I'm still relatively new to the game, and not the greatest deckbuilder, but since I saw the translated spoilers from the Dread Realm, I've been interested in 'breaking' Elven Light. The card is amazing as it is, and it can basically turn Hero Arwen's ability into 'draw an extra card' if you want.

I'm wondering if it might be possible to take it somewhat further by comboing Elven Light with Leaf Brooch and permanent secrecy through use of Spirit Merry to play Elven Light for free every turn (since its easy to make Elven Light your first event of the turn if you have access to discard effects).

My initial thought was Arwen, Merry and Glorfindel as heroes, though Merry is probably the only one that's very important to this setup.

I don't have a deck list in mind yet, and don't have any thing newer than the Lost Realm yet to try any of it (though they should be coming soon now that the Dread Realm is shipping).

What do you guys think? Is this worth pursuing? Is there some other synergy I've missed?

It would provide a nice draw+resource engine. This is going to be a very playable archetype (it already is, even without Arwen!), but Arwen's ability is limited to once per round, so I doubt it can really be broken.

Yeah, I figured it would be somewhat limited, I wasn't looking to make something like Seastan's playthroughs . Maybe 'broken' is the wrong choice of words given the relative options in the game.

You could definitely use other heroes too, Arwen seems a natural choice given the fact that her ability would combine with the Brooch to still generate a resource, though you could choose somebody else, as long as you had some recurring way to get Elven Light into your discard pile in the first place

So, first off it is an excellent and legal idea, so you should try to make it work. That being said, I have not been impressed with Sp Merry, at least in solo. The problem is that an enemy may not come out that frequently, and on the rounds when an enemy doesn't come out, Merry is essentially useless, unless you have hobbit pony. The problem is Tha Merry is not good enough to justify including the Hobbit pony just to make him not completely useless. Often times enemies come into play because of quest effects or other things that don't allow Merry to activate. You are basically only playing with 2 heroes and you may not even be able to stay in secrecy. In multiplayer the situation is improved because enemies come out far more regularly, but you need a good combat ally to keep those enemies off your back because Merry is so weak.

In addition, Leaf Brooch turns out to be extremely weak as well. The problem is that it only works on events while allies and attachments are more consistently impotant. If you rise above 20 threat, the card is completely dead. Now the good thing about your idea is that Elvish Light may be the exception because you want to play it basically every round. The problem is that it only costs 1, so once you have 1 copy of leaf brooch you are set. Each additional copy becomes redundant. If you are in secrecy with 3 leaf brooch out you can play a 3 cost event for free, but that potential is tough to build around.

In all, you may find that the deck space required to make the idea workable may be too many card slots so the deck strength overall is too weak. If you just forget about Merry and Leaf Brooch and secrecy and just pay for Elvish Light then it might make for a stronger deck.

But don't let me stop you. It is totally worth it to try and prove me wrong.

It's true, it seems to be a multi-card combo relying on a somewhat unreliable hero to keep it moving. The solo-viability is somewhat less of a concern, as I only play with my girlfriend, so there's always at least two players; though there are still some turns where no enemies come up.

Some other thoughts I had were to replace Arwen with Hama (the only other Hero I could find with a reasonably reliable 'discard a card for some benefit' ability), which would help out in the combat department, though not release you from the trouble of maintaining secrecy with Merry (and actually double down on your troubles if you don't find enemies), or redrafting the Hero lineup to include Galadriel as your threat pressure switch (though this would also basically negate the need for the card draw from Elven Light as well...)

You're probably right that just paying for the extra card when it's needed is likely the best option, but I'll have to play a few games with a mess of a deck once I get the cards to convince myself of it

Some other thoughts I had were to replace Arwen with Hama (the only other Hero I could find with a reasonably reliable 'discard a card for some benefit' ability)...

There's also Eowyn, whose ability is not restricted to the quest phase. Although I guess you're not really benefitting when you trigger it elsewhere (Herugrim shenanigans excepted)...