Here is a Snake! - Resource - Short-event
Playable on a company during its movement/hazard phase after cards have been
drawn. Opponent may reveal to you any number of hazards from his hand. He may
only play hazards he revealed to you (including on-guard cards) for the
remainder of target company's movement/hazard phase. Alternatively, a
face-down agent is tapped and revealed.
Sorry for all of you non-Spanish speakers, it just sounds cooler to shout out ¡Aqui es una Culebra! rather than Here is a Snake! Anyway...
I anticipate this card becoming a very useful card. Not only does it let you get an idea of your opponent's strategy is, it can let you know what kind of danger you WILL be facing, so you can plan accordingly. For instance, you decide to move through a wilderness, border-land, and shadow-land to a ruins & lairs. Normally, your opponent might play a Slayer, getting you to tap the target and maybe another character to remove an attack. He then follows up with a medium-sized orc. You think for a few moments and decide that it would be tough to stay through this attack with your characters untapped, so you tap a scout and play a Concealment. You've got a coupple characters untapped and your opponent has a couple hazards left, so you think you're doing pretty well until WHAM! you get hit by a Nazgul riding a Morgul-horse. Now you wish you had tapped most of your characters to beat down the orc and then saved your concealment and a scout to stop that Nazgul. That's where thsi card comes in. Your opponent may only play cards he chooses to show to you, so you can plan accordingly. Is this better than other scrying cards? With Secret News, you only get 5 cards, so it's possible that, after drawing cards, your opponent has 10 in his hand and you don't see his three nastiest cards. Mirror of Galadriel ius nice, but it requires a company at Lorien, which isn't always possible. The Palantir of Amon Sul is also nice, as it lets you see your opponent's hand as well, but that imparts corruption and palantir use, etc.
The only disadvantage to this card is that it takes up space in your deck. Thus, you might not want to include it if you are planning on having a company of big fighters or if you enjoy the thrill of guessing what's up your opponent's sleeve, but otherwise you might want to include this card. The other thing that could be better is if you could play it during organization and so decide where you wanted to go according to what you would find. However, you usually don't find a snake until you're right on top of it.
This card even has another feature. You can scope out your opponent's agents and thus decide where you want to go (avoid that Grimburgoth!). I believe that this part of the card can be played anytime (similar logic as Wolf-riders), although I've been corrected a couple of times recently, so let me know if I'm wrong Mike. This can be somewhat useful, but it's probably not worth including Here is a Snake! just for turning agents face up.
So all in all, Here is a Snake is a good card. You can sus what your opponent is up to, plan your movement, it even messes up Revealed to All Watchers. Plus, it's fun to look at the picture and shout "¡Aqui es una Culebra!"
| Ratings for Here is a Snake!: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 7.5 |
| Wormtongue: | 5.0 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 8.0 |
| Gandalf: | 7.0 |
| Samwise: | 7.6 |
| Morgoth: | 7.0 |
| Frodo: | 8.0 |
| Average: | 7.2 |
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.