Due to the fact that I was overly busy yesterday, I am posting two cards of today. Interestingly, they are quite similar.
An Unexpected Outpost - Hazard - Short-event
Bring one hazard from your sideboard or discard pile into your play deck and
shuffle (up to two if Doors of Night is in play).
This is a fairly simple card wich combines a watered-down version of a couple of cards. It has two seperate effects, which will be described seperately.
The first effect is that it can bring a card from your sideboard into your deck. While this can be useful to combat whatever strategy your opponent comes up with, you're using a space in your deck that could be used for a card you have currently in your sideboard. The primary advantage of this card, though, is it can bring one of several cards from your sideboard to combat a variety of strategies. This does have a drawback, though, as the card goes into your deck (and possibly at the bottom). Doors of Night helps this card quite a deal, making it so that you actually get more cards than you use.
However, there are already ways to bring cards from your sideboard to your deck. You can use a Nazgul to either put one into your deck or 5 into your discard pile (which can be better). You can also do the same thing by lowering all the hazard limits by one if your opponent's wizard is out. While tapping a Nazgul may seem like a risk, without Doors of Night out it's the same ratio of cards used to cards earned (and has one more hazard to contend with). While you can't put two cards into your deck that way (assuming Doors), you can't put 5 into your discard pile with An Unexpected Outpost.
The other nifty feature of this card is that it can return a card (two with Doors) from your discard pile to your deck. This can be useful in several ways. It can bring back cards you used and would like to reuse (such as Wake of War), cards of yours that were discarded and you want to get back again (like Bane of the Ithil-stone, perhaps), or cards that you discarded earlier because they weren't helpful early on. It can also be useful to keep your Will of Sauron around for another couple of turns.
As with the sideboard ability, this use is duplicated. You can get the same effect multiple times with Palantir of Orthanc (and it can even do resources and characters) if you don't mind the corruption et al. You can also use Mouth of Sauron to take a hazard from your discard pile directly to your hand (which is usually better than back into your deck). Admittedly, these two cards don't do two cards, the palantir can bring an indefinite number of cards back into your deck.
The last (minor) ability of this card is to recycle your deck if you find that you are having bad luck. But there's nothing to say you won't get worse luck.
So all in all, An Unexpected Outpost combines watered down versions of a couple of cards. It's mainly useful in decks where you want to reuse a hazard or in which you have a wide array of cards in your sideboard.
| Ratings for An Unexpected Outpost: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 4.5 |
| Frodo: | 9.0 |
| Legolas: | 9.0 |
| Wormtongue: | 5.0 |
| Strider: | 5.0 |
| Gandalf: | 8.0 |
| Smaug: | 6.5 |
| Eonwe: | 8.0 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 9.0 |
| Average: | 7.1 |
Card names and text copyright 1996 by Iron Crown Enterprises, all rights reserved. This document copyright 1996 by Trevor Stone. Permission given to duplicate so long as no profit is made and the copyright notice is kept in tact, blah, blah, blah.