https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/5/13/a-storm-on-cobas-haven/

Seems good! Tactics Imrahil is appropiate and possible, which narrows the list of possible Flame of the West heroes again.

Ioreth at 0 cost is pretty **** great IMO. Also, I'm glad to see more of these minor ROTK characters in the game. Here's hoping for a Bergil ally in the cycle or in Flame of the West as well.

Justice Shall be Done is intriguing. Not sure how good, if any good, it will be in solo, but I'll try it for sure. Love the art and theme of that card! And that quote, yeah, pretty literal.

More love for the suicidal support deck!

Looking forward to a Justice Shall Be Done "play all your cards on your team-mate and then die" deck. The recent Heed The Dream gives a reliable way of finding it if you can spare the leadership resources.

Edit: Bonus marks if your team-mate uses Message From Elrond to give you a second copy.

A card for last round, interesting

OMG! Some amazing stuff in there!

It looks so good

Really glad they have a great sea battle. If this quest will be fun will probably be a matter of how much you have to rely onto the objectives and how consistent they Show up. The spoiled ship enemy brings an objective into Play (guarding it) so it should be a managable Task to get at least some under Control. Looks like staying on Course will be key to be victorious (again).

Very cool Player Cards shown so far. Tactics Imrahil indeed seems to fit very well.

Knife-work should be good and give tactics important carddraw if you can activate it. Even if you "Just" kill 2 enemies you get 2 Cards it's ok (not great like daeron's runes or mithrandir's advice with 2/3 lore heroes), but for a sphere thath has so Little draw Options it should do some work. Combine it with tactics Aragorn to get a -2 defense Advantage on your enemies and engage as much stuff as possible, 3-5 dead enemies don't seem too unlikely (depending on Player numbers, set-up etc.).

Ioreth Looks like a good healer. she fills the role of a situational healer "really" well, as 1 ressource for 3 HP is a great deal (warden of healing Needs 3 turns to be equally efficent without elrond). Only downside are her stats (REALLY BAD) it's not that she is a 0 in every Attribute, only 1 hitpoint is so weak against many AoE treacheries (even worse if you used her before questing :S)

Justice shall be done. Great concept. But then again they Limit it to once per deck. Even if I would Play a deck that could/would/wants to make use of it, It Needs luck or an Investment of ressources to grap justice consistently. Just having it Pop up randomly usually won't do you any good. Either you are winning and don't Need it or you will loose anyway. It is like the Fall of Gil-Galad you can't use it because you can't draw it most of the time. Very sad

More love for the suicidal support deck!

Justice shall be done. Great concept. But then again they Limit it to once per deck. Even if I would Play a deck that could/would/wants to make use of it, It Needs luck or an Investment of ressources to grap justice consistently. Just having it Pop up randomly usually won't do you any good. Either you are winning and don't Need it or you will loose anyway. It is like the Fall of Gil-Galad you can't use it because you can't draw it most of the time. Very sad

Rajam, that's what I thought, too! At this point in the game, there are so many cards that can look at the top 5+ cards to help you get the exact cards you need, that limit-one cards are becoming much more viable. I can definitely see Justice Shall Be Done being a "win more" card, but I can also see it helping in many quests that tend to be most difficult near the end when the "boss" shows up, and of course, some treacheries/shadows can absolutely wreck a deck that is pretty much all set up just as you're nearing the end. Of course, it is probably the case that most games are lost before you get close to the end, so this card may not be of much help there.

Calvadur, on 13 May 2016 - 6:23 PM, said:
Knife-work should be good and give tactics important carddraw if you can activate it. Even if you "Just" kill 2 enemies you get 2 Cards it's ok (not great like daeron's runes or mithrandir's advice with 2/3 lore heroes), but for a sphere thath has so Little draw Options it should do some work. Combine it with tactics Aragorn to get a -2 defense Advantage on your enemies and engage as much stuff as possible, 3-5 dead enemies don't seem too unlikely (depending on Player numbers, set-up etc.).

