Sacrifice of Form

Spell. Wizard only. All of the strikes from one attack against your Wizard's company fail; -3 to any body checks made to determine if the attack is defeated. Discard the Wizard (i.e. he becomes unrevealed) and any non-item cards he controls. Place any items he controls under his card and keep these off to the side (these items are considered to still be in play). If the Wizard is put back into play, return his items to him and place Sacrifice of Form with him. Wizard receives +1 to his prowess, body and direct influence. May not be duplicated on a given Wizard.

First, its effect. There are many of these, tied together into one big overall one. The first one is that it makes all strikes fail from one attack and subtracts 3 from body checks of that attack afterwards. Against Nazgul or Shelob, it can get to be an instant 6-M.P. boost (especially Khamul, 5 body makes him almost a sitting duck, which is hard to say about an 18/8 Nazgul, especially if you make it one with 2 strikes and attacker choosing defending characters). And that's just the basic effect, though it is quite useful when your Wizard's in danger.

The next effect is that it un-reveals and discards a Wizard and non-items he controls. This could seem bad, except that there are actually many uses for this rather than penalties for it. First, if you use a discard recycler like Favor of the Valar, or better yet, one of the Palantiri (I'm doing a week on them soon, of course, just not yet), you can get your Wizard right back into play. With this assurance, that you can get the Wizard back if you need him, you have lots of great possibilities. Like if your Wizard's finished his work of getting out The One Ring easily (Wizard's Test etc.) and you won't be needing him again, and you have few enough characters so you don't need him for direct influence, use this to bring him safely back into your hand and prevent unexpected attacks. Or if you've influenced a lot of factions and now you just want to send him back before the corruption checks of the Free Council, this card's great. Plus remember, you keep the items if you bring him again, so it's also useful if your opponent's got a killer combo for use against your wizard and you want to keep him safe for a few turns while your opponent gets bored, annoyed, and finally discards it.

And that's not even all its effects. The Wizard also gets +1 to prowess, body, and direct influence when he does return, making him a formidable 7/10 character (1 pt. away from Glorfindel, and his body isn't as high), with 11 direct influence. A handy little extra boost in the probably dangerous conditions which caused you to un-reveal him in the first place. Not to mention useful if you're going through bad territory with The One Ring and you do want your wizard after all. Though this effect can't be duplicated, or else you could enhance your Wizard to 9/12 and 13 D.I., more powerful than any other character in the game.

Overall, Sacrifice of Form is an excellent card, one of the best resources in the game and an extremely useful boost for wizards.

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