Misty Mountains

Resource: Short-event

Playable at the end of the organization phase on a company containing a ranger. If the company uses region cards for its site path, tap the ranger to move as if the following pairs of regions were adjacent: Rhudaur and Anduin Vales, Rhudaur and Wold & Foothills, Hollin and Wold & Foothills, Hollin and Fangorn, Dunland and Fangorn. Otherwise, if the site moved to is in one of the regions listed above, the hazard limit is reduced by two (to a minimum of two). Cannot be duplicated on a given company.

Well, it still does have some uses, though a good deal of this review will be about the class in general. Basically what they do is allow passage between otherwise unconnected regions, which are blocked off by various things (mountain ranges or in one case the Anduin River). There's also two special case ones, Morannon (whose effects are in a way actually better suited to a hazard) and Paths of the Dead, which I'll review in other COTDs.

But this card is an example of the general class. They also all include another use, reducing the hazard limit by 2 to a minimum of 2, that gives them a use other than easy passage between regions. The other examples of this type are: White Mountains, Anduin River, Mountains of Shadow, and Ash Mountains. There are some uses for this. It can often allow safer passages between areas, which are not available even on the conventional site paths. Misty Mountains doesn't offer many of these, since there are two paths through them already, but look at White Mountains (though you can use Edhellond for site paths, if you're in Lorien it takes two turns with that while with this it takes one). Anduin River is okay, but would be better if Anorien and Ithilien weren't connected (there's no reason I can think of for that, the river's in between them and Frodo and Sam had to cross it, why shouldn't we?).

But the hazard limit reducer's also quite good. Basically like giving you a Fair Travels in _____ card, and it's not the cards' only feature. But, as I said before, Misty Mountains specifically isn't that good as one, since it can be easily passed through anyway. But also this class in general isn't that great, since because of ICE's devotion to making the game easy (though I agree that 8-hour games are a bad idea and that's what it would have been otherwise) any site can be reached from any other in a maximum of 3 turns anyway (though not with site path movement, consider Himring to Mount Doom for instance).

So overall, Misty Mountains is a mediocre card, the worst in its not-too-great class.

Ratings for: MISTY MOUNTAINS

Rater	Rating	Rater	Rating
Gandalf	4.0	Lobelia	3.0
Morgoth	5.0	Faramir	4.0
Shadowfax	5.0	Beren	N/R
Isildur	4.0	Gollum	5.0
Turin	N/R	Sauron	N/R
Radagast	5.0	Cirdan	7.5
Eru	4.5	Average	4.32

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