I was just asking for more weapons (among other things) in my own thread (on saga expectations) and here we have one. Both the Spear and Erestor are great. Plus the new Silvan ally that would fit very well in both The Galadhrim deck (Celeborn, Galadriel, Haldir) and whichever deck that has the two above-mentioned cards. Love the Elves, very excited about the pack (and the whole cycle).

An interesting Leadership card, Reinforcements. Whilst we can only guess what it does, there comes a new mono-sphere card of the like of Thicket of Spears from Tactics and Shadow Gave Way from Spirit. It is funny to see it took some four years for the designers to decide that each sphere needs a card like that. At least this is what I am guessing and the Lore equivalent is on its way: either this cycle or next.

As for the guesses, I hope it brings allies from your deck.

Erestor is crazy. I'm curious to see how he plays. I'm a little worried that he'll be like Gandalf in that it totally changes how the game is played.

The spear is nice and a 1 cost Silvan ally (that doesn't get easily discarded) has a lot of value.

Pffffffff, i'm getting crazy! Muuuuaaahahahaha

Elven Spear: The other side of Protector of Lorien, curious.

The craziness: Erestor open the door to a 100 cards decks. If you got 1 copy of each card of the game, generally with 0 or 1 cost. Yeah, good, very good! Sure you will play tones of card of your mega-deck, and fast, very fast!. And 1 spirit resource pool for when you get dwarven tomb or stand fight, to get the card you want in your discard (amazing), and of course Test of Will (no problem with his last faq if your deck has 100 cards or more ^^).

PD: as always, congrats for the awesome artwork

^That is true. Up to now, I never considered having more that 50 cards in a deck. Erestor does really open that option. Of course I am saying this without experience and 50 still maybe the best way to go if you find the right deck but it is definitely a great step from the designers to even trigger this thought.

Also, Erestor is very good in monosphere lore with Scroll of Isildur. You can collect a lot of events in discard pile ready for play by the attached Scroll. (And Hammerstroke to get the lost Scrolls)

To manipulation discard pile was property of spirit sphere (Emery, Zigil, Stand Fight, Dwarven Tomb, Will of the West), but anyway, welcome lore Erestor! -Maybe Erestor is more powerful with bisphere lore-spirit than monolore-

^You mean Hammersmith.

And yes, this is true. Though they will probably have cards in other spheres (like the Weaver, Spirit, or Spear, Tactics) that go well with the whole strategy.

This is pretty much exactly what I've been wanting for my support Noldor. Erestor and the spear look fantastic and I can't wait for the scenario! Obvious combo with Protector of Lorien.

So best heroes to play with Erestor for maximum jank:

Erestor + Gandalf + Grima = Playing any sphere you want, and doing so cheaply while always having access to the top card of your deck

Erestor + Gandalf + Galadriel = Playing any sphere you want, having easier access to spirit and lore, AND you get to draw extra cards, and reduce threat, and with cheap allies you can have them all quest the turn they come out, and you can control what Gandalf can play by controlling the top card of your deck.

Erestor + Spirit-Theoden = Cheap flood-the-field Rohan deck. Add Galadriel for card draw and threat reduction. Add Eowyn for maximum questing craziness.

Erestor + Celeborn + Galadriel = Not as much jank as with Gandalf but now flooding with Silvan allies who don't exhaust when they come into play. No access to tactics, though.

Erestor + Celeborn + Gandalf = Silvan deck with access to all spheres, and top card of the deck, no inherent card draw or threat reduction, but you get access to tactics, including the Noldor and Silvan allies

Erestor + Bombur + Oin/Thorin/Ori = Same as starting with 3 Dwarves, you'll rapidly get access to dwarf characters, which gives you one of the following: access to Tactics (Oin) ; More resources (Thorin) ; Even more card draw (Ori)

I feel like playing spirit is almost essential as they have the best recursion in the game.

This is indeed a mixed bag for me. And here's why (rant): First, story-wise this is getting strange. I was reading and looking at the map at the same time in the beggining and it seems like we're returning to the Weather Hills/Rivendell region again, It kinda looks like they wrote themselves into a corner, and we got stuck in basically where we've been in Black Riders and Lost Realm, except for the Mount Gram quest which I really look forward to. I was originally hoping we would go to Lake Evendim, Annúminas, Carn Dum, places like that. And what we got so far is the wilderness of Eriador, again, Mount Gram which is really the most redeeming one, Ettenmoors which while not explored before to depth (still did to some extent in Black Riders) is still kind of the same wilderness, and now we're going again to a place very similar to one in LR with the same boss. However I am really looking forward to seeing where they're actually gong with these.

As for the quest, I never liked Time at all, but I do appreciate that they're not just ditching the mechanics they've come up with, so that gives me hope for side quests. The good thing is that I suppose the encounter cards won't interact with Time at all and i'ts just gonna be a counter. That's what I hope. Otherwise, the quest looks amazing. It feels like Nin-in-eilph done right to me, plus cool flip over objectives, and undead are never unwelcomed. Really cool.

As for the cards, that leadership event will haunt me until the pack comes out. Really the card I'm most looking forward in the cycle, apart from the Veteran of Osgiliath. Anything that works great with mono-leadership is great, especially Gondor. And it looks like that event with fetch allies or something like that, which may be really amazing if it is like the other 3 cost events of that "cycle". The Silvan Weaver is interesting. I abosolutely loved the Silvans and this looks like a very nice addition to take back events and discarded attachments (I assume you take the top card of the discard pile into your hand).

