Along with any new strategy, there must be cards to hurt that strategy. The main new strategy in Dark Minions is agents, so a card to hurt that strategy is
Face Out of Sight # Resource # Long-event
All on-guard cards are returned to owner's hands. At the end of any turn, all
wounded and tapped agents are returned to their owner's hands. Cannot be
duplicated.
Well, this card has two interesting and useful effects. However, since it is a long-event, your opponent can usually avoid the effects of it. In case you have forgotten, resource Long-events are played played right before movement/ hazard phase, so you can't respond to anything and your opponent always knows that they're out before he decides what to play.
The effects are pretty cool. Playing an on-guard card every turn can really help a player speed through his deck, as she may be able to draw another card, and can also see what her opponent does in the site phase before deciding on whether or not to discard a certain card. Now with this card, you can force your opponent to discard those Incite Denizens and other nasty cards to be played on-guard. However, since it's played during the Long-events phase, your opponent won't bluff with a card he needs to keep around.
The other ability of this card is pretty nice too. In order for agents to do much of anything, they must tap. So unless your opponent spends an additional hazard to untap an agent, it will go back to his hand if he does anything with it (like move). While he can just play it next turn, it takes up hand size and many times an agent only gets one shot to do what you want. Also, if he has moved his agent quite a way, he'll have to either start over or wait for a turn.
That's the primary purpose of this card, lessening the barrage on your characters for a turn. It does, of course, help your opponent too, but deck planning can avoid that. There is a way to make this card permanent, although it's not as easy to play as Will of Sauron, or as powerful. Echo of All Joy is a cool resource that keeps a resource Long-event around indefinitely, and only requires that Doors of Night not be in play.
So if you're really paranoid about agents and on-guard cards, you can play with both of those cards. Otherwise, this card can help you out for a turn, but rarely is good enough to make it into a deck. Perhaps the best use is to put this card in your sideboard in case your opponent uses an agent-heavy deck. Actually, this card may become VERY useful once Lidless Eye comes out. Since all minions so far are agents, playing this card on your turn may make your opponent take his whole company back to his hand. So hang on to this card now, as you will probably find that it comes in handy in a couple of months.
| Ratings for Face Out of Sight: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 3.0 |
| Frodo: | 6.0 |
| Bandobras Took: | 6.5 |
| Cirdan: | 6.5 |
| Alatar: | 7.5 |
| Legolas: | 5.0 |
| Samwise: | 7.1 |
| Gandalf: | 7.5 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 7.0 |
| Strider: | 7.5 |
| Beorn: | 7.7 |
| Wormgontue: | 7.0 |
| Fingolfin: | 2.5 |
| Merry: | 6.0 |
| 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.