Any other feedback from people who have tried the deck? It can be tricky to use.

NM Shadow and Flame is fun. Rather than defend with Bilbo and risk losing all his attachments, I sneaked in Gandalf to defend every combat phase .

Maybe a few of the cards you really want to see in that opening hand? Obviously Love of Tales, but any others that you get and know you're set?

Love of tales is number 1. If it's not there I'll mulligan regardless of the other cards. It's all about getting to two LoTs on that first turn so that the songs you play generate resources.

If I where to Errata this setup for argument's sake I would suggest:

Deep Knowledge:

Doomed 2.

Each Player Draws 2 cards.

The players as a group can only play 1 copy of Deep Knowledge each round.

Legacy of Númenor:

Doomed 4.

Add 1 resource to each heroes recource pool.

The players as a group can only play 1 copy of Legacy of Númenor each round.

Because these cards, combined with standard lore carddraw, let you draw half your deck in turn 1 regardless. Even without Love of tales, you can make silly combo decks on those premises alone.

Love of Tales:

Attach to a lore hero (Limit 1 per hero.)

Response: after a song is played, add 1 resource to attached heroes resource pool (limit 3 times per round).

It won't break your setup completely, but honestly I don't think that's possible. As long as there are cards that turn resources into carddraw and cards that turn carddraw into resources you CAN loop something ridiculously. These changes would make it slightly less silly without really changing the uses of the cards on normal play.

Completely unrelated: can you make a Path of need deck without the above cards? I love the idea behind the path of need/westroad traveler, but they play second fiddle to the above power cards.

I wouldn't be too upset by your errata. With Erestor in the game now Deep knowledge isn't needed as much for something like this.

Completely unrelated: can you make a Path of need deck without the above cards? I love the idea behind the path of need/westroad traveler, but they play second fiddle to the above power cards.

Are you referring a deck that I made? I think I used some doomed cards but it definitely doesn't depend on them.

That is almost the exact errata I was thinking of. I think if Lot can generate 3 resources a round for 1 hero it is still extremely strong, just not broken.

Any other feedback from people who have tried the deck? It can be tricky to use.

NM Shadow and Flame is fun. Rather than defend with Bilbo and risk losing all his attachments, I sneaked in Gandalf to defend every combat phase .

Well, I suggested Love of Tales with Erestor right when he was first discussed. But my version is not nearly as powerful as yours as it tries to stay more thematic: Erestor, Círdan, Glorfindel. So I need the Songs of Wisdom first. It is a fun approach but by now it is getting a bit old. The problem is, there is little other option to generate enough resources to be able to play the cards like the upcoming Lindir or Galdor (or even Rivendell Minstrel).

Would you have a suggestion for this line-up excluding the songs?

Yes, all the errata suggestions seem fit. But I doubt it will happen. Courage has been there since the beginning and still functions the same, although it makes designing new readying attachments terribly difficult.

Any other feedback from people who have tried the deck? It can be tricky to use.

NM Shadow and Flame is fun. Rather than defend with Bilbo and risk losing all his attachments, I sneaked in Gandalf to defend every combat phase .

Well, I suggested Love of Tales with Erestor right when he was first discussed. But my version is not nearly as powerful as yours as it tries to stay more thematic: Erestor, Círdan, Glorfindel. So I need the Songs of Wisdom first. It is a fun approach but by now it is getting a bit old. The problem is, there is little other option to generate enough resources to be able to play the cards like the upcoming Lindir or Galdor (or even Rivendell Minstrel).

Would you have a suggestion for this line-up excluding the songs?

You could try some Zigil Miners? You can play one turn one, and if you get lucky even a second one. Maybe build a deck with mostly 2-cost cards? Or keep the theme going with stargazers.

Yes, thanks. Oh, I haven't tried the Zigil much since the errata. It is certainly an option. It is not much more thematic than songs, though, but it takes fewer spots in the deck. That was something that bothered me about the Love of Tales approach, it was already quite hard to fit the other Erestor oriented cards (and I passed on Galadhrim Weaver -- put them into Galadhrim deck -- or Elven Jeweller -- put those in a box) and with more hopefully coming in the Grey Havens, it would become a much bigger issue.

I think the cheap cards is a good approach. If you remember, we talked about it when Erestor was first spoiled. I was running him with Boromir and Glorfindel, and it worked quite well. But now I would like to incorporate Círdan and the new costly allies like Lindir and Galdor -- the latter may be really hard to play without resource acceleration, especially if you still run the Protector and Asfaloth in the sphere.

Perhaps Elf-stone could be an option? The timing will be difficult, perhaps too difficult...

Yes, I remember talking about that.

Erestor is a tricky hero to make work. You get a starting hand of 10 cards and if they aren't cheap then you can't play most of them. On the other hand, if you include a bunch of cheap cards that make you discard, like Elven spear, protector of Lorien, Steed of Imladris, Elven Jewler, etc. Then after the first turn, when you are only drawing 4 cards, you have nowhere near enough cards to both make use of your resourced and your discard mechanics. That's why I was pushed into this approach where you have good resource generation and good draw, but minimal discard mechanics.

