Re: The Twilight World - New DC set from Thranduil!

[Thranduil]

Well that lot was incredibly uncontroversial. Let's move on to our last companion, a reprint and another card.

Now this one is a funny turn around. I always thought: "What's the point of unhasty? It's such a useless annoying keyword!" And here I am putting it on my cards... It was on Radagast in the last set, and it's on Treebeard here and another couple of Ents in the next set, Back to the Light. Not sure about it - but what do you think?

•Treebeard, Fangorn
Companion • Ent
Str: 12
Vit: 4
Res: 7
Unhasty. Unyielding (Treebeard cannot be assigned to a skirmish by you unless a card allows him to be and his resistance is not reduced by the number of burdens).
At the start of the assignment phase, reveal the top card of your draw deck. If it is a or card, each companion loses unhasty until the regroup phase.
While Treebeard has resistance 6 or more, he is damage +2.
T U 21

Now, the plan for this DC block was always that it comes after Hunters (as sets 20-22) and therefore King block would rotate out to make the new standard of War of the Ring/Hunters/Light & Shadow. In fact, it would be with the release of the Twilight World (ie. this set) that King block would be out of standard, and so I'll be sprinkling some reprints or re-imaginings of cards. Also, Magic has convinced me that reprints are inherently necessary in a TCG - if you have a card that does what you need it to do, then you shouldn't change it by making a new card, you should clearly use an old card so that you don't unnecessarily use up design space. And so I need to strengthen what the culture is good at, and one of the things it can do is heal, and so I thought (obviously) of this card:

Have Patience (reprint)
Event • Fellowship
Spot Gandalf to heal an unbound companion twice.
T C 17

The last card in this set is a slightly wacky rare which, I think, could open up some interesting deck options:

•Great Trials
Condition • Support Area
Tale.
While you can spot a Wizard, each Free Peoples card gains toil 1.
Response: If you play a card with toil X, exert a Wizard companion to make that card's twilight cost -X.
T R 16

And to be honest, while we're still on the subject of Free Peoples cards, I might as well post one of the cards from the culture that ties in (thematically if not mechanically) here. Wait for it....

•Curunír, The White Wizard (FP)
Companion • Wizard
Str: 8
Vit: 4
Res: 7
Traitor. Unyielding (Curunír's resistance is not reduced by the number of burdens).
Play with the top card of your draw deck revealed. Curunír is resistance -X, where X is the twilight cost of the revealed card.
Each time a spell is played, unless Curunír is corrupted, you may add a burden to discard a condition (companions with resistance 0 are corrupted).
T R 45

BAM!

A couple of words.

1) Obviously this is Saruman, but I chose to use his Sindarin name Curunír so that we have a Sméagol/Gollum duality, where having a Saruman companion does not stop Shadow players playing Saruman minions, and this is the easiest way to do it.

2) Traitor is usually a minion keyword (and is unloaded) but I decided that, just as it fits Saruman minion, it should also fit a Saruman companion (and his game text really speaks "traitor" to me!). I was also thinking of adding it to both Gollum and Sméagol for the same reasons.

3) I know many DC-makers put Saruman companions (and the Blue Wizards) in the culture, and while that makes a fair amount of flavour sense (Saruman was, after all, heavily influenced by Gandalf) and a lot of mechanical sense (because he can then be spotted by many cards as a " Wizard") I felt that Saruman could be nowhere but in his own culture. If he was forced to be subservient to Gandalf, he would be disgusted, and so the only way I saw him joining the fellowship was under his own authority.