118.html|@/@@TEXTR*chh ĭ~ka Bane of the Ithil-Stone

Bane of the Ithil-Stone

Hazard: Permanent-Event

Corruption points for Palantiri are doubled. Automatically cancels any effect that causes a player to search through or look at any portion of a play deck or a discard pile outside of the normal sequence of play. Discard Bane of the Ithil-Stone whenever a play deck is exhausted. Cannot be duplicated.


This is one of the main reasons not to play Palantiri. It's often worth it anyway, but this card can make them a much bigger pain to carry around. First, there's the basic effect, corruption points are doubled. And it's permanent until the specific effects listed on the card happen. On some Palantiri, this totals them to 6 corruption points, as many as The One Ring. Major annoyance. Now corruption points aren't just a minor annoyance, they become a downright threat, with close to a 50% (I believe the exact number is 41.6 repeating) chance of failing the corruption check. So already Palantiri become a much more dangerous thing to carry around. Though the effect is still worth it. Except that now it's not, because of the other effect, on some Palantiri. The Orthanc, Minas Tirith, and Annuminas Palantiri all lose their main abilities, plus some other cards besides the Palantiri. So it makes those three effectively almost hunks of rock that give you 4 (6 in the case of Annuminas) corruption points to carry around. Pretty powerful. You can use this to stop all sorts of strategies. Use it just in general when your opponent plays Saruman to make him almost wish he hadn't. Use it with those Palantir based decks, or for that matter Far Sight et. al. based decks as well, to make all that fishing around for items useless and effectively destroy their deck. Use as soon as your opponent's brought out their first Precious Gold Ring to cut down on their ring fishing strategy. Just in general this is useful to annoy your opponent. And there's only one setback. It's discarded whenever any play deck is exhausted. But even that's not much, sincee a lot of the time the reason to use a Palantir in the first place is to search through a play deck and with few cards in the play deck there's no need to search it. So overall, Bane of the Ithil-Stone is a very useful card to keep around for Palantir-using opponents, a sideboard one if you don't know your opponent's strategies well yet.
Ratings for: BANE OF THE ITHIL-STONE
RaterRatingRaterRating
Gandalf7.0Gollum7.5
Morgoth7.0Shadowfax6.2
Radagast9.0Sauron6.5
Eru5.0Isildur6.0
Average6.78

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