Wondering if Burglar's Turn could be used to cheat Banner of Elendil into play in a non-saga quest?

Relevant cards:

The "Saga Expansion Player Cards" section from Black Riders/Flame of the West: " While most of the included player cards are fully compatible with all published The Lord of the Rings:
The Card Game scenarios, a select few are only intended for use when playing the scenarios presented in The Lord of the Rings Saga Expansions. These are the ☺ Fellowship sphere cards: Aragorn and Banner of Elendil, as well as the boon cards: Esquire of Rohan and Esquire of Gondor."

My thought process also lead to the idea of sneaking Boons in regular games, but this nugget of text from the Black Riders rulesheet (pg 4) seems like a no: " Boons are neutral player cards that must be earned by playing through a scenario in campaign mode in order to be used. Players are not allowed to include these cards in a game until after they are earned, unless a scenario directs them to do otherwise."

The rules for boons state they are cannot be included in a game unless they are earned, which implies that they can't be sucked into a game by a contract's setup effect. However that text is omitted from discussion on the Fellowship sphere cards. I know that you can always just play with the cards however you want but it would be fun if this actually worked with the rules as written!

Is the Banner technically a boon? I didn't think it was. I just thought it was a fellowship sphere card.

Technically, this is a card from your "collection"...

Caleb gave a ruling that @UnwoundAttic38 shared on the CotR Discord:

“Your collection” means cards that you could normally include in your deck. Boons, treasures, and encounter cards are not considered part of your collection because they all have specific rules about when and how they can be used.

Though Fellowship cards are not specifically mentioned in this ruling, it is not really intended for players to be able to use them in non-Saga quests. So, this would appear to prohibit them outside the Saga, even via contracts.

Alternately, the fact that fellowship cards were not specifically mentioned in the ruling shows that they are still fair game. I say "they", but it's really only the Banner of Elendil. It's limited to decks with Aragorn, and it's very thematic to include in the stash with The Sword That Was Broken, Ring of Barahir, and Celebrian's Stone.

When using the contract in LOTR saga quests, I assume Banner of Elendil would certainly qualify, but the non-permanent boons would be excluded from your deck and also from the stash due to the ruling?

Note that if it's legal to include Banner in your deck even though it's "intended" to be used only with saga quests, you could also cheat it into play with Reforged or A Good Harvest.

@sappidus thanks for sharing that ruling! It is a shame though because some of the biggest/most flavorful "scores" exist in the boon cards. Like what kind of amazing burglar would dare to steal Anduril? Or sneak up on Galadriel and pluck a few strands of her hair? Or her phial for that matter? My first thought had been the Treasures as well but then I realized they don't even have the Attachment card type so they were right out 😔

@dalestephenson I think I'll try it with Burglar's Turn next time a friend and I play through a saga quest just to get a feel for it! Ally Galadriel is another way to cheat a Banner into play; between that and reforged and harvest you could have a pretty consistent orange splash in a standard deck. I've just always been fascinated with getting the exotic/exclusive cards into more games haha

Not the exact topic of this post, but i was thinking that with a consistent way to fetch ring of barahir (in another deck) and several artifact put in play by this contract, you can pump hp of an hero to the point of taking undefeated attack almost every turn as long as you bring healing. This can change the way to model your defense in mid-late game.