What I like: Honestly, this is a good all-around card. +1 fight and most of the time +1 damage. It doesn’t use ammo like the guns, and is very nicely priced as well. I know this is a lot of peoples go to weapon for roland and skids for now, and I can see why, as it doesn’t have to be replaced like the guns do. You also can more reliably turn down extra ammunition for other upgrades if you are focusing on the Machete. Skids I think gets a lot more mileage out of this because he has the agility to evade an enemy if engaged by multiples and strike down on the remaining one.

What I don’t like: I don’t focus on the Machete as much as most people, but I’ll still run at least one. The biggest reason for this is that draw back that you don’t get the bonus damage if there are multiple enemies. I’ll probably take the .45 more often, at least the first time through a campaign because if I find out that a scenario is an enemy swarm or has a boss, I’d rather the consistency of that bonus damage. If I’m engaged with multiple enemies, I probably need to take one out quickly, and Machete won’t get that job done. That being said, I can’t really complain about the work it does.

What it needs: Probably cards that can move enemies around (I know there are some coming) or let you disengage easily to just pull in one enemy. Skids is already pretty well suited for this card with his high agility so I can’t say it wants a different kind of investigator. I feel like down the line there may be a card that does the same thing but with different restrictions, but only time will tell.

Scaling: If I were to go through expert right now, I don’t feel like I would have the card power to actually make it through. I just feel like a +1 isn’t going to get anyone there, but that’s roughly all we’re going to have for a little while it seems. Seeing as how you have to pull from the chaos bag in order to use it, it just gets slowly worse as the difficulty gets higher.