Part of my job as the writer of the Card of the Day is to help bring enlightenment to readers about cards that are confusing or seem useless. One such card that arose on the newsgroup is
Await the Advent of Allies # Resource # Permanent-event
Playable on a non-Wizard character with a mind of six or less. Character must
stay at its current non-Haven site until you play a card at the site. Target
character does not count against general influence and its marshalling points
do not count. Discard this card when you play a resource at the site, the
character is discarded, or the character is wounded. Cannot be duplicated on
a given character.
First of all, you may be asking, how does this card work? In short, it allows you to leave a character somewhere and not have them take up any GI. He doesn't give you any MPs and can still be attacked by creatures, but this can still be a very useful card with many uses.
It's most obvioius use may be factions. Many characters have a bonus to influence factions that are played at their home sites. So, you can bring in Vygavril at Southron Oasis and put Await the Advent of Allies on her. Now that your influencer is in play, you can use something to sideboard the Southrons into your deck. When you draw them, you can bring them in with Vygavril, then discard her during your next organization phase. In the mean time, you can have another 3 GI to work with. You can even get the MPs from the character if you call the council right after playing the faction (or other resource) as you won't have an organization phase where you'll have to discard the character. This influx of up to 6 MPs can be a definite deciding factor. Another use is cards like Palantir of Elostirion. Since your character is going to be there for the rest of his life anyway, why not use his GI for something else. Or you can send Balin (or some other sage) to Blue Mountain Dwarf-hold with the Book of Mazarbul. Play Await the Advent of Allies on him and use him as a cheap Elven Lord. Then, when the council is called, he can store the Book for 5 MPs. Or perhaps you have a character who's sole purpose in life is to keep hold of Tom Bombadil so he can give you ally points and cancel hazards. Plop down Await the Advent of Allies and bring in another character you can move about. This card can be used to keep a site in play. For instance, you can drop off a weak follower at a tapped < ahref="84.html">Moria as you drop down into the Under-gates and then return to Moria once you've tapped the Under-gates instead of spelunking around for a while looking for untapped surface sites. This can also keep a tapped Minas Tirith with The White Tree in play. Also, unless the text I got from the spoiler list is wrong, the character CAN have followers. This means you can have Arwen<./a> with Choice of Luthien controlling Aragorn, giving you 4 MPs plus any items, for no GI and you can use Aragorn for influencing characters away that happen by. Similarly, you can have Celeborn with a Lesser Ring control Galadriel who is using a Palantir. 6 MPs and two possible characters when you need them all for no GI cost...
While there are many uses for Await the Advent of Allies, it has several drawbacks as well. The biggest drawback is the fact that you have to time it right. It's best used when you can play a character along with it, but that means holding a combo and you might be better off trying to hold the resource you want to play and the character as a combo. Also, you can't use it for Elven Lords because a) their mind is too high and b) their ability is used at havens. Also, as I mentioned, your opponent can still attack you. So if you have someone like Denethor waiting around for the Tower Guard, your opponent can throw Assassins and Slayers at him, either killing him or maybe getting rid of Await the Advent of Allies.
So Await the Advent of Allies can make things a little easier, but it's a bit combo intensive and so doesn't make it's way into general decks. But if you have a character for just one purpose, this is the card for you.
| Ratings for Await the Advent of Allies: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 5.5 |
| Bandobras: | 6.8 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 6.0 |
| Legolas: | 5.0 |
| Strider: | 6.5 |
| Fingolfin: | 6.5 |
| Beorn: | 7.7 |
| Cirdan: | 6.5 |
| Frodo: | 5.5 |
| Samwise: | 8.5 |
| Average: | 6.5 |
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.