Actually, even though Spirfindel has good stats, low threat, good action advantage, and potentially great leverage on location heavy APs I think he's still less ubiquitous than Eleanor. People who don't play multiplayer won't readily understand this statement. But any group of three or four players know how much more important Eleanor is than Glorfindel to player success. She may not have as much individual synergy in a given deck(in fact she very often has no synergy other than her sphere) but is necessary to keep treacheries from hosing the players EVERY turn. Her threat is similarly low like Spirfindels, but the only thing you can readily spec her for is defense with a shield. Beyond that she just kind of gets in the way of individual deck synergy.

Say what you want about Spirfindel, but his ubiquity springs from his uber-synergistic qualities. Not a statistical mandate of the encounter deck. Playing with three people? On average your going to get hit with a nasty quest disrupting global effect EVERY turn, unless you play Eleanor. I was actually experimenting with spirit Pippin in a threat dropping deck, but I had forgotten that in three and four player one must carry the burden of Eleanor.

Looking ahead to the coming AP, I know there's an emphasis on Unique allies. I think an exact copy of Eleanor as an ally would do wonders for this issue. Hell I'd be happy with a copy that had two hit-points and 0's in every stat so long as it kept the ability. The only other multiplayer option I've seen is utilizing decks with scout ahead and the door is shut. I haven't tried it, but the limit one per deck rule makes it look like a very involved strategy if you want to use it for consistent treachery nullification. Has anyone had success with this sort of strategy?

Guys, You are overthinking it. Just give Glorfindel the card text... "Limit one per deck". Problem solved!

You mean Light of Valinor right?

I don't think he does.

I was just being funny.

Edit: Ok that clearly went over my head

A couple of things:

3. To me, this argument is a bit more complex than "if you don't like him, don't use him". The problem is a systemic one, and it has to do with the way that the metagame has formed around these cards for everything released since the Dwarrowdelf cycle. It's all well and good to say "just stop using Glorfindel/LoV/Asfaloth", but if new quests are designed around the assumption that low-starting threat, cheap readying/action advantage, and powerful location control are all available, then I am basically handicapping myself not to at least consider these cards for the harder quests. I can't speak for others, but I have found The Battle of Carn Dum solo to be very difficult. I want to try different decks, but the concern that I have with these more challenging quests is that they will push me right back to these same arguably-broken staples. Maybe there is another path, using cards like Thror's Map, threat control and questing via Galadriel, and other more interesting tricks. I certainly hope that there are alternatives, because even if they never again print something as broken as Spirit Glorfindel and his toys, he can still warp the metagame into an unwholesome shape.

Exactly! That's my worry about the latest difficulty ramp. I feel somewhat obliged to play "the only decks that can beat things", and LoV Glorfindel w/ Asfaloth is sadly a big requirement these days... although I will point at "Location Lock" as being the root cause; I need glorfindel and his horse due to locations just piling up and spiraling out of control if you cannot quest enough... we need more progress-placing cards.

I guess the designers might feel they can't print another card with a big repeatable progress-placing effect because you'd just use both it and Asfaloth. Perhaps a new version of Asfaloth that is not as strong as current Asfaloth on Glorfindel but is more widely applicable.

To some extent problems such as this are inevitable when a game lasts for any length of time.

There will always arise some cards that are indisputably better than others in their category, and will forever after influence the game.

The only other option is to make sure every card ever produced is perfectly balanced. Even if this were humanly possible, it would result in a situation where there would be little reason to choose one strategy over another. It'd make for a rather dull game.

To some extent problems such as this are inevitable when a game lasts for any length of time.

There will always arise some cards that are indisputably better than others in their category, and will forever after influence the game.

The only other option is to make sure every card ever produced is perfectly balanced. Even if this were humanly possible, it would result in a situation where there would be little reason to choose one strategy over another. It'd make for a rather dull game.

Long story short, I don't agree with you. To keep game not dull is a quest's job, not player's card pool. What balanced card pool provides is not dullnes, but choice that you actually make, not the designer, who first create a powerhouse card and then balance their stuff around it, essentially forcing your choice (if you wanna succeed that is).

I've succeeded with tons of spirt decks without glorfindel.

Long story short, I don't agree with you. To keep game not dull is a quest's job, not player's card pool. What balanced card pool provides is not dullnes, but choice that you actually make, not the designer, who first create a powerhouse card and then balance their stuff around it, essentially forcing your choice (if you wanna succeed that is).

So why even have a player's card pool at all? Is the only purpose of a varied player card pool to allow the designers the flexibility of creating quests? That suggests there will be only a few (or even only one) "optimal" player deck for each quest, which seems like a rather dull way of looking at the game. But to each their own.

Long story short, I don't agree with you. To keep game not dull is a quest's job, not player's card pool. What balanced card pool provides is not dullnes, but choice that you actually make, not the designer, who first create a powerhouse card and then balance their stuff around it, essentially forcing your choice (if you wanna succeed that is).

So why even have a player's card pool at all? Is the only purpose of a varied player card pool to allow the designers the flexibility of creating quests? That suggests there will be only a few (or even only one) "optimal" player deck for each quest, which seems like a rather dull way of looking at the game. But to each their own.

No. Not flexibility for the designers to create quests (whch is a good thing too), but a flexibility for player to build a deck that will be viable to some extent. With unbalanced pool as current, there some cards that hurt you when you don't take them (because they are powerhouses, and when designers design quest, they keep those cards in mind, not the weaker ones), and there are cards that hurt you when you take them, because their power level and usefulness is significanlty below the power level quests are aimed to challenge, so you're literally handicapping yourself. In a perfect world with balanced card pool, that thing won't exist, and that would make for a much more diverse and enjoyable experience, not a dull one.