Vile breath infects the living with Shadow.

The Ringwraith culture offers some of the most versatile minions in the game. For a reasonable twilight cost you get minions with 9-12 strength, the Fierce keyword, and site numbers of 2 or 3. The end result is that by playing Nazgul you can hit hard and fast. Nevertheless, at early sites the twilight pool is often small and only enough to play one Nazgul. Clearly, a minion side with all Nazgul and unique weapons will be somewhat risky. As a result, Nazgul players must attempt to minimize their chances of drawing an unplayable hand early in the game and this can be accomplished by incorporating a variety of low twilight-cost support cards. Black Breath is one such card that has seen substantial use in many top-ranking tournament decks.

The power of Black Breath is twofold. First is in its ease of play - particularly important to the usually slow-cylcing Nazgul decks. It costs only 1 twilight, which makes it easily playable in the early turns of a game, even in conjunction with the playing of a Nazgul; very often 1 or 2 twilight will be left over from playing a Nazgul at sites 1-3. Unlike events, Black Breath is a condition, so you can play it as soon as you draw it, and it doesn't require spotting a minion, or anything else, to play, facilitating cycling of your hand.

The condition's only requirement for transfer to an opponent is that one of your Nazgul skirmishes a companion - it doesn't even have to win. Although your Nazgul will most certainly be winning skirmishes in your game, they might have some difficulty early on when twilight is scarce. Therefore, this is the perfect time to transfer Black Breath to a companion (or ally!) - when the fellowship is at its weakest.

The second is its ability to aid both a killing strategy, where the intent is to beat the opponent by killing off their companions one by one, and a slowing strategy, where the intent is to slow your opponent down, letting you get to site 9 first. Killing is aided by reducing the effectiveness of your opponent's main skirmishing characters - being able to get a Black Breath on a companion early in the game, particular before the site 3 sanctuary, ensures that your opponent must be extra careful with that companion for the rest of the game, often crippling it, and your opponent's fellowship strategy along with it (imagine a Trust Me deck without the ability to remove wounds from Gandalf!).

The inability to remove wounds can slow your opponent dramatically as well, by removing their flexibility. Attaching this card can be particularly troublesome for the fellowship early in the game. They will be less confident about double moving to site 3 with a small, wounded fellowship; they risk losing companions in the mid-game if they can't cycle their fellowship cards well. In the long term, Black Breath is equally troublesome because it reduces the vitality available to absorb wounds from the skirmish-winning Nazgul. Multiple copies in play can even put enough pressure on your opponent that they will have trouble double-moving late in the game, when Nazgul are often less effective.