Harry Potter Card of the Week
with Alex Rockwell

07.17.02  Card of the Week: Forbidden Corridor

Well, I have been gone for over 3 months, and haven't even played, I was busy finishing college, having a tough last quarter.

But I'm back!

And we have a new set!

And with it a whole bunch of awesome new cards worthy or great lengthy articles.

But for me, there is one that stands out from the crowd. Maybe its not the best card from the new set, but its certainly my favorite, and it's a card that you can base a good deck around, a card that can win for you and drive your opponents crazy!

My favorite card from the new set is: Forbidden Corridor

Forbidden Corridor
Location
6 Transfiguration
Before each player's turn, that player must choose and discard of their cards from play.
If a player has no lessons in play, discard Forbidden Corridor.

Now I know that most of you probably looked at this and thought: Well, it hurts me just as much as them, that's not that great. But lets take another look.

Well, we have learned the power of massed lesson destruction (usually in the form of repeated lost notes, picking on Neville, and so on), to disrupt our opponent and give us a big edge. And Forbidden Corridor has the potential to force our opponent to sacrifice either a lesson or another card, probably a creature or something important), EVERY TURN. Now if we can manage to minimize its drawback, we can have a very powerful card.

Lets take a look at what happens when we play Forbidden Corridor. First of all, it will destroy any other location in play, meaning that we can destroy a pesky Wand Shop, Potions Dungeon, or other location that our opponent will often play BEFORE us, because Forbidden Corridor costs 6, which is more than most of the other locations. Our opponent will probably play one pretty quick if they are using one, such as wand shop (4), potions dungeon (3) or whatever. So we are more likely to play the second location. Often I will wait a little, put out a couple creatures and destroy a couple lessons with Lost Notes and PONeville, and then play the corridor, to give my opponent a chance to play some location first.

Even in the worst case, when we play Potions Dungeon, and then our opponent plays a Location the next turn, this is what happens:

We spend 1 card and one action to play the Dungeon. Our opponent must sac one card, often a lesson, if not, usually a creature, so that's decent. Then they play a location and kill it. We never have to sacrifice anything. Overall, we are just even.

Now, if it stays around, our opponent will always have to sacrifice a card first, so they'll always be hurt more. If we ever need to not sacrifice something, we can just sacrifice the Forbidden Corridor! In which case, our opponent will have discarded one more card than us total (since the corridor doesn't count then)

Now, how to best use the Corridor?

Forcing our opponent to discard lessons is very good when we have several creatures out beating on them, and especially if we can keep them low enough on lessons that they cant do much about it.

So we will want to use Corridor with small creatures and Lesson Destruction.

Anything else?

Consider the following:

You have drawn 1 Hedwig, and have had another discarded due to damage suffered. (Or drawn 2). You play Hedwig, getting back Hedwig. You sacrifice Hedwig to the Corridor next turn, play another Hedwig, get back Hedwig. You can repeat this indefinitely to sac the same cards over and over. It costs you 1 action a turn. The card your opponent is losing is costing them an Action and a draw each turn! So you gain 1 draw each turn on them! And of course, with some creatures out, its completely awesome.

Also, since we want to be able to get some stuff out fast, and start killing lessons, we want to have relatively low costs. The 6 for Corridor should be our highest. Also, most of our stuff should be 5 or less, so we can freely sac a lesson to the corridor without trouble. Also, we will be sacrificing lessons and stuff, so having many of them will be good.

In addition, we can sacrifice creatures and get them all back with a Halloween Feast.

Lets put this all together into a deck:

4 Forbidden Corridor
4 Picking on Neville
2 Lost Notes
2 Halloween Feast

and for the damage:
4 Marble Gargoyle (awesome!)
4 Quintaped (an old favorite of mine)
4 Cunning Fox
4 Doxy (helps kill a little guy they play to try and sac to the corridor)
4 Hedwig (for the combo, and cause he's good)

Lessons:

4 Borrowed Wand
11 Charms
13 Care of Magical Creatures

Minerva McGonagall (she rules)

Well, that's the deck!

If you can get out a couple quick creatures, maybe Doxy one of theirs, Kill a lesson or two and plop down the Corridor, the game should be yours.

Generally I try not to sacrifice creatures to it unless I have to. If my creatures are killing my opponent quick (like 3 of them), and they can't to much, I can just sac a lot of lessons if I need to. Just keep playing them and sacrificing them, playing whatever you can, and watching your opponent get killed by your creatures because they cant get enough lessons to stay on the board.

Now, what if they try to sac all their lessons to get rid of the corridor? Well then you will just win, since they can do nothing! They lose turns losing lessons, you play stuff, then the corridor goes away when they have nothing. Often you can Hedwig for it back, or get another, and play that when they are back up to 2 or 3 lessons!

Generally, the Corridor completely rules in the right deck, you just have to kill their lessons and swarm them with creatures :)

Well, hope you like the deck, its been pretty good for me :)

Thanks all for reading!

-Alex