What are your hope and/or predictions for the player cards in the upcoming cycle?
We know that we will be getting a handful of cards that support the new Noldor mechanic of discarding cards. We also know about Valour, Spirit Merry and more support for the Dunedain trait (or at least more Dunedain characters in general) and some more player side quests.
What specifically are you hoping we get from these new cards?
With the Noldor mechanic I am hoping for a card (or two) that have useful effects from discarding a card that can be used just a few times over the course of a game and still be useful/powerful. Elven Spear looks great but needs multiple cards consistently discarded from your hand so fits perfectly with a deck fully embracing the new Noldor Mechanic, such as one running the new Erestor hero but weak. What I want are a few cards that can be run in decks that want to utilize the mechanic of discarding cards to clear your hand of extra copies of uniques or dead cards (not very useful for the current quest or even just your current situation or do not have all necessary requirements to play such as feigned voices without a silvan ally in play) but do not want to fully embrace this mechanic.
Cards of this nature would need to be well balanced or they could be too powerful but if done right I think could be pretty neat. Discarding a card as an additional cost to a fairly powerful card that doesn't cost much resources could be a good way to do this.
The new mechanic as a whole looks pretty fantastic though and it would also be cool to see discard effects that utilize player card costs in the effect.
For example a spirit noldor hero that has something like "Action: Discard a card from your hand to give this hero +X willpower until the end of the phase where X is the discarded cards cost (limit once per turn)". This might be a little too good but is just an example.
Valour seems really cool and its great to see some love for decks that have higher starting threat or utilize threat to gain power (Doomed, Boromir, Palantir etc). I think that we will get some really neat cards with this mechanic and I am absolutely itching to see what the tactics event "Hold your Ground!" does! I have mentioned before how much I love that they are not only doing the valour mechanic but also doing similar cards that have "when your threat is X or higher" like Veteran of Osgiliath to go with Valour. Not really hoping for anything in particular with the valour keyword but I think we will see some great things. Any ideas or predictions?
Spirit Merry is awesome for the opposite side of affairs and might be the key new piece to many secrecy decks and builds. Such a fantastic hero and I hope we see a few more like him.
I do hope we get a few more Dunedain cards that focus on engaging enemies and tie the trait together a little more as it is not really too fantastic for Solo play as some have noticed and is not as fleshed out as it needs to be to be as powerful as other existing strategies and traits. This is to be expected as it has only recently been introduced and has very few cards and even fewer that actually focus on engagement so I am sort of stating the obvious. Nonetheless is will be very cool to see what other Dunedain cards we get and how they combo with the existing ones.
Finally and potentially one of the more exciting type of new cards we will be getting is more player side quests. The lore one is pretty fantastic and allows you to remove an upcoming nasty encounter card, re order the remaining ones that you looked at (which I think will actually be very powerful in practise) and combos with other cards like Keen as Lances or The Door is Closed. The tactics side quest I think is less fantastic. Yes it can discard multiple enemies in play, yes it can discard very nasty foes instantly and yes it even has the battle keyword so is easy to clear for combat heavy decks. I think however it will take some very good timing to be useful. For example if you already have the nasty foes you want to discard in play you need to play Delay the Enemy and clear it that turn or the next to get rid of those foes before they make more nasty attacks you are trying to avoid to begin with. If you are not able to clear it fast enough the enemies may have already done their damage or you may have mustered the attack strength to kill them anyway making the side quest useless or far less useful discarding weaker foes that came out after you played it. Then again even just taking out a few smaller foes can be useful and can give you breathing room to defeat nastier ones and avoid getting overwhelmed. If you already have the firepower to defeat enemies fairly quickly however this might not be worth the delaying of progress on the encounter quest card.
I do think it will be a very useful card but not quite as powerful as the lore or neutral one.
The only way to find out however is waiting for it to come out and trying it out.
The neutral side quest we already have has already proved its power to me in the games it has appeared since including it in my decks and is absolutely amazing and allows ANY and ALL decks to run that little bit more smoothly. Being able to get whatever card you need for the current situation (healing, direct damage, cancellation, location management, a feint) or whatever card you need to complete a specific combo is just fantastic. I seriously cannot love this card more. The only downside is lack of progress on the encounter quest stage for a turn or two but for so many encounters this is inconsequential, meaningless or even downright beneficial (Helms Deep!). Only quests with time effects or side quest hate make Gather Information less useful but even then it can still be fantastic and may get you the cards you need to push through and stop future nasty time effects going off.
I really hope that the leadership and spirit side quests are really creative and powerful especially as cards you can only have 1 copy of in your deck.
What are your thoughts, predictions or desires? 
