Council of Elrond

Let's say I'm trying to run a fallen-Pallando-Prophet-of-Doom deck.
I included a few of the most played hero big minders (glorfindel, thrain, cirdan, etc.) in the sideboard, in order to reduce their mind to 0 during the influence attempt.
Last night I played live, and another player questioned the legality of such cards in a play deck.
Was he right? Or can a FW player actually include such charachters in his/her playdeck/sideboard? I would say that he ca: I've spent so many charachter slots with high mind agents like elerina or anarin, that I can legally include without playing them... by analogy, I could put someone like beorn in mi starting pool, and then put him back to deck.
That's of very limited use, but I ask nonetheless.

btw: As the question arose, others players argued that playing fw so much is making me treacherous as one of them. I can defenitely imagine fallen Saruman desperately runnign through rulebooks and erratas trying to find some devastating loophole in the rules...

MEWH rules wrote: CHARACTERS AND COMPANIES

All of your non-Orc and non-Troll characters are considered to be hero characters. Thus, a company consisting of only such characters is treated as a hero company. Such a company is covert for the purposes of playing minion resources.

* Your Fallen-wizard may only start at his home site.
* You may not start or bring into play any character with a mind greater than 5.

Note: See the section on Orcs and Trolls for more details.

According to this, you can include them but not bring them into play

White Hand Rules wrote:You may use both hero and minion characters. However, you may only use a character if his mind attribute is 5 or less. All of your non-Orc/Troll characters are considered to be hero characters. You may only use up to two of each non-unique character.

As I read this rule, revealing a character with greater than 5 mind is illegal, since you would then be using such a character. You can certainly play an agent as a hazard if their mind is greater than 5, since you are then not using them as a character.

I'm pretty sure there's some ruling that contradicts this somewhere, but I can't find it. Help, anyone?

[lawyer mode]
You may use both hero and minion characters. However, you may only use a character if his mind attribute is 5 or less.
If you reveal character card while influencing, you are using character card, not character.
[/lawyer mode]

And how about 6 mind character played with Trall of The Voice, when Trall of The Voice will be discarded thereafter?
Will 6 mind character become unusable?

It happens all the time, with Echoes of the song. Thrall gets discarded, but since the attacched charachter is already in play, nothing really happens. He's not playable anymore, but as already in play he ignores that effect.
If the charachter had to be discarded, Echoes would be devastating; since this is not the case, it does not get to see so much use (at least in my playing experience). The same applies to Mask Torn; how is it supposed to be effective? (I'd say that the most devastating cards to meddle with fw-charachters is call of home... )
It would be nice to try some heavy-influencing fw strategy: Pallando's Thruths of doom is HARD to play (btw, does anyone have some tips?), but what about a 17/18 DI influence saruman? (A wizard's Ring/voice would be sufficient to reach that sum...)

Zangtumb wrote:If the charachter had to be discarded, Echoes would be devastating;

And Palm to Palm, Necklace of Silver and Pearls, So You've Come Back, Diminish and Depart, minion Arkenstone would be devasting too.

CRF, Fallen Wizards wrote:Fallen-wizards may not play characters with more than five mind, but if they have one in play the character is not discarded.
Fallen-wizards can have a character with more than five mind, they just can't start with one or play one.

If playing a character with more than 5 mind was otherwise legal, then they certainly aren't discarded.

But we aren't talking about playing a character, we're talking about revealing a character in order to reduce the number required to influence them -- in my mind, that clearly counts as using the character. Without a card/ability that permits such use, it should remain illegal.

For that reason I'm not talking about playing/discarding character but about using/inability of use the character. Using of character incudes using its skills, direct influence, special abilities, tapping it as condition of other action.
If

CRF, Rulings by Term, Fallen Wizards wrote:Fallen-wizards may not play characters with more than five mind, but if they have one in play the character is not discarded.
Fallen-wizards can have a character with more than five mind, they just can't start with one or play one.

is not correction for

White Hand wrote:However, you may only use a character if his mind attribute is 5 or less.

and later is still in force, it should be taken seriously in all aspects.

Or we can take former as correction for sloppy worded WH record.

Actually,

You may only use up to two of each non-unique character.

may deserve closer examination -- is this meant to be limit on the play of characters or on inclusion in the deck? Is it legal to have 3 copies of the same non-unique character in a FW deck, but only two may be used at a given time?

If it is not legal to have 3 copies of a non-unique character in a FW deck, then by the same reasoning it is not legal to have characters with more than 5 mind -- yet we know that a FW deck can have characters with more than 5 mind because of the existence of Thrall of the Voice.

The point about using characters is a very good one, which I hadn't considered. Can a character be in play and not be used for anything?

Perhaps it would be a good idea for the NetRep team to clarify what "used" means in the context of these rules?

Bandobras Took wrote:Perhaps it would be a good idea for the NetRep team to clarify what "used" means in the context of these rules?

I`d highly recommend to refer to the common sense and interpret it the same way as with ressources (only 2 in deck).

If that is the case, Thrall of the Voice is a completely pointless card, since FWs are forbidden from using characters with greater than 5 mind, i.e. including them in the deck.

cards overrides rules, that is the reason why thrall isn't pointless

Bandobras Took wrote:If that is the case, Thrall of the Voice is a completely pointless card, since FWs are forbidden from using characters with greater than 5 mind, i.e. including them in the deck.

No, I meant using only two non-unique characters in deck, which is is common sense.

However, you may only use a character if his mind attribute is 5 or less. All of your non-Orc/Troll characters are considered to be hero characters. You may only use up to two of each non-unique character.

The same wording must follow the same interpretation -- if "use" for non-unique characters means inclusion in the deck in the first place, then it means exactly the same thing for characters with greater than 5 mind. Thus, you cannot include characters with greater than 5 mind in the deck. Likewise for starting characters. Thus Thrall is effectively rendered useless because it would be illegal to include a character in the deck that would give it a use.

Thus we conclude that "you may only use up to two" refers to something other than deck construction limits.

But in that case, what does it mean, and how does it relate to "use" as applied to characters with mind greater than 5?

Or, on the other hand, if "you may only use" does mean "you can only include these in the deck," then I conclude that putting a character with more than 5 mind in your deck is illegal. You can have a character with more than 5 mind in play so long as the method of obtaining it was otherwise legal, but I cannot conceive of such a method.

CRF:
Rulings by Term
Subsection F
Subsubsection Fallen Wizard
Bullet 4
Fallen-wizards can have a character with more than five mind, they just can't start with one or play one.