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Emerald of the Mariner
Emerald of the Mariner
Resource: Greater Item
Marshalling Points: 3
Unique. Hoard Item. Bearer receives +1 to all of his corruption checks.
Controlling player may keep one more card than normal in his hand.
This item gives zero corruption points.
Simply put, wow. This card is probably the third greatest item in the entire game, only behind The One Ring and Dwarven Ring of Durin's Tribe. Maybe a few other items equal it, but it's certainly near the top. Let's look the details. First thing, it's a Greater Item, which is admittedly often a bit difficult to find sites for, and also to add to that it's a Hoard Item. So I believe there are only 6 sites to play this at: Caves of Ulund, Dancing Spire, Gold Hill, Irerock, Gondmaeglom, and The Lonely Mountain. Each of which, of course, is the home of a Dragon. So it's pretty difficult and dangerous to get this out. This actually introduces a new strategic idea of mine: Dwarven Rings for Hoard items. With Dwarven rings you can get out any type of item except for Gold rings, and I don't know of any rules that stop this, so I think it should be possible to get out all the Hoard items like this just by using Dwarven rings. If that's so, then it becomes a good deal easier to get this out, as well as completely demolishing ICE's idea of luring people up to dragons with Hoard items. But getting back to the Emerald, the features of this card are well worth the possible risks in getting it. The first of these is a simple +1 to corruption checks. Think about this. It's like having a permanent, character-centered Fellowship (which even with just that ability is a good card) around, without having to keep the company together to maintain it. So it overcomes the one weakness of Fellowship, with the only problem being that it's Unique so you can't have three like you can with Fellowships. Not only that, but also it doesn't give any corruption itself, so it's the only item in existence that's GOOD for a character's corruption levels. And therefore it's the perfect thing for someone like Saruman who often has to travel a lot but handles lots of items and needs this sort of bonus. Also, there's the other feature of this card, possibly even better. It allows you go keep an extra card in your hand, something previously reserved only for Pallando players and for Elven-kings. Now Pallando becomes even less useful than he already is, since this item has the better of his abilities AND another ability better than his second. It's like carrying around a whole extra Pallando with you. Or for that matter having the special abilities of Cirdan, Elrond, or Galadriel instead. And it also gives you their marshalling points, 3 of them, without a negative modifier on death. So there are ABSOLUTELY NO REASONS not to play this card, other than the difficulty of getting it out, since every single modifier on it is a good one and it doesn't even have corruption points. Therefore, overall Emerald of the Mariner is an insanely and fantastically good card, which no good deck should be without.
Ratings for: EMERALD OF THE MARINER
| Rater | Rating | Rater | Rating |
|---|
| Gandalf | 10.0 | Gollum | 9.7 |
| Morgoth | 8.0 * | Sauron | 10.0 * |
| Farmer Maggot | 10.0 * | Beorn | 9.0 |
| Eomer | 10.0 | Glaurung | 10.0 |
| Isildur | 9.5 | Legolas | 9.0 |
| Shadowfax | 8.5 * | Smaug | 8.6 |
| Frodo | 9.0 | Average | 9.42 |
|---|
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