I just realized that it made a lot of sense for them to make Elrond and Galadriel allies that leave play at the end of the round: if they didn't, they'd stick around long enough to receive and make good use of the attachments meant for their hero counterparts, since the attachments only specify the character's name and not that it should go on a hero. Specifically, I think Vilya and Mirror of Galadriel would be really strong for ally attachments.

The fact that OHUH Gandalf is relatively "under-played" and that he has a significant disadvantage for remaining in play meant that they felt leaving Gandalf's toys available for the allies was OK.

Another example that I believe someone else brought up before was that Leadership Hero Faramir has an a ability that would make ally Faramir extremely powerful, so they made sure it was on a card with the same name so that it could not legally target ally Faramir.

Any other examples of good work by the designers done in these somewhat stealthy ways?

This doesn't have anything to do with card abilities, but the designers do their research and use actual Sindarin names when making up characters.

For example, "Rossiel" means "red-haired girl", Naurlhug means "fire serpent" (not very creative, I know), and Thaurdir means "dreadful/horrible man" (now I wonder why Amarthiul is surprised when Thaurdir turns out to be an evil wrath)

Oh, interesting.

I am going to disagree on this one with you here. While the combos you present are indeed of some power, I don't see them being "overwhelmingly, gamebreakingly" powerful the other way around.

If Elrond was not a one turn ally, he would probably cost 5-6 resources, so you'd need to draw him, you'd need to spend around 2 turns worth of monolore resources on him, and then you'd need to draw a Vilya and attach it to him. Too much setup, too unreliable, and questionable result in the end.

Galadriel ally is whole another song, she's not even in the same sphere with her name attaching card. You would have to perform all the thing stated about Elrond above, and you would have to run a duosphere as well. And for what? For boon even more questionable than trying to get Vilya for ally Elrond.

And I don't see how Faramir hero would make Faramir ally extremely powerful. Faramir ally has pretty meh battle stats, I wouldn't risk defending with him (too many times in the past he got consumed by shadow effects adding that 1-2 missing attack to the attacking enemy), and his attack is "whopping" 1. Nothing that powerful about him being ready for the combat phase.

Faramir Hero would work really well with Faramir ally. Exhaust the ally to give all of your characters +1 Willpower during the quest phase. Then use an effect like Westfold Outrider, Son of Arnor or Quick Strike + Tactics Aragorn to engage an enemy. Ready ally Faramir and use him again for an insane quest boost. Some might say, "this takes too many moving parts, and isn't worth the effort to setup", to which I would respond: https://hallofbeorn.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/deck-rally-the-troops

Obviously, the deck does not use ally Faramir, but it is pretty clear to to see how well he would fit if the hero had a different title.

Some might say, "this takes too many moving parts, and isn't worth the effort to setup", to which I would respond: https://hallofbeorn.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/deck-rally-the-troops

And I would be among them. Its definitely a cool thing to perform in the game, but it is not worth building a deck around, and it's definitely not worth preventing someone from doing this in the tedious manner like creating a hero that has the same name as an ally.

I think that having to choose between a good Hero and a good Ally who has the same name (Legolas is another example) is really good. It makes deck building even more diverse and interesting.

I am going to disagree on this one with you here. While the combos you present are indeed of some power, I don't see them being "overwhelmingly, gamebreakingly" powerful the other way around.

If Elrond was not a one turn ally, he would probably cost 5-6 resources, so you'd need to draw him, you'd need to spend around 2 turns worth of monolore resources on him, and then you'd need to draw a Vilya and attach it to him. Too much setup, too unreliable, and questionable result in the end.

Galadriel ally is whole another song, she's not even in the same sphere with her name attaching card. You would have to perform all the thing stated about Elrond above, and you would have to run a duosphere as well. And for what? For boon even more questionable than trying to get Vilya for ally Elrond.

And I don't see how Faramir hero would make Faramir ally extremely powerful. Faramir ally has pretty meh battle stats, I wouldn't risk defending with him (too many times in the past he got consumed by shadow effects adding that 1-2 missing attack to the attacking enemy), and his attack is "whopping" 1. Nothing that powerful about him being ready for the combat phase.

