Harry Potter Card of the Week
with Alex Rockwell

02.20.02  Gaze into the Mirror

Well, time for another card of the week!

This week I'd like to look at a card which is good against certain types of decks:

Gaze into the Mirror
Adventure
Effect: During your opponent's turns, prevent all Spells damage done to you by Spell cards. To Solve: Opponent chooses 5 Spell cards in hand and discards them. Reward: Opponent gets 1 more Action

If you have any trouble with someone playing a Quidditch based deck against you, with Madam Hooch or others (maybe Oliver wood), and using lots of damage spells, then this is the card to shut that deck down. It forces them to discard 5 of their damage spells before they can do anything to you! That will basically make them waste several turns drawing to get enough cards to discard.Since most people using this kind of deck do not use Minerva McGonagall as
their character, they will be very vulnerable to this adventure.

A deck that you might use this against follows roughly the following format:

Madam Hooch
Nimbus 2000 (or Comet 260)

About 16 Quiddich Damage spells (Fouled!, Ouch!, Pulling Up, and Cobbing
being the most likely)
0-8 matches (some use more matches and bludgers, but not usually) The
best match is Hufflepuff, since it gives draws and damage! Of course, it
is good in combination with potions, to deal damage.
~24-28 lessons
Some creature defense, other versatile cards, damage spells from other
lesson types, such as charms or potions.

They will probably have some sort of creature defense, such as Stream of
Flames, and/or Fumos if they play charms, Transfiguration Test if they
play Transfiguration, and Weakness or similar Potions. Alternately, they
can use creatures also and play Doxy's. If they play potions, they will
probably have big damage potions and hatches like Hufflepuff or Slytherin.
If not, it is less likely that you will see matches, and more likely they
will play out a Nimbus and keep hitting you with spells over and over.

You would probably play about 24 lessons + wands, if playing charms, or
about 26 lessons. Less if you use comet 260 and smaller spells. Of
course, it depends on the range of spells used.

Anyway, this is a good deck type if you want to work on building it, and
if you have problems against it, adding Gaze into the Mirror to your deck
can be incredible against it. I think that the two main decks you have to
be able to beat are a spell-damage deck, probably involving quiddich
cards, which will most likely not use McGonagall, and a creature based
deck probably using Flitwick and Halloween feast, but there are many
variations. These seem to me to be the two most common decks.

Of course, if you only play with a couple friends, then you just have
tomake something to beat them :-) And if they use lots of spells for
damage, Gaze into the mirror is probably the card for you.

It is risky, because many decks don't rely on spells for damage, and some
people use McGonagall, and could destroy it. Therefore, it helps if you
play Flitwick and can discard it to use his ability in these cases. That
way, its always good for something!
But I think the risk is often worth the reward, especially if your deck
has problems dealing with spell damage decks.

Well, thanks for reading!

Until next week,
Alex


P.S.
If anyone would like to see a certain card featured on card of the week,
just send me an email and I'll think about it.  rockwell@u.washington.edu