A Secret Mission

Any ideas of situations where this card would be useful? At first glance it seems like another His Viper Eyes.

My shadows Kingsguard deck is not thrilled when Jaime with three power, Black cells and Queen of thorns are all sent back into shadows...internally though it combos really well with shadows Arianne, I can't really find very much martell stuff that doesn't have its own mean of returning to shadows though. Potentially in a shadows heavy bloodthirst deck? Help give you the least characters if you have a lot of shadows on the board.

Sending back just 1 character to shadows is a big effect if its the right character, lets say its their only standing character who can defend your intrigue challenge, and its also Jaime and he has power on him...

And I think Martell are starting to get bonus effects from their Sand Snakes dying - eg new Nymeria lets you kill one of their characters as a result.

Then there's the characters with comes out of Shadows effects, Araianne, Kingsguard, Summer Sea Merc (draw a card). OOH if you go City of Shadows (which I realise isn't top tier) there's Meera Reed, though you'd lose your restricted, Gold Cloaks, Sister of Truth, Queen of Thorns, Alchemists Guild Hall, ... so many options.

Definitely has to go into a deck built around it, but I think there is potential.

I had thought of shadows Arianne as well, but that's a unique character and your restricted card. Some other good Martell shadows cards are Dayne Spearman and Venomous Blade, which both already come with reliable mechanisms to send themselves back to shadows. Filling the deck with out of house shadows cards could quickly make the entire combo difficult to pull off since this event requires a sand snake in play to begin with. And lastly, there are shadows cards your opponent may be using which may not be in your interest to send back to shadows.

 

I'm not arguing that this card is entirely useless, but it appears very situational. Unless there are some forthcoming shadows cards which would work well in a sand snake deck, I can't think of a good reason to include this event over things like RV, HCiT, or even sand snake events like A Nest of Vipers, A Hidden Game, or An Opening Gambit. I'd be glad to be proved otherwise, though.

Oh, I agree its going to be tough to get the best out of, but I think it could be interesting to try.

And its definitely not at the level of His Viper Eyes surely! That one is almost as bad as Without his Beard.

Maybe a dumb question, but it doesn't say can't be saved, so if you used something like a body guard or a dupe, could you get this effect without killing a character?

The character death is a cost. You can't save from costs.