Erestor is cool! New deck building options is upon us!

I have not, and probably will not make up my mind about Erestor until I've used him a couple of times.

He's just one of those heroes with that kind of ability that you will eighter love or hate.

As his ability is not a response, you are forced to trigger the effect every turn yes?

The 1st combo partner that popped into my head and I did not see mentioned yet is Beregond.

He has a 2 cost reduction or weapons & armor. You can load him full of cheap stuff for free every turn if you put enough of it in your deck.

And he will work well of course with SoG. But that's just too easy.

I swore out loud when I saw Erestor just now.

w00t

Don't want to appear to be sore or something, but I'm kinda sad that Erestor has no "profession" trait, like Noble, Warrior, Scout, etc. Who was he in the books? Why they leave him without a prof trait?

The crazy thing actually is that with Erestor you will start the first round with 10 cards in your hand. That's 20% of a standard sized deck!

Yes, but usually you have only 3 resources in total in the first round and then the cards are all discarded

I would call them most useless 10 cards you'll ever have at once... unless there is some discard pile meta incoming.

I would call them most useless 10 cards you'll ever have at once... unless there is some discard pile meta incoming.

Yes there is:

""To represent the inner strength and resolve of a fading people, these new Noldorcards grow in power as cards are discarded from your hand. Some of them have powerful effects that require you to discard cards from your hand as a cost. Others can only be played while they are in your discard pile, requiring you to first discard them, and giving you an avenue with which to trigger other discard effects. Many of these effects breathe new life into older cards such as the Trollshaw Scout (Foundations of Stone, 104) and Watcher of the Bruinen (The Watcher in the Water, 56)."

Don't want to appear to be sore or something, but I'm kinda sad that Erestor has no "profession" trait, like Noble, Warrior, Scout, etc. Who was he in the books? Why they leave him without a prof trait?

I would've liked to see another trait as well, but we don't know very much about him from the books. It could be "Counsellor", but that would just be for flavour as I doubt they'd expand on a trait like that (would be cool if they did, though).

Well, starting with 10 cards can be super useful if you are running a combo heavy deck with lots of cheap attachments (LoV, Gondorian Fire, Nenya, Blood of Numenor, etc.). 3 resources would actually be enough to get all of them into play immediately. Add Legacy of Numenor and you could also get Steward of Gondor into play round 1 with a relatively good probability (assuming 3 copies each, of course, since you will discard unnecessary copies anyway...)

Edit: The chances to start with a specific (3x) card in the starting hand are 57% and 66% with 7 and 10 cards, respectively (including 6 cards before mulligan, if necessary). The chances to start with a 2-card combo are 20% and 30%, respectively. Well, okay, the probabilities are not as high as I initially thought they would be...

Edit2: Now that I did the maths, I guess that his draw/discard ability really is not all that great. Even if there were several new discard related action cards, you would need to draw them first and this can be pretty random (<50% chance per round). In light of this, I agree with Gizlivadi in that we can probably expect another hero that provides more regular interaction with the discard pile. With cards like Stand and Fight and Dwarfen Tomb, Spirit seems to be the right sphere for that.

Does anyone else think there should be a card that allows you to play Noldor allies cheaper? (Like O Lorien, Heir of Valandil etc.) We have 12 Noldor allies out so far, ranging from 2-5 in cost with an average cost of 2.75. In multi-sphere decks it may be difficult to gather enough resources to play cards every round. On the other hand, it might be a good strategy to discard cards for effects and save up resources certain rounds, and then put cards into play when you get the ones you want.

In comparison, there are 16 Silvan allies so far, so I'm holding out for more unspoiled Noldor characters. Again, I like the mechanic, and I'm sure we'll see it developed more.

Edit2: Now that I did the maths, I guess that his draw/discard ability really is not all that great. Even if there were several new discard related action cards, you would need to draw them first and this can be pretty random (<50% chance per round). In light of this, I agree with Gizlivadi in that we can probably expect another hero that provides more regular interaction with the discard pile. With cards like Stand and Fight and Dwarfen Tomb, Spirit seems to be the right sphere for that.

It was said that there will be actions (and prolly responses) that trigger from the discard pile. Like Yithians from the Call of Cthulhu LCG.

So with Erestor you play what you can, paying with your hard earned resources and discard the rest at the end of the round.

Hmm I think I might want to have Eowyn around, and trying to attach Protector of Lorien, Herugrim and Unexpected Courage to her. She may then either quest for up to 8 or attack for up to 9 or do both with slightly less bonuses.

And I really like the Idea of being able to actually play some of those discarded cards from the discard pile later on...

Erestor with three copies of will of the West will be the basis for a very powerful deck. I'm super excited for this new hero.

Those Yithian cards were errata'd into the void. We've got some pretty clever deck builders in this universe too and the designers are going to have to be very careful.