They likely would not have made the allies quite so strong, and this cheaper, if they weren't one-turn allies. You're probably right that it wouldn't have been game breakingly strong if they had been allowed to use their attachment, but it's obvious they intended those attachments to only go on the heroes and they found a good way to enforce what they wanted.

BTW, I think Vilya on an ally is to strong because the exhaustion requirement isn't as big of a downside because an allies action tend to be worth less than a heroes's.

Also, the fact that they are 1-turn allies means they could more appropriately give them high stats without making them too expensive, because we all know it's already difficult enough to pay for the 3-cost allies.

Well, we have Gildor who has the same stat box as an ally Elrond, and he costs 5. However, Elrond does instant impact upon entering the game, while Gildor needs to exhaust his precious himself to do stuff (from the design perspective, same Elrond ally without "discard at the end of the round" text should cost more than Gildor).

That depends on an ally, I must say. Elrond ally has 11-threat worth of stats, outmatching numerous heroes. He is extremely good at both questing and defending, while also decent at attacking. To me, his action is extremely precious.

Well, I think it was kind of the point of their creation. They were also trying to achieve thematic goal here, to represent Elrond and Galadriel helping Frodo on his journey, but only for some time.

Faramir Hero would work really well with Faramir ally. Exhaust the ally to give all of your characters +1 Willpower during the quest phase. Then use an effect like Westfold Outrider, Son of Arnor or Quick Strike + Tactics Aragorn to engage an enemy. Ready ally Faramir and use him again for an insane quest boost. Some might say, "this takes too many moving parts, and isn't worth the effort to setup", to which I would respond: https://hallofbeorn.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/deck-rally-the-troops

Obviously, the deck does not use ally Faramir, but it is pretty clear to to see how well he would fit if the hero had a different title.

This may just be me, but discarding Son of Arnor or Westfold outrider seems too expensive to get a ready out of Faramir ally when there are cheaper ways like Ever Vigilant, Spare Hood, or Strength of Arms. With cheap ways to ready ally Faramir already in the game, I don't see how allowing one additional method would make it overpowered. I think they just had a cool idea for a hero ability and wanted it to be on someone well known, and Faramir happened to be featured in an upcoming expansion.

Hmmm, considering how few ally-readying effects there are compared to hero readying, I'd say if Elrond (hero) was a 5 cost ally, he would be less powerful.

To be honest I can't think of any examples of unique characters who would break the game if they could be combined with their counterpart. Faramir has such a setup it's amost a shame that his combo isn't possible for creative deck-builders. I would actually like to thank the designers for the opposite though: thank you for making remakes of existing characters so different from each other, that I'm not frustrated by their mutual exclusion. So far I've only had the urge to put both Merrys in one deck.

Getting back on topic, I think it's a neat touch that Leadership Faramir and Galadriel are some of the best hero's to use with core-Gandalf. Both of them deeply respected the wizard in the books. Now make me proud designers and give us a card that makes Elf-friend and Tactics Gimli have a super combo!

Back to the Sindarin names again:

Amarthiul: amarth means doom/fate, and iul means embers. Fate's embers?

Iarion: iar is blood and ion is son. Fairly straightforward, blood son. Daechanar's son? If I remember the story from Treachery of Rhudaur correctly, didn't the heroes find a scroll that had Daechanar's name on it and had the hawk seal of Iarion's family? Speculation, speculation.

Daechanar: dae means shadow, that we know. The rest is more dubious. There isn't any Sindarin root chan; the closest I could find searching the internet was chae which means ground. As for the last part, nar means the verb 'are', which doesn't make sense, although if you put a circumflex over the a you get 'rat'. So, shadow ground rat? Just kidding. It's probably not even Sindarin, but in the Black Speech or maybe the name is old enough to be Quenya. Clarification pls, Feonix?

BTW, has anyone been able to read what it says on the Orders from Angmar picture? The bottom word is 'Angmar' and it says 'Dunadan' somewhere in there, but my poor translation skills yielded a bunch of gibberish for the rest.