Magical Harp

Music can be very important part of a society or of your company.

Magical Harp # Resoruce # Major Item # 2 MP # 2 CP
Unique. Hoard item. Tap Magical Harp to cancel all actions for the rest of the turn that discard a target character in bearer's company. Bearer makes a corruption check. This item may also be so tapped during opponent's site phase.

At the simplest, this card gives you 2 MPs for 2 CPs if you visit a hoard major items site. It's ability, though can greatly help a hoard item deck, or any other deck.

There are normally 9 hoard item sites, and you can get more with Dwarven Hoard or even Hermit's Hill. And you can even get a major item at Framsburg if you tap it and play Bounty of the Hoard... Nevertheless it takes some planning, but getting hoard items isn't too hard. Once you have Magical Harp around you can effectively give a character +2 to corruption checks, paying for it by having the bearer make a corruption check. This can assure that your character with a Lure of Nature and heading from Lorien to Buhr Widu will not be discarded or you can use it with someone like the Bearer of the Ring to make it more likely to keep your character around. Of course, if you fail by more than 1 under your corruption value you're eliminated still, but that doesn't happen too often.

The coolness of this card doesn't stop there. You can use it to prevent a character from being discarded in the Hour of Need. You can keep your wizard around after a Sacrifice of Form, though he doesn't get the bonuses and still loses his allies/other perm. events. And perhaps the second best use of this card (after corruption) is the fact that it can be tapped during your opponent's site phase. Saruman with Wizard's Ring getting you down? Respond to his influence attempt against your character with the Magical Harp. Most opponents will say "Oh, yeah, forgot you had that..."

Unfortunately, unlike Tookish Blood, this card doesn't cancel actions that return characters to your hand. Thus, Call of Home still works as well as ever and you cant use this to convince Beorn to stick around after changing skin. The only other drawback to this card is the 2 CPs, though if you tap this for its bearer he basically makes corruption checks as if he didn't have the Harp.

Ratings for Magical Harp:
Isildur: 7.7
Bandobras: 8.0
Farmer Maggot: 9.0
Legolas: 6.0
Strider: 7.5
Fingolfin: 8.0
Beorn: 7.8
Cirdan: 8.0
Merry: 6.0
Frodo: 8.0
Samwise: 8.0
Average: 7.6

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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.