Around this time of year people are starting to get the cold. Does that mean that they are...
Little Snuffler - Hazard - Creature - 1 MP - 5/10 - Playable: Wi, Sl, Dd, Rl,
Sh, Dh
Orc. One strike. Attacker chooses defending characters. Each ranger in
attacked company lowers Little Snuffler's body by 2. If attack is not defeated,
any resource that requires a scout in target company cannot be played for the
rest of the turn.
As Gandalf (the rater) said: "Aw, how cute." And although the picture isn't very cute, you do sort of get the idea of some small orc-child sniffing around looking for a party of hobbits.
This card ties Crebain for the lowest prowess of any creature. 5 prowess just isn't that much. Even a Hobbit taking -3 to stay untapped can defeat that prowess with a roll of 8 (and avoid with a 7). And even though you get to chose defending characters, 5 prowess is hardly ever going to wound anybody.
The point of this card, however, is not to kill off characters (or even really tap out a company). Sure, you could use cards like Minions Stir or the plethora of orc and troll enhancers in Dark Minions to pump it up to a couple of strikes with a prowess of 8 or 9 or so, but you could also pump an Orc-patrol up to more strikes and a higher prowess (and Orc-patrol is playable in the same, fairly common, places). The point of this card is to help attacks down the road.
The fact that it is fairly playable (the dangerous half of the spectrum that covers well over half of the possible site pathes) means that you can use it as a preceder for almost any planned attack. And while the character may easily beat the prowess, the body is another question (they have to have two rangers to get a failry good chance). However, this is yet another reason why every party should have a couple of rangers.
So if this creature is not defeated, you can then unleash creatures like Dragons, Nazgul, and other varied nasties and no concealments et al. may be played. Further, when they get to the site phase they won't be able to use cards like Thorough Search or Lucky Search. This can be especially useful if you play Little Snuffler on guard, thus slowing down an Indy Jones deck. Sure, they can use the Concealment to hide from the Little Snuffler (shameful though that may be), but they they won't have it for that Pale Sword-bearing Witch-king :-)
This card is mainly useful in decks where you have several powerful creatures or are trying to stop an Indy Jones deck. It is also pointless against a company without any scouts (rare) or that doesn't use many scout cards or that has a whole bunch of rangers. So in general, Little Snuffler is an interesting card that could easily cause the death of a character, not directly, but idirectly by cancelling that damn concealment.
| Ratings for Little Snuffler: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 6.0 |
| Frodo: | 7.0 |
| Legolas: | 8.0 |
| Wormtongue: | 5.5 |
| Strider: | 7.5 |
| Gandalf: | 3.0 |
| Smaug: | 6.0 |
| Eonwe: | 5.0 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 8.0 |
| Average: | 6.2 |
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.