I know. It makes perfect sense. I think they are perhaps trying to trick us with all the possibilities, thinking we'll do the Outlands type of deck-building and put them all in, haha. It is definitely a problem to have too many of those. And I find some of them not very strong, i.e. the Steed of Imladris. Elven Jeweller feels like another stinker but can be okay-ish round one, and then again if you have two Harps.

However, I think I have found a pretty good deck yesterday. It has nothing to do with the Love of Tales and it uses the three heroes mentioned above. I don¨t want to derail it here any more but if you're interested I'll send it to you to have a quick look.

I know. It makes perfect sense. I think they are perhaps trying to trick us with all the possibilities, thinking we'll do the Outlands type of deck-building and put them all in, haha. It is definitely a problem to have too many of those. And I find some of them not very strong, i.e. the Steed of Imladris. Elven Jeweller feels like another stinker but can be okay-ish round one, and then again if you have two Harps.

However, I think I have found a pretty good deck yesterday. It has nothing to do with the Love of Tales and it uses the three heroes mentioned above. I don¨t want to derail it here any more but if you're interested I'll send it to you to have a quick look.

Sure!

I don't think they need to errata the cards. I think they need to make an entire cycle of quests where all the quest cards say:

"Characters cannot use readying effects from player cards, cannot gain resources from player card effects and cannot draw cards from player card effects".

Maybe that's too extreme. If not all three at once, at least a couple of those effects per quest card.This could completely change the game for a few quests at least and nerf these kinds of decks, and also Boromir decks as well.

Some other ideas for quest card texts:

Every time a player draws a card from a player card effect, reveal a card from the encounter deck. etc.

Or every time a player gains a resource from a player card effect deal one damage to a hero.

The designers don't need to errata cards, just make wildly different quest cards so that there's no "one deck to rule them all".

Or any time a player would draw a card from a player card effect they must exhaust a hero, or discard that card.

Erestor .. do you discard all your cards at once or one after another? With 3 silver harps can you hold 3 cards back after discarding via Erestor?

Erestor .. do you discard all your cards at once or one after another? With 3 silver harps can you hold 3 cards back after discarding via Erestor?

At once or together, you still keep 3 cards with 3 harps.

I just tried this deck against Battle of Carn Dum.

The first 3 tries, I lost during the first 2-3 turns (that's a sign of a strong deck, I think).

But then... on the 4th try... I got the needed cards... and it was AWESOME !!! The songs combo has to be one of the best resource splashing-generating mechanics I've seen so far.... it's insane! Especially with Lay of Nimrodel, that you can play for free and gives other heroes resources, that gave Bilbo 43 will power on the first turn of the last quest card!

Bilbo was defending and attacking sometimes with 18 points!!

On of the best constructed decks I've seen. You should try it, it's super fun!

Glad you like it Lecitadin!

I think the deck gets better with experience. It's all about maximizing the first planning planning phase which takes a while to learn, like saving your songs until as many LoTs are out as possible, using sneak+Gandalf+WoC to grab a LoT, etc. Modifying it slightly for different quests can help too. I think you will find as you play it more that your frequency of success goes up.

I tried building this deck and giving it a go, as I was intrigued - after about a dozen attempts I never once had a draw that would make the deck "go off" - most of the time it managed to draw loads of cards but lose steam before being able to do anything, and on several occasions even with mulliganing, I didn't see a love of Tales despite drawing through at least half the deck. How consistent is this deck, really? After a dozen games, I never once saw a draw like what's described in this thread.

Plus you seem to describe repeatable recursion...I'm not seeing how this is supposed to be achieved.

How does this deck work in the Hobbit sagas? Who do you replace Bilbo with?

The deck works great for Hobbit sagas. You can swap Bilbo for Pippin.

I tried building this deck and giving it a go, as I was intrigued - after about a dozen attempts I never once had a draw that would make the deck "go off" - most of the time it managed to draw loads of cards but lose steam before being able to do anything, and on several occasions even with mulliganing, I didn't see a love of Tales despite drawing through at least half the deck. How consistent is this deck, really? After a dozen games, I never once saw a draw like what's described in this thread.

Plus you seem to describe repeatable recursion...I'm not seeing how this is supposed to be achieved.

I haven't had a problem with consistency. Drawing half the deck without any Love of Tales or the Sneak+Gandalf+Word of Command combo sounds pretty unlucky. In any case, if all the LoT are in the second half then your next turn should be pretty good.

Recursion is through Will of the West.

Earlier in the thread you say that you can "sustain 2-3 sneak attacks per turn"...not with will of the west, post errata, you cant - and not being able to hold them for the right moment because of erestor.

With 3 sneaks and 3 Will of the West, it's possible to have a total of 12 sneaks. So yes, you can sustain 2-3 a turn considering you will beat the quest in 3-4 turns. I even once had 5 sneaks in a round.