Average Ally Willpower:

Dwarves: 1.00

Rohan: 1.00

Gondor: 0.77

Average Ally Attack

Dwarves: 1.22

Gondor: 1.13

Rohan: 0.88

Silvan do win out by this comparison but possibly because they are flimsy and don't stay around for long. Still trying to find some metric by which Dwarf allies are lagging behind.

We played the Hobbit sage with two dwarf decks and no Dain (5 dwarf heroes + Bard). We didn't find ourselves lacking for Willpower or Attack (Defence was a problem). The one thing I would say is that apart from Thorin the heroes are a bit meh in terms of stats without Dain.

Neither defense nore health help you progress, they help you stall.

Personally, I love to have more good defending characters in my decks, as they let me take on more enemies more confidently. But to each his own.

Average Ally Willpower:

Dwarves: 1.00

Rohan: 1.00

Gondor: 0.77

Average Ally Attack

Dwarves: 1.22

Gondor: 1.13

Rohan: 0.88

Silvan do win out by this comparison but possibly because they are flimsy and don't stay around for long. Still trying to find some metric by which Dwarf allies are lagging behind.

Well, if you want to go down that road...

If we are going to evaluate stats, let's do it the proper way. We must take into account that there are unique allies, and non-unique allies, and that there cannot be more than 1 unique ally in play at once. (And let's drop the fact that various unique dwarf allies share names with dwarf heroes and even with each other, dropping their effectiveness even further).

Hence what we'll do is take each non-unique ally and multiply it's count and willpower by 3, while leaving unique ones alone.

The numbers will shock you:

I love them too, but to make progress on the quest, to win in and to not threat out - you need willpower (unless it's siege, but it's a whole different story). To prevent enemies piling on on you (and eventually overrunning you, as there might be more enemies than you have defenders), you need attack. Defending is good, but without anything to strike back, the defense is just a stall for defeat.

The Outlands comment was meant ad a joke. However, underlying the joke was a deeper point that base stats/cost ratios don't give an accurate picture.

As I have said, and maybe this is where John and I have some disagreement, my point is not that Dwarves have been nerfed comparatively to other tribes. My point is that Dain limits design. That is why I made the point about Visionary Leadership, because that example seems to make my point totally obvious.

Now Seastan asked a good question, "what more do you expect?" Well, John actually answered it, but I will restate it. The point is to have a low cost ally with 3 willpower or 3 attack (not both, one or the other). In other words, an ally that specializes in questing or attacking. Now the Dwarves have the attacker (Erebor Battlemaster) in a dedicated Dwarf deck, but not a quester. In contrast, Ents have Quickbeam to attack and Wellinghall has 3 willpower. So, IMO, with Ents they would not give a global buff like that which Dain provides. They have gone in a different dirrection, using the "comes into play exhausted" to compensate. So, it's either global buff or high stats, but you can't have both. If you do, the result is OP, like... Outlands.

If you read my comment, the Outlands remark was in reply to Duke.

Just realized how off topic we are. Sorry Noccus.

Is ok mate.

I enjoy a good debate.

This is one of those rare times it doesn't go down the drain with offensive remarks.

So carry on! Kudos!

Wow my steward of gondor comment lead to a quite arguing. Whoops

Please, once again, if you want to discuss it further - let's make it in some place it won't take so many time to express our opinions.

And we all know the power of the Erebor Battle Master, who is unmatched in combat and gets hidden by these statistics. Dwarves do not need more attack strength.

I counted Escort from Edoras because it's +2 wp is unconditional, it requires no addional engineering. Even if I remove those 6 willpower it provided to the statistics, Rohan would be 0.94, which is way above the dwarves. Interesting thing, if I throw off those 7 lore/leadership allies which are rarely used in any rohan decks due to being off-sphere, the rohan becomes: 39/29=1.34(33/29=1.13 without +2 on Edoras) in terms of willpower.

Why do you thinj I'm so fixated on spirit Dwarves? There are 3 spirit dwarf heroes (meaning that I can try to build monospirit dwarf deck (and fail miserably)), two of which imply the dwarf synergy, from which one implies connection to tactics, And while the tactics dwarves perform decently in combat, spirit dwarves suck at questing.

