Saturday, famous poet Allen Ginsberg died of liver cancer. Many of his poems that were recorded or performed involved some cool Drums. Accordingly, I thought Drums were a Permanent-event, as death (which was on my mind) is not a Long-event...
Drums # Hazard # Long-event For each company at or moving to an Under-deep site, the hazard limit is increased by one and the prowess of all attacks is increased by one. All automatic-attacks at sites in the following regions have their number of strikes and prowess increased by one (by two if Doors of Night is in play): Angmar, Gap of Isen, Gorgoroth, Gundabad, High Pass, Redhorn Gate, Rohan, Southern Mirkwood, and Udun. Cannot be duplicated.
This is one of many cards that can mess up an Under-deeps deck. Unlike several of those cards, though, Drums can mess with other decks as well.
The first ability of this card is fairly good. While most under-deeps companies will be prepared for a fight, one extra hazard may be all you need to tap another character or two. The only problem is, Drums counts one against the hazard limit (unless you've got Will of Sauron out). So Drums basically pays for itself. An additional prowess to all attacks can be pretty tough, especially considering that if you've got a few creatures in your hand the average Under-deeps company will face 10 or so strikes per turn. It makes The Under-gates into a frightening 17 prowess auto-attack. Yikes! It can also be well combined with cards like Minions Stir and The Moon is Dead to make some truly frightening auto-attacks.
While this isn't as powerful as several of the underground hosers, it has another ability that comes into play more often. +1 prowess to most of the auto-attacks listed isn't too bad, but when combined with the +1 strike you can often hurt the character that was going to be untapped for the item. With Doors of Night out, the attack starts to get a little scary, hitting an extra two characters. While it doesn't hit all of the sites (like most of the Dragon lairs or the stuff in the west), it hits many of the most popular sites, especially for Indy decks. The most visited of these include Moria, Carn Dum, Isengard, Glittering Caves, and Mount Gundabad. If compounded with Redoubled Force or some of the minions/denizens cards, you can throw a wrench in the spokes of quite a number of decks while keeping safe yourself if you plan your deck right.
On the defending end, Drums with Will of Sauron is in some ways harder to deal with than most of the other auto-attack helpers. While it doesn't do as much as most of them, it's permanent. Many of the enhancers are short-events which a company can avoid a really scary attack by just waiting a turn. Also, it doesn't go away when an affected attack is defeated, so Doors has to be Twilighted or a Marvels Told needs to come out.
| Ratings for Drums: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 5.6 |
| Farmer Maggott: | 9.0 |
| Wormtongue: | 6.2 |
| Frodo: | 7.5 |
| Bandobras Took: | 8.0 |
| Samwise: | 7.3 |
| Legolas: | 6.2 |
| Strider: | 7.0 |
| Beorn: | 7.2 |
| Fingolfin: | 8.0 |
| Average: | 7.2 |
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.