Of the many Kuduk Lore quotes that were made up by ICE, few have produced as annoyed a response as "The kalaloki boast whip-like tails with serrated spines, each housing a retractable membrane filled with electricaly charged fluid. The sting of one knife-like spine delivers the impact of a lightning bolt!"
Light-drake # Hazard # Creature # 1 MP # 8/- # Keyable: Wi, Rl
Drake. Two strikes.
Drakes range in power from near Nazgul and Dragons to near Crebain and Orc Warband. There's lots of stuff you can do with them, but some of them aren't quite worth it.
Light-drake is one that's usually not really worth it. To its advantage, it is keyable against almost any company, especially if you hold on to it for a few turns. It's got two strikes, so you can potentially tap two characters, but to its discredit, it has but 8 prowess. And while some orcs and undead have comprable prowess, they also have both more strikes and potential modifiers. Sure, you can modify Light-drake with cards like Half an Eye Open or Dragon's Terror or Prowess of Age, but in most cases this is just a waste of cards for a wasted cause (Dragon's Terror) or requires extensive planning which defeats the purpose of easily playable creatures (Prowess of Age).
It can be useful in situations where your opponent's company is pretty weak, such as a company of Hobbits, though if two Hobbits both get help from one other Hobbit, they just need to roll 6s to avoid the strike. Further, most companies either take sufficient protective measures like Stealth or have big warriors to protect the weak. Since Light-drake can't choose defending characters (and thus has one more strike than Land-drake), your opponent is likely to have his protective guys take the strike. Even an unmodified prowess of 6 (like a wizard) can take a -3 modifier and only have to roll a 5 to stay untapped against the Light-drake. Once the company's gotten some weapons, this weak drake can just forget it.
Light-drake is perhaps best used as a pawn in the meta-game of dragons. You can use it to distract away Itangast with Dragon Feuds, though a drake like Cave Worm, Ice-drake, or Nameless Thing will do this just as well. Perhaps the best use of Light-drake is in conjunction with Worm's Stench in a wolf/ spider/animal deck, which can often do a significant amount of damage on only one wilderness. Keep in mind, though, that you may be giving your opponent an MP and lowering the hazard limit one so you can get bigger wolves, but bigger wolves, animals, and spiders will often prevent your opponent from playing resources during the site phase.
I guess Light-drake can also be somewhat useful in sealed deck, where players don't have much control over what characters they have and might not have as much protection as they would like. Still, I think a Cave-drake may be a much better choice for deck building.
| Ratings for Light-drake: | |
| Isildur: | 3.4 |
| Samwise: | 2.0 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 7.5 |
| Legolas: | 5.0 |
| Bandobras Took: | 3.2 |
| Fingolfin: | 6.5 |
| Beorn: | 6.6 |
| Frodo: | 5.0 |
| Strider: | 5.0 |
| Alatar: | 4.0 |
| Average: | 4.8 |
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.