Working a Hunch

Maybe I'm overrating this card, but I think this is one of the best events in the game.  Not only can 2 surprise skulls keep your overmatched character at the story, it could even knock your opponent's character out of the story.  And at your option, you can throw in a little more and enjoy some extra readying and an extra success token.  I love the optional overpay cards, and this one is especially great.  The first half clears the path, and the second half exploits the opening.  Love it!

I use this card in my MU/Agency deck, and I do like it. I generally prefer direct damage/removal cards, but this will sometimes fully swing the combat struggle at a story, which is the two-character differential I hope for in events.

It's generally superior to Arrest Warrant which costs the same.

But I find I am torn about this card vs Intervention, which competes for the same spots in my deck.

 

As you noted the overpay option is nice. The card is useful for its base effect on turn one, but in practice, I almost always get to use its overpay effect too. Unfortunately, I play with a lot of A/I icons, and so the overpay only occasionally helps.

I think there is very little reason to play this card over Black Dog, especially in a draw-light faction like Agency

It depends on what you're trying to do. Black Dog can pick off a lone attacker or defender, but it's no good against groups and it's only good at one thing. Working a Hunch offers fewer play restrictions, flexibility in how it's deployed, and the opportunity to affect more than 1 struggle. It might be slightly less potent than Black Dog, but it sacrifices that little bit of potency for more versatility. Agency is already king of combat, but it needs arcane help and more investigation is never a bad thing. Play both cards even!

I think Black Dog is certainly a better card on average and I would usually prefer it in mono-faction decks, but in decks with multiple factions it can aggravate resourcing difficulties.

The tremendous downside to Working a Hunch is that it's one use event. The character you kill with Working a Hunch is sometimes going to be as good as the character you kill with Black Dog, other times it will be worse.

 

Let's say there are two main sorts of Agency decks, Rush and Build, with Rush going as fast possible and Build looking to play The Foundation/Heroic Hunter Lady. In either deck, the card advantage of not having to discard Black Dog after use is tremendously good, particularly in draw-lite Agency.

 

In Rush, you would never want to waste a 2 domain for arcane/investigation because you need a lot of bodies out fast and you shouldn't much care what an opponent is doing on their turn (if you really care about mounting some token defense, Black Dog is still the better choice).

 

In Build, you need card efficiency in your stall because you're devoting a fair portion of your cards to expensive things you can't play for awhile. Black Dog crushes Working in efficiency.

 

Plus in Agency you have San Marco's which is Arcane on a stick and can be used as much as you want it to be, unlike Working

I defer to your experience as I don't have much of my own with this game. Drawing on my general experiences with other card games, I just really like this card a lot and am never sad to draw it.