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What's So Special About Special Abilities?

by Mark Tuttle
"Elrond"

Shortly after the release of The Lord of the Rings TCG: The Two Towers, I got an email from a player, thanking me for the card Weapons of Isengard (4 R 211). It seems that in a recent game, he had gotten 4 copies of this card into play, played 8 Uruk-hai, then discarded all 4 in one archery phase delivering a whopping 32 points of minion archery total to his opponent. Needless to say, this wiped out his opponent's fellowship.

Further, his friend will no longer play with him.

The first thing I did was point out that this was wrong from a rules standpoint, and a bad thing to do to your friends. The root of this problem is a misunderstanding of the workings of special abilities.

Rules Summary

In The Lord of the Rings TCG, special abilities are actions that are featured on certain cards. Recognizing a special ability is very simple and they are quite easy to define.

A special ability is game text on any card (except an event, more on that later) that begins with a bolded timing word followed by a colon. Examples are:

Legolas, Greenleaf
1 R 50
Archer. Archery: Exert Legolas to wound a minion; Legolas does not add to the fellowship archery total.

Frodo, Tired Traveller
4 C 302
Ring-bearer (resistance 10). Fellowship: Play a Ring-bound companion to remove a burden.

In the above two cards, the "Archery:" action and "Fellowship:" action and all text that follow, are special ability actions. Note that the keywords "archer" and "Ring-bearer" are NOT special abilities, but rather keywords.

Other special ability text could include the keywords Response:, Shadow:, Skirmish:, Maneuver:, Assignment:, and Regroup:. Again, we are talking about non-event cards, so you'll only find special abilities on characters, sites, conditions, possessions, artifacts, and the Rings.

Other types of text on cards is generally referred to as game text. This is text that is not a special ability and only happens once when triggered.

Under The Watching Eye
1 C 281
Search. To play, exert a [Sauron] tracker. Plays to your support area. Each time the fellowship moves, the Free Peoples player must exert a companion.

Note this card has no bolded timing word followed by a colon. Thus, this is not a special ability. This text is then activated only once, when the fellowship moves.

Another example that I get frequently:

The Witch-King, Lord of the Nazgûl
2 R 85
Twilight. Return to Its Master may not be played. Each time the Witch-king wins a skirmish, you may exert him to wound the Ring-bearer twice.

This text is, again, not a special ability since there is no bolded timing word. That makes it straight game text that activates once when something happens. In this case, when The Witch-King wins a skirmish, the Shadow player may exert him to wound the Ring-bearer twice. Since this is not a special ability, there is no option to activate this text multiple times.

Using Special Abilities

Special abilities are unique in that they are actions that can be declared multiple times. This means that one card can perform an action many times. This is great for deck-building because it makes for good card efficiency. You must remember though that each time you declare an action you must first meet all requirements, pay any costs, and then resolve that action before performing another. Let's look at an example:

Greed
1 R 125
To play, spot an Uruk-hai. Plays to your support area. Maneuver: Spot 6 companions and remove 2 to wound a companion (except the Ring-bearer).

This card is a condition so once I get it into play, I can use it in my maneuver phase as often as I wish. Let's say we enter the maneuver phase and the free peoples player passes, having no maneuver action. I declare Greed's special ability. I meet the requirements (spot 6 companions) and pay my costs (remove 2) and wound a companion. It is now the free peoples player's turn to play an action. He still has no maneuver actions, so it's my turn. Since I can still meet requirements and pay the costs for Greed, I may declare this action again, because it is a special ability. In fact, as long as there are 6 companions, and I have twilight to remove, I can perform it over and over.

We're skipping over a more detailed description of the action procedure here. You can find that discussion in my Help Clinic article entitled "Maneuver Phase and the Action Procedure". What is important to note here, is that although the Shadow player used Greed's special ability multiple times, he did so one action at a time. Special ability actions MAY NOT BE COMBINED. Each one must be initiated, paid for, and resolved separately. Let's return to our Weapons of Isengard example from the beginning of this article and determine what our player did wrong.

Weapons of Isengard
4 R 211
Machine. Plays to your support area. Shadow: Play an [Isengard] archer to place an [Isengard] token on this card. Archery: Remove 2 [Isengard] tokens from this card to make the minion archery total +2. Discard this condition.

Wow. There's a lot going on with this card. Note that there are two special abilities on this card. The first is a Shadow: special ability meaning that this action may be performed in the Shadow phase. The action allows the Shadow player to play an [Isengard] archer (from hand for its normal cost) and place an [Isengard] token on this machine. This means that you are initiating a single action to play that archer to place a token. If you had multiple copies of Weapons of Isengard in play, you would not be able to place multiple tokens since the action allowing the playing of the archer and placing the tokens is a single, special ability action. So, the player from our email made a mistake when he played one Uruk-hai archer, and placed a token on four different copies of Weapons of Isengard.

Second, let's look at the second special ability. This is an Archery: action that allows you to remove 2 [Isengard] tokens to make the minion archery total +2, THEN DISCARD THE CONDITION. Again, let's look at this from the fact that each special ability action is separate, and must resolve before you can initiate another. It is possible to have more than 2 tokens on Weapons of Isengard, sure. However, when you declare this archery action, you remove 2 tokens, and add 2 to your minion archery total. But now, you MUST discard the condition to fulfill this action before you could attempt to initiate it again. So after removing 2 and adding 2, the condition is discarded. All other tokens are lost.

One last example looks at special abilities from the cost point of view. Let's use Weapon Store for this example:

Weapon Store
4 R 294
Plays to your support area. Fellowship: Exert a [Rohan] Man to play a hand weapon from your discard pile.

This card is not unique so you may have multiples in play. Remember that you can never combine special ability actions and the cost of that action is no exception. With 4 copies of Weapon Store in play, you may not exert a [Rohan] Man to pay the cost of each. I have many players ask me if they can exert a Man once to play 4 hand weapons from the discard pile. No, each special ability must be paid for individually.

Naming Special Abilities

Sometimes a type of special ability is differentiated by the phase in which it's played in. Certain cards have specific affects on "skirmish special abilities".

Sharku's Warg
5 R 59
Bearer must be a warg-rider. If bearer is Sharku, he is damage +1. Response: If a skirmish special ability is used in a skirmish involving bearer, exert bearer to cancel that action.

A "skirmish special ability" would then be any special ability that is denoted with the "Skirmish:" keyword.

It Looks Like a Duck....

One tricky thing about special abilities is where they are NOT found. Event cards have text that looks like special abilities, but they are not.

Event Cards
Event cards in The Lord of the Rings TCG are cards that play from your hand, have their effect, and then leave play. They have timing words followed by colons, so they look like special abilities but they are not. The timing word states WHEN the card may be played and the duration the effect lasts. For example:

Dagger Strike
1 C 102
Skirmish: Make a [Gondor] or [Shire] companion bearing a hand weapon strength +2 and damage +1.

This card may be played during the skirmish phase, and its effect (strength +2, damage +1) lasts the duration of the skirmish in which it was played. So, Dagger Strike is NOT a special ability, although it is a skirmish event. This is an important distinction to cards like Faramir, Son of Denethor (4 C 117) who prevents special abilities and skirmish events and Wargs (5 C 65) who may cancel special abilities but wouldn't be able to cancel Dagger Strike.

Conclusion

This is a lot of information, but it's not that difficult once you begin to recognize the special ability. If you have any questions, please email me at Elrond@decipher.com.

June 12, 2003