Shadow Era Spoilers #13 - Smoke Screen

Today's card is a new trick for rogues to pack up their sleeves, but is it a good one? We'll see.


Dark Prophecies 79/150 - Smoke Screen
Spoiled by Kyle on 12/23/2012
Source

First, a clarification - The wording for this card is NOT the same as Assassination, which requires the friendly target be able to exhaust itself to work. In other words, this card should be playable even if your hero is exhausted. You just can't attack after you play it, because at that point he'd be exhausted no matter what.

However, I've come to the DT about this and the response is that, if anything, it's the card wording that's unfinished. Both effects, the disable and draw, are tied to the hero exhausting, not the state of being exhausted. In other words, if your hero is disabled, frozen, exhausted, or some other effect that stops you from exhausting it, you can't play Smoke Screen.

For the card itself, I'm really not a fan. This card is basically Mugged, but it costs one more and has the hero clause in exchange for maybe locking down three or more allies (more than just attacking with an Anklebreaker or DoU and a Mugged would have done).

Now, nobody really plays Mugged. I understand that as rogues currently have no way of dealing with large armies this would be appealing, but it doesn't deal with large allies. This card does absolutely nothing, in reality. It's a glorified Rain Delay. In the same way that Rolling Boulders spoiled earlier this week is just stall, the same goes for this card. And unless you're Millstalker, stall can't do anything by itself.

The draw effect attached is nice, but again, other Rogue cards such as Mugged already have that and have proved that it's no consolation for actually doing something with those spent resources.

Rating: 2/10. This card is slightly better than Campfire Stories, but not by much. If you lose to large armies, this card will not help you. If you're worried about 1-2 targets, Mugged is cheaper and the end result will be the same if not better. I understand the appeal some players may have toward it, and compared to some cards from CotC, this card could actually be played. That's why it won't get the worst rating I have to give, but it's close.