Not sure what I think about Erestor yet really. I expected Noldor to have a player deck interaction since that's what we've seen so far. Remember Light of Valinor though: Erestor might get a "made for him" attachment with an effect that counteracts his drawback:

Fancy Title

Attachment 1

Play only on a Noldor hero

Exhaust Fancy Title to cancel any effect requiring one or more cards to be discarded from his hand.

Of course, that makes Bilbo's threat even more of a joke.

Does anyone else think there should be a card that allows you to play Noldor allies cheaper? (Like O Lorien, Heir of Valandil etc.)

I would hope so. It would be hard to play everything considering your hand is gone at the end of the round. Maybe there would be an attachment that allows you to reduce the cost to play the next Noldor ally by one for each card you discard from your hand? Or discard pile manipulation might be a thing.

Well, we're going to get up to some discard pile shenanigans with Erestor, that's for sure. I'll bet we get a card that makes it cheaper to play cards from the discard pile, or at least certain types of cards.

The worst thing would be if that card were a hero, because it more or less would lock in two of your hero choices if you ever wanted to use Erestor.

Yeah I really like this new mechanic for Noldor but agree it needs some way to play certain cards from the discard pile to be truly viable.

I've been thinking about Erestor and Will of the West. The problem is that you could draw all your copies of Will of the West in the beginning when they aren't very useful. Of course you could include Dwarven Tombs, but now you have 6 cards in your deck for the sole purpose of recursion.

But consider a situation where you don't have any extra card draw and the encounter deck doesn't screw with your deck. You get 10 cards on the first round and 4 cards each round after that. So you don't run out of cards until the start of the 12th turn. This would be an issue playing solo and maybe 2 player, but how many 3 or 4 player games last more than 11 rounds? Not to mentions cards like Galadhrim Weaver that could shuffle cards back in and buy you more time. I'm beginning to think the Will of the Wests just aren't worth it. Maybe it would be worthwhile if you have 2 spirit heroes and you can play Map of Earnil to pull it back whenever you need it. What do you guys think?

Teamjimby, this is basically what I meant in my post on probabilities. The chances of getting the 1 or 2 events that you would want in a specific round are so low that a strategy built around them will never work out consistently. Without good cards that can directly be played from the discard pile--or a hero that gives you consist access to it--the only reliable strategy with Erestor seems to be using plenty of cheap and redundant cards, so that you will always have at least something useful and also be able to pay for it.

Edit: I am not saying that this is necessarily bad but there might be wrong expectations as to how Erestor will play out in event-centric decks. In contrast, I still think that Erestor could be pretty good in decks that are build around cheap attachment combos--mainly because you usually want them as soon as possible but you do not need them in a specific round.

Does anyone else think there should be a card that allows you to play Noldor allies cheaper? (Like O Lorien, Heir of Valandil etc.)

I would hope so. It would be hard to play everything considering your hand is gone at the end of the round. Maybe there would be an attachment that allows you to reduce the cost to play the next Noldor ally by one for each card you discard from your hand? Or discard pile manipulation might be a thing.

Yes, I thought so too. A 1-cost attachment that let's you discard X cards to lower the cost of the next Noldor ally you play from your hand this round by X (possibly to a minimum of 1, as with O Lorien). Or the same thing, but with allies already gone to the discard pile. That might be even better with this mechanic, actually!

Also, I'm pretty certain but to make sure: you have to specifically discard one card to trigger an action, right? So I couldn't put Protector of Lorien on e.g. Erestor and then discard one single card to buff both him and my friend's Eowyn? I'm guessing it's one card for each effect. So considering you only really hold on to 4 cards every round (unless you have Bilbo or Daeron's Runes), it won't be insane. For instance, with 4 cards, you could buff Glorfindel to 4 WP, Elladan to 5 ATK and then have Trollshaw Scout attack once. But, as we've already said, let's hope we get more synergy with the discard pile etc.

Teamjimby, this is basically what I meant in my post on probabilities. The chances of getting the 1 or 2 card types that you would want in a specific round are so low that a strategy built around them will never work out consistently. Without good cards that can directly be played from the discard pile--or a hero that gives you consist access to it--the only reliable strategy with Erestor seems to be using plenty of cheap and redundant cards, so that you will always have at least something useful and also be able to pay for it.

Erestor is a very similar Hero to a Netrunner ID MaxX who is right now considered one of the best ID's in the game. Her ability as is Erestors is a self milling ability and requires her to play lots of recursion (9-12 cards). I would probably add card draw to the deck and would want my Will of the West to recycle key events like A test of Will, Hasty stroke, Feint etc

JTG, if you had 12 recursion cards in your deck, this would of course be a completely different story (actually, the chances of drawing one of them each round would be >67% with a 50-card deck). Most of them are not for free though, so the next question would be whether all these cards would be worth their cost in resources and deck space.