Criminal Allies.
Renown economy: Center Stage, Fame, and Extravagant Ring all work on Renown, so the Evergreen pool is begging for Renown enablers that will inevitably come in later expansions. Extravagant Ring powers Showoff/Oversucceed playstyles, Fame rewards enemy management, and Center Stage is even more general — suggesting that Renown will become the equivalent of charges for Mystics during Chapter 2.
Rumor: another new resource is hinted at by The Grapevine in the Evergreen pool, which will be fleshed out later. The Grapevine is all about enemy management, but it will be interesting to see where the designers take this new resource.
Event-as-income is a structurally unique Rogue sub-economy. Guardian generates income by killing enemies (Logan Hastings). Seeker generates income through investigation success (Dorothy Simmons). Rogue generates income through events that require no persistent asset setup: Out the Door fires once for 4 resources with no preconditions. Watch This fires through a committed skill. Paint the Town Red fires through a free parley. This is a distinct resource-generation mode — burst income through timed events rather than sustained income through asset loops. It rewards building a hand full of events and skills and knowing when to fire them, which is a meaningful play-skill axis the class description doesn’t articulate at all.
Dark Horse Rogue? Prestidigitation (1 resource, Trick, fast) lets you play an Item asset for 2 fewer resources, then bounce it back to hand at end of turn. It’s tempo compression: play a Thieves’ Kit, use it for a supply, put it back. That’s action economy through sleight of hand. It hints at a low-resource version of Rogues — something one might rather expect in Survivor.
Low willpower as a structural weakness, giving Rogues treachery vulnerability. The Evergreen pool does provide a couple of solutions — Center Stage, Well Connected, Easy Street, and Out the Door — for the daredevils.
Gun-poor Rogue: in Chapter 1, Rogues came to be gun experts, but in the Evergreen environment the class clearly pivoted away from that identity. Further expansions will no doubt enrich Rogue’s arsenal, but Rogue’s Chapter 2 environment will always remain much more limited in that regard compared to Chapter 1.
Rogue in Chapter 2
The Rogue Evergreen pool shows a lot of promise. The class strengths and playstyles advertised in the manual are pretty well supported, and the designers did a great job making evasion and movement an interesting part of the game, which is crucial for Rogues. This allowed them to remove guns as a class-defining element, which defuses overlap with Guardians.
A lot of seeds are planted in the Rogue Evergreen pool, making it one of the most promising classes to be fleshed out in Chapter 2. The Rogue Evergreen pool is not necessarily the flashiest, but it laid a lot of infrastructure that will hopefully pay off in the future.
There are still some drawbacks. Push Your Luck is not really fleshed out as a playstyle. Marcus is pretty much dead on arrival and will require some heavy lifting to rescue. Because the Evergreen pool aims in many different directions, the XP ladder is uneven — but that’s what further expansions are for. As a foundation, the Rogue Evergreen pool is very solid, and will help realize one of the biggest promises of Chapter 2: rebalancing key aspects of the game and creating distinctive class identities.