The Noldor archetype... Personally it dissapoints me that the hero wasn't Arwen... I was really hoping for Spirit Arwen. I knew at least that the victory display mechanic wasn't going to be the Noldor mechanic. Their actual mechanic of discarding cards indeed strange though, I think you will need to run Erestor with a Spirit hero just for Will of the West, which is kinda restrictive, but with that said, Erestor looks like a pretty good hero, though probably NOT with Elrond if you're running Vilya. The spear is also really good, but the art feels a bit to movie-like. In any case I can imagine using Erestor, Legolas and Glorfindel, and mostly 0,1 and at most 2 cost cards (and only a few select ones, Asfaloth comes to mind), that should work nicely. OR, as Mndela said already, a Highlander kinds variant could be an option.

Erestor just totally blown my mind.

Interesting new hero, hard to tell how much of a change he makes, but certainly a fresh idea. Certainly makes cheaper cards the key, and he still only gives you 4 per turn in total without other card draw.

I'm so behind on the game that I only just discovered how much fun Halbarad is, so the idea of more heroes to try out is sickening in a way! Not even tried the last Lost Realm quest or any the Treason of Saruman!

I wouldn't say Erestor goes well with Galadriel, or the entire Silvan synergy. Not even event responses like A Test of Will. That is all good, I think. Very innovative. I will probably not add more card draw into the deck, and yes, you probably only want 0-2 cost cards. The hardest may be to properly manage the very first round as you will be getting 10 cards, and only have three resources to play them. Might be surely worth it to mulligan for the 0-costs like Elven Spear or Protector of Lórien. As for the article-mentioned two Noldor allies from the Dwarrodelf cycle, I am still not sure. Erestor certainly gives them more value but they are not very strong anyway.

I think the one that doesn't exhaust to attack is very good. But I don't see you you will even be able to play them if you're discarding your hand every round.

I doubt the Silvan ally returns the top card to your hand. My guess is that it shuffles the top card into your deck. Otherwise her plus Tree People would be broken and you could loop it every turn.

I also think we still might get an Arwen hero this cycle. I'm holding out hope. Ideally she'll be 8 threat or less and can work in a secrecy deck to unlock Elrond's council. I'm surprised Erestor has such high threat. Seems like he should only have 1 attack and 1 defense.

Yeah, the limits to Erestor are much more tricky to work with (which is good!) since Test of Will can come and go without anything useful coming up to block etc. I know you can pull it back out with other cards, but it's still a big change.

I think the one that doesn't exhaust to attack is very good. But I don't see you you will even be able to play them if you're discarding your hand every round.

Well, they only cost two. Grima + a Tactics hero OR Grima + Elrond and you can play one every turn.

I think the one that doesn't exhaust to attack is very good. But I don't see you you will even be able to play them if you're discarding your hand every round.

Yes, pretty much. Unless you have two Tactics heroes, which would seem strange with Erestor, or some quick resource acceleration, which I can't think of, the only way to get Trollshaw Scout (that is the attacker) is to save a resource on a round previous to which you draw him. And I agree, the attacker seems much better than the Watcher of Bruinen (including the art design).

You are right Teamjimby just looked at COTR's fb page, it is broken with Tree People.

The problem with Grima + tactics hero or Elrond is that you need Spirit for recursion, unless you only play 0-1 cost cards, in which case Grima won't be much use.

I doubt the Silvan ally returns the top card to your hand. My guess is that it shuffles the top card into your deck. Otherwise her plus Tree People would be broken and you could loop it every turn.

I also think we still might get an Arwen hero this cycle. I'm holding out hope. Ideally she'll be 8 threat or less and can work in a secrecy deck to unlock Elrond's council. I'm surprised Erestor has such high threat. Seems like he should only have 1 attack and 1 defense.

I think you are right, Galadhrim Weaver probably shuffles the card back to your deck, otherwise it would indeed prove too strong with the Silvan returning ally events. The space there would suggest the first word on the second line is "shuffle" more likely than "add".

Personally the only way I could really like Erestor, or rather see him as part of a new powerful archetype, is taht this was just one half of the cake, and we got another spirit hero that worked with him that let you take a card from you discard pile into your hand. Maybe Círdan or Arwen? We're certainly not getting both with Erestor now confirmed but either of those could be it. It would certaily be powerful, especially with Silvans as said above, BUT those are important and powerful characters, and I don't think the Silvan deck would change Galadriel.

I doubt the Silvan ally returns the top card to your hand. My guess is that it shuffles the top card into your deck. Otherwise her plus Tree People would be broken and you could loop it every turn.

I also think we still might get an Arwen hero this cycle. I'm holding out hope. Ideally she'll be 8 threat or less and can work in a secrecy deck to unlock Elrond's council. I'm surprised Erestor has such high threat. Seems like he should only have 1 attack and 1 defense.

I think you are right, Galadhrim Weaver probably shuffles the card back to your deck, otherwise it would indeed prove too strong with the Silvan returning ally events. The space there would suggest the first word on the second line is "shuffle" more likely than "add".

Yeah, I don't think they would have used the word "into" if they were telling you to add a card to your hand, the phrase tends to be "shuffle x into y" or "add x to y".

I do like the fact that Erestor encourages a play style that uses Protector of Lorien and the new Spear to boost one heroes powers every turn. Would he work on his own, secrecy style? Put in buckets of songs/secrecy cards, the Leaf Broach, Protector of Lorien to discard cards if they're not going to get played, and try to burn through quickly. Erestor and Glorfindel?

Erestor in an outlands deck = gg. Who cares if they get discarded when you have men of the west? Card draw has always been their biggest weakness and their low cost works well. Erestor, Hirluin, and Sam would probably be best since that opens up Steward on turn 1 and you can play Bill for free to use with a Very Good Tale. Also maybe Aragorn for Sword that was Broken.