I started thinking about all purpose and/or all powerful allies and the ranks are thin. There are only 13 allies whose willpower, attack, and defense are all two or greater. Interestingly, lore does very well in this regard, as six are neutral and five are lore, with one each for leadership and tactics. Of the 13, six are two across the board for willpower, attack, and defense and could be considered all purpose, but not all powerful. Four of those who remain are powerful, but have serious limits (such as being discarded at the end of the round).

Taking it a step further, to these 13, I added allies who were 3 or greater for at least one stat. Only two additional allies have a willpower of 3 or greater (Denethor, Galadriel). Four more have a defense of 3 or greater (Beorn, Defender of Rammas, Warden of Helms Deep, Winged Guardian). Thirteen additional allies have an attack of 3 or greater (I won't list them here).

This leaves us with 33 allies with all purpose to powerful stats, but few that could could considered all powerful. All powerful can be defined many ways, but I settled on stats of 3 or more in two categories without a discard at the end of the round effect. The likes of Treebeard, Gildor Inglorion and Beorn are rare indeed. None of this takes into consideration ally abilities, which adds a whole other dimension to their power. I'll leave that discussion for another day. Nonetheless, I was surprised to see the number so low and realize this speaks to the game's balance.

I think part of the reason for the low-ish number of powerful allies has to do with what players really want. Adding a single resource to the cost of a card greatly reduces its ability to be played, especially in non-mono-sphere decks, and powerful allies either have to have big downsides or high costs, and the developers tend to try to keep most of the allies "playable", so that means most allies need to be weaker.

I am excited for the abundance of unique allies we are apparently going to see in the next cycle. I definitely have a soft spot for unique allies and love to run quite a few of them and less of the generic nameless allies.

I imagine some of these unique allies will be quite powerful as well, we can already see that the Eldahir and Glorfindel allies are both pretty badass.

The main reason I love the OP Gandalf-Elrond-Glorfindel deck is that you can just put any unique ally and play it for free, jus to test it.

You can also do that with a reinforcement deck. Its pretty neat. Just think of erestor and galdor together. Thats a daerons runes every round(if you have at least one Card left in your Hand).

Best all purpose ally overall right now might be Quickbeam. His stat total when readied immediately is 8 for the coat of 2 resources. Normally allys cost half their stats, so qucickbeam should cost 4.

Not the best Defender though

I agree.

Before very recently there weren't really too many ways to ready up your allies. Now we have Faramir and Narya and to an extent; Galadriel (who also helps make the most out of your stats by having your ally not exhaust to quest the first turn).

I was messing around with a Faramir deck a while ago and while I didn't quite get it to work to the level that I was happy with, one of the best cards for it was the Veteran of Osgiliath. Solid stats, even better with Valor, and the Gondor trait means he can be buffed up further with Boromir or Visionary leadership or both.

Gandalf/Boromir/Faramir Valor deck! I want that to work. Maybe it would.

The best thing about a Leadership Gondor deck (in terms of power) is the ability to play Gandalf (core) over and over with Sneak, Reinforcement, and if played from hand, to have him ready with Faramir. Thus, I would not recommend having Gandalf hero as the third hero there.

I agree Veteran of Osgiliath is a perfect target for Faramir: 3 willpower, 4 attack is quite easy to achieve, whilst 2 and 3 is still worth it.

Gandalf Hero lets you play Narya though, further increasing the stats of the Veteran. But you could use Ciradan as your third hero to do the same thing of course.

Yes. I have actually tried Círdan with Boromir and Faramir but it was not as effective as pure Gondor with Imrahil. Perhaps solo it could stand against more quests but in a coop, the Gondor Leadership is clearly better (for me also from the thematic point of view, though I like pairing Noldor, especially the sailors, with Gondor).