Living in Colorado right next to the Rocky Mountains I've done plenty of hoping for
Fair Travels in Wilderness # Resource # Short-event
Playable at the end of the organization phase if target company plays a new
site card. The hazard limit for the target company decreases by one for every
Wilderness in its site path (to a minimum of two). Cannot be duplicated on the
same company.
Of the fair travels cards, this is probably the most useful. Wilderness appears more than all other region types combined and there are more decks based around wilderness than other region types.
The best use of this card is if you have a fairly large company and are going through just enough wildernesses. For instance, if you have a company of five characters, you can use something like Rhun or Forod to travel great distances and only have a hazard limit of two. Or you can head from Lorien to Buhr Widu with a company of 7 and only expect to see 3 hazards. The most obvious combo with this card is Radagast. Build your deck around wilderness, draw lots of cards and not have too many hazards played on you. Throw in a fog for good measure and build your hazard portion around attacking in the wilderness. Craig O'Brian calls this a tree-hugger and it was one of the first decks discussed on the net...
This card finds its primary target around Rivendell where there is the most wilderness. A deck based around there with Ford, this card, and other wilderness helpers forms itself pretty well. You can also get good use out of this card in the north-east and Mirkwood where most of the regions are wilderness. Keep in mind that you can also use it when what you'll be facing won't be based around the wilderness. You can head to Mount Doom with this card, lowering the hazard limit by two (canceling the +2 from Mount Doom). You can also use this card to trick an opponent in a sneeky way. Move one company before the company with a Fair Travels. Your opponent will anticipate you heading through several wilderness and will hold cards in his hand accordingly. Then, surprise! you go through a bunch of non-wilderness regions. So maybe that's cheesy and stupid, but it DOES get a card out of your hand... This card can also be useful in sealed deck where you often end up going through a fair amount of wilderness and you tend to have a less than ideal character situation, some of whom you would like to protect (or at least keep untapped).
Fair Travls in Wilderness is not as useful as it once was. Previously, you could take a large company out, play Fair Travels, and only have to face two hazards. Now with cards like Two or Three Tribes Present and other cards like Pierced by Many Wounds, no matter if you reduce your hazard limit or not you may face a lot of hazards. This means that even your large company with a small hazard limit may be tapped from a hoard of spider attacks or Undead attacks may still do about as much damage. Fair Travels is still useful, though. If you have four characters to face a barrage of creatures it's better than only two and your opponent may be playing with hazards that cost normal, such as corruption. And if you've reduced your limit from 6 to 2, you can only expect one Lure of Nature and one Weariness of the Heart rather than several more cards to cause a corruption check. This means you've got more people to tap in support.
So Fair Travels in Wilderness is a way to escape some of the nastiness of the hazard phase without appearing to be as much of a whimp as you do when you just cancel anything that comes along.
| Ratings for Fair Travels in Wilderness: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 7.0 |
| Samwise: | 5.0 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 7.5 |
| Legolas: | 2.0 |
| Bandobras: | 7.5 |
| Fingolfin: | 6.0 |
| Beorn: | 7.5 |
| Frodo: | 8.5 |
| Average: | 6.4 |
COTD may be delayed in the coming days as I have a whole bunch of big projects and tests due almost simultaneously this week. I will catch up with any back issues during spring break, the last weak of March. I will also link the recent issues, something I've been slacking on.
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.