I would have thought that undead weren't intellegent enough to whisper when they need to keep quiet. I guess I was wrong.
Endless Whispers # Hazard # Permanent-event
Dark Enchantment. Playable on a non-Wizard character wounded by an Undead
attack this turn; does not count against the hazard limit. Target character
can never become untapped while bearing this card. Any effect that would move
him to an untapped state makes him tapped instead. Cannot be duplicated on a
given character. During the organization phase, a sage in target character's
company may tap to attempt to remove this card. Make a roll (or draw a #): if
the result is greater than 7, discard this card.
Unlike yesterday's card, Bring Our Curses Home, this card is both fairly easy to play and does more damage. Plus, it doesn't count against the hazard limit.
First of all, this card is only useful in an undead deck (duh). Undead are currently probably the #1 creature type for wounding characters due to all the nice enhancers and slight lack of defenses. While this card itself won't help to get rid of a character, it does the next best thing: puts him out of commission for a couple turns. This is a nice card (along with Pale Dream Maker) that can be used if you can't quite kill a character outright. If there's some character you don't like, hand him all your extra strikes from a Ghouls or some other undead to give yourself as good a chance as possible to wound. Then roll the body check, with all the fun that involves. If the body check fails, make a big and nasty grin and start whispering taunts to your opponent, while slowly slipping Endless Whispers on top of the character. If you have several possible casualties, you can even hold Endless Whispers until the end of the M/H phase, bringing it out when you've used up your hazards (and your opponent may have used his Marvels Told).
Once on the table, this card is NASTY. The character would normally be tapped for at least two turns while he travels to a haven to heal. Once he's healed but tapped, a player may get a chance to remove Endless Whispers, but this means he'll have a tapped sage for that turn, and he still has less than a 50% chance of getting it off. Marvels Told, Wizard Uncloaked, et al. can also deal with the whispers, but that means fewer cards to hose your other permanent events. Another nice thing about Endless Whispers is that a speed company may have some cards like Healing Herbs or Herb-lore to handle wounds rather than taking the time to head back to a haven. While the character can still heal with those cards, he still requires a sage to help him shake the whispers from his head, meaning that with one hazard you've tapped at least one and probably two characters that could otherwise be of use.
Perhaps the best use of this card is to hit a company's only sage (or only remaining sage after a big attack :-) to completely hose up that character. While you can't play Endless Whispers on a wizard (or the wizard is Radagast), a company with only one sage (or no sages...) can be really hurt with a well placed Endless Whispers. Not only will the company be unable to play cards like Marvels Told, Wielded Twice, Dreams of Lore, or one of myriad other sage cards, it will also have a character which CAN'T DO ANYTHING and will likely have to be discarded at a haven. This also leaves the company open for more damage done with more Endless Whispers or some of the other recent cards which make the sage skill a passively defensive skill.
So if you're planning an undead deck, Endless Whispers may be a nice card to include. While it's not as nasty as it first seems (the character will be tapped for a couple turns anyway), it can hold up a company which wants to go a little fast for your tastes.
| Ratings for Endless Whispers: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 6.8 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 7.0 |
| Samwise: | 6.9 |
| Strider: | 6.5 |
| Legolas: | 8.4 |
| Beorn: | 7.5 |
| Frodo: | 9.5 |
| Fingolfin: | 9.5 |
| Average: | 7.8 |
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.