Ren the Unclean

Unique. Nazgul (8th). May be played as a hazard creature (with one strike) or as a permanent-event. As a creature, may also be played keyed to Dagorlad, Ithilien, Gorgoroth, and Horse Plains; and may also be played at sites in these regions. If played as a permanent-event, it will remain in play until tapped during the opponent's movement/hazard phase (tapping counts against the hazard limit). When tapped, Ren the Unclean becomes a short-event: each character in play must make a corruption check.

Let's talk about that event. It makes EVERY character in play make a corruption check. No strange restrictions about it. Of course, it does effect you, but that's relatively minor compared to the devastating effects it can have with careful planning. Such as with Lure cards. Play a bunch of these and then this to have a huge effect on your opponent.

Another use is with big One Ring companies - with 6 for the bearer and also +1 to EVERYONE in the company, you can make them all make checks and therefore have a quite good chance of getting at least one of them out. In fact, this is useful in almost any possible corruption strategy. Though its main uses are with either item-heavy players or with high-powered corruption decks, it can also be used in others.

The main problem, as I said before, is that it also affects your characters. This can be remedied with either careful planning (transfer those items to all the Frodos and Bilbos in your company and then tap this) or with enhancers like Fellowship. And remember, you can recycle this, so once you've gotten yourself set up to be tough for it to effect you can play it over and over. And it's easier to recycle than Weariness of the Heart, in addition to affecting all the characters. So you can be simultaneously trying to corrupt your opponent's Wizard out of the game AND corrupting that item-laden character.

Plus, here's a final combo: use it with Traitor (or several of them) to add an extra little problem for your opponent when one of his characters fails a check. An extremely powerful, wide-range, and easy to use effect.

Overall, Ren the Unclean is a good bit above average for overall ability and first for special ability.

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