Page values for "Data:Bill Ferny, Swarthy Sneering Fellow (2R75)/Data"

Simply put, Bill Ferny is a nightmare for Alternate Ring-bearers that take wounds or burdens when assigned to a skirmish, since Bill can saunter on up and trigger those deleterious effects whenever he feels like it.

The errata ensures that the self-assign only works if Frodo is around, or if you’ve brought Sam, Son of Hamfast (1C311)START_WIDGET"'-517ac5e8d0ba619aEND_WIDGET or some other Hobbit splash along for the ride. Either way, the Free Peoples player now has a bit of counterplay available by not including such cards with their ARBs.

Decipher Notes:

There was talk of adding Bill Ferny to the X-List while we worked on Reflections. Clearly, he works well against the alternate Ring-bearers and deters some players from using them. But at that time, we felt that the scales were not tipped far enough against the new Ring-bearers to warrant removing Ferny.

But now Shadows gives resistance a much larger role in the game, and the fact that Ring-bearers other than Frodo have a lower resistance is becoming a greater liability in and of itself. That new liability, combined with the existence of Bill Ferny, threatened to make one of the most well-liked aspects of Reflections too unreliable in a tournament environment for most players to consider.

Also, as one more strike against Bill Ferny (though an unneeded one), Shadows introduces a couple of new cards to the Wraith culture (renamed from the Ringwraith culture) which, because they work for the whole culture and aren't Nazgûl specific, would have made Ferny a truly frightening force to be reckoned with.