Perhaps the best card in the entire Dragons expansion, certainly the best dragon mainefestation, is
Daelomin at Home # Hazard # Permanent-event # 4 MP # 14/8
Unique. Unless Daelomin Ahunt is in play, Dancing Spire has an additional
auto-attack: Dragon -- 3 strikes at 14/8. In addition, you may discard this
card from play during opponent's movement/hazard phase (not counting against
the hazard limit) to increase the hazard limit against one company by two.
This card has several nice uses. First, you have a decent chance of tapping a company (and almost certainly preventing a Thogough Search). It can also give you just the extra hazards you need to do some damage. Or you can use it yourself for King Under The Mountain/Returned Exiles.
First off, Daelomin is an interesting dragon. At first, he seems weaker than the other four greater item dragons. However, he's got more than average strikes, which means you have to buff up several people to try to kill him. Also, he's worth 4 MPs, so he's not QUITE so much of a bummer as Smaug or Itangast. So, you can shut off Dancing Spire. That's not all that good of an ability, but it's his second ability that rocks.
You can get two additional hazards to play. Well, you don't get the hazards, but you get the chance to play them. And using Deolomin this way doesn't count against the hazard limit, so you can do it even if you've just used your last hazard slot. With just a couple of creatures, you can do some serious tapping. It's not restricted by having to be held in the hand. It's not restricted to just certain kinds of hazards. You can play it several turns ahead and not fear your opponent gettting really powerful and trying to beat it, because you can just discard it on his way there. There is no reason not to include this card in your deck save that you have the exact resource and hazards you need.
Thirdly, you can use Daelomin at Home in your own little schemes. Go and kill him to play King Under the Mountain and then top it off with Returned Exiles. Play it just to annoy your opponent because she can't play it either. Or play it just because the art's pretty darn cool (David Martin).
| Ratings for Daelomin at Home: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 9.7 |
| Bandobras Took: | 8.5 |
| Samwise: | 8.1 |
| Cirdan: | 10.0 |
| Frodo: | 7.5 |
| Alatar: | 8.0 |
| Legolas: | 4.9 |
| Beorn: | 7.6 |
| Merry: | 8.5 |
| Fingolfin: | 9.5 |
| Farmer Maggott: | 9.5 |
| Wormtongue: | 7.9 |
| Strider: | 7.5 |
| Average: | 8.2 |
Card names and text copyright 1996 by Iron Crown Enterprises, all rights reserved. This document copyright 1997 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.