I can see why everyone hates on this card, BUT I can see 1 scenario in which it might be OK. If there is a ton of locations in the staging area and you want to ignore them, then play several of these on a location(or some other threat reducing card) and a Thrór's Keyand TAADAH! That location has no effect on anything. That is the ONLY possible scenario in which this card would be decent.

Power in the earth is terrible. I know, one for one isn't bad, but odds are, that location isn't going to have one threat; which means you're going to want to travel to it to get it's remaining threat out of the staging area. Even if there was a location with 1 threat, there are just so many better options. At least you've now got a proxy for some card that's actually good.

I can see few special cases where this can be used. For example if you have this 1 locations in staging area which needs 3 progress tokens to be explored. Then yes, you can use power on them and ignore them forever. So from time to time, when I run location scenario and putting deck together I will add pair of those....and then, when I realize I have to much cards in the deck...this goes first off, simply because it's not so important and it can be handled other way. Artwork is fine. Verdict: 2/5.

This is one of the worst cards of the entire cardpool, of course, but I think I finally found a case where it might actually be playable. For a long time, I thought you might want to play this against locations that sit in your staging area all game long, sadly those are mostly immune to player card effects. However, you could use this against locations you don't want to reveal ever again (be it for surge, doomed or when revealed effects).

As for doomed, Hall of Beorn gives 5 locations with doomed 1, of which 4 are locations you might still want to travel to for various reasons, and the fifth one is the Endless Caverns from Escape from Dol Guldur, which is a scenario you'd probably rather use more powerful cards against.

Similarly with surge, there are 14 surging locations, however, all of those will force you to eventually clear them through selfexploration, permanent effects or outright forcing you to travel there.

This leaves us with the when revealed effects, where we finally find some suitable targets, like the Impassable Bog (1st cycle), Fouled Well, Plundered Armory, Warg Lair, Stagnant Creek (2nd cycle), Slopes of Gundabad (8th cycle). A cool combo could be cooperating with the West Road Traveller on neutralizing the Dreadful Gap from Dwarrowdelf or the Stock-Brook from the Fellowship of the Ring.

Of course, in order to make all this worth the effort, you want to effectively lower your probability of revealing the said location again... which grows with a thin encounter deck (not the case with most of the quests quoted above) or with additional players.

So in summary, if you want to gain some "I actually put Power in the earth to a sensible use" bragging rights, throw it into your deck together with West Road Traveller the next time you play a 4 player game of Into the Pit/Flight from Moria/Redhorn Gate/Road to Rivendell/The Dead Marshes, and there is a slim chance it might actually happen :)