Both Steward and We Are Not Idle are leadership, which means Dain. Erratad Miners won't bring you much resources (and might even bring none at all if you're unlucky).

I'll correct your last sentence: Dwarves do not need more attack strength in Tactics.

Both Steward and We Are Not Idle are leadership, which means Dain.

Oh, of course, it's not like there are three other Leadership Dwarf heroes you could use...

​I see we have dropped to the level of considering Dwalin as a legitimate hero (Just kidding).

My issue wasn't with sphere balance. It was with this:

They ARE designed with Dain in mind, every dwarf is, because if they wouldn't - their stats wouldn't be so critically small.

This is such a huge claim, especially the "every dwarf" part. Look at the dwarves we have and add a willpower and attack to them but keep the cost the same. They become overpowered and destroy the cost curve of the game. Zigil miner with 2/2/1/1, Fili and Kili at 2/2/1/2, potential 1-cost allies Bofur at 3/2/1/3 and Dwalin at 2/2/2/3 sentinel. There is just no sign that these allies would've had more stats without Dain because it would break the cost curve they have used with every other trait.

Yes, but if you'll try to combine Oin with anything but leadership, because lore dwarves suck across both atk and wp, tactics dwarves are good with attack but have no wp, and spirit dwarves themselves are not much of neither willpower nor attack (remember, I judge this one purely on solo experience, this all argument gets negated if we have a second player with Dain in his deck).

I'll go into a little bit more detail here: Nori and Oin both imply dwarf tribing happening, but we can't combine spirit with anything but leadership and hope to be successful, because without Dain, none of this decks would have sufficient stats to perform, this is not a mono-spirit talk. More of it, most disastrous combination would be lore+spirit dwarves, which would have decent amount of dwarves and stuff.

My point is and was all along: Dain's existance hurts all Dwarf characters willpower and attack, essentially killing any attempts at Dwarfs without Dain in solo (I'm sure there is some clever stuff one can do to make something like this work, but I'm also sure that it will be mostly due to not dwarf related stuff). I think that Dwarves could have been much more interesting and self-efficient archetype that exists in all spheres (and is at least somewhat viable in most spheres and combinations), if a staple like Dain would not exist. And then and now every Dwarf coming out is getting double-evaluated due to Dain and turns out a little bit weaker because of him. Staples like him hurt the future game design possibilities.

Adding willpower and attack together is not a right way to do it, because a character that has 2 willpower and 0 attack (or vice versa) provides a meaningful impact on his own, while a 1 willpower 1 attack character can be barely felt and won't make huge difference by his very presence. Well, I did not sey that without Dain they would have stats just like they have with Dain, but some of them could have that 1 missing point of stat in a right place to make them valuable picks for non-Dain decks (and make them tremendously powerful for their cost with Dain).

A few solo dwarf decks have already been posted that don't use Dain. Are they underpowered? That's subjective, but as someone who plays with powerful decks a lot I'd have to say no.

Adding even a single stat point of stats to most dwarf allies still upsets the cost curve. Many of the allies already get more than double their cost in stats (Especially true when you consider that allies like Bofur, Dwalin, and Fili/Kili are cheaper than they appear).

Silvan need to be high in a single stat because the are going to come down and do 1 action before leaving. Dwarves are a different design with a higher spread of stats and more durable, offering flexibility from round to round. Maybe you just don't like that playstyle.

I can't say much on that account until I see them performing decently against some non-pushover quests.

It might be [in some cases] even a matter of shifting a stat point, rather than adding it, that can make a huge difference.

Also, I find it funny that the only non-unique dwarf ally in the game with wp above 1 is in leadship. He also scries [lore] and places progress [spirit]

Zigil Miner - We all know this guy would get played with no stats whatsoever.

With 0 hit points it would be tough, though not impossible, strangely, to get him into play

Guys, what did you do to this thread?

Well, the Thorin Ori Oin deck I posted beat Carn Dum quite handily on the first attempt, but I think I can make it better. Never ended up using Oin's tactics resource so maybe Nori is better. Swap out those Longbeard Sentries for A Good Harvest to get Battlemasters into play. Here: http://goo.gl/3sUKhs

At some point maybe I'll make a video of a non-Dain dwarf deck, but I have a long list of decks to showcase already...

Why Good Harvest? Just use Narvi's belt!

My money on the cost difference of 2.