Add Elf-friend to Aragorn and give him a Rivendell Blade so he's cutting through most enemies like a hot knife through butter

I'm loving the -x to Defense cards we've been seeing as of late. It makes Straight Shot even more viable/abusable.

I am SO loving the quests in this cycle. I thought we would get Imrahil in the next saga box, but I agree he's a great fit here. Ioreth, Knife Work and And Justice Shall Be Done are dripping in theme. I probably will never play the last though.

Kinda bothers me that the Gondor healers are better than the eleven healers though.

Kinda bothers me that the Gondor healers are better than the eleven healers though.

I think you are definitely right as far as cards with the "Healer" trait go, but Silvan Tracker still packs a lot of healing punch in a Silvan deck.

Kinda bothers me that the Gondor healers are better than the eleven healers though.

From a pure numbers perspective, the Elves still win. They have 4 or 5, whereas Gondor still only has 2, one of which is unique. And I'm totally OK with unique characters being more powerful than universals.

Silvan Tracker is a good point - in the right deck he is absolutely obscene. I was thinking Noldor healers when I wrote that but admittedly didn't say it.

I'm curious why people are so convinced Imrahil will be in this pack?

Just a hunch. Some people have been awaiting Tactics Imrahil, and this seems like a great opportunity to get him (we won't get him in Flame of the West unless he is Spirit, so there.)

I'm curious why people are so convinced Imrahil will be in this pack?

He was the Prince - ruler of Dol Amroth ... so there is no pack more perfect than this for him

Calvadur, on 13 May 2016 - 6:23 PM, said:

Knife-work should be good and give tactics important carddraw if you can activate it. Even if you "Just" kill 2 enemies you get 2 Cards it's ok (not great like daeron's runes or mithrandir's advice with 2/3 lore heroes), but for a sphere thath has so Little draw Options it should do some work. Combine it with tactics Aragorn to get a -2 defense Advantage on your enemies and engage as much stuff as possible, 3-5 dead enemies don't seem too unlikely (depending on Player numbers, set-up etc.).

Add Elf-friend to Aragorn and give him a Rivendell Blade so he's cutting through most enemies like a hot knife through butter

Play with Elladan in the same line-up with Aragorn and you don't need elf friend and have the potential to take out more enemies with Elladan's readying effect. If you have a few nice combat allies out like Mithlond Sea Watcher, Marksman of Lorien, Legolas etc you could really clean up house with that extra -1 on top of Aragorn's -1 and for a few attacks with Elladan an additional -2 to enemy def and you would draw several cards at the same time. I think even with just 2 enemies killed and 2 cards drawn it is still very worth it as it isn't just drawing you the cards but also helping you destroy those enemies at the same time which is great in of itself. The 2 lore resources are a little harder to come up with or afford than the single tactics resource though but so long as you use this perhaps mid to late game it will hopefully be more affordable as well as more useful. Could be a great card for all those quests that reveal several encounter and/or enemy cards all at once when you progress to a certain quest stage. I think that includes quite a few quests to be honest!

I'm going to make proxies of Knife Work and try it out soon, I'll post about my experiences!

I really do think that it will be Imrahil in this pack as it is a perfect thematic choice and also continues along the trend we saw in Flight of the Stormcaller of providing us with Heroes that are also thematic for the next saga box (Denethor). By providing us with several heroes we would like to see in that saga box in this cycle instead it allows us to get so many more heroes that are thematically fitting for the next saga box by the time it comes out. I'm actually really happy and impressed they seem to be doing this as it means pretty much everyone is happy and we get all the various heroes we desire to use and or get for that saga box. Hopefully this means we do indeed see new versions of Eomer, Merry, Pippin, Elladan, Elrohir, Halbarad and Beregond!

I like the final breakthrough card.

Silvan Tracker is a good point - in the right deck he is absolutely obscene. I was thinking Noldor healers when I wrote that but admittedly didn't say it.

Noldor have Elrond, a healer so awesome he boosts the healing of everyone

The weird thing about Knife-work is that it seems like it's supposed to work with Aragorn (T), but really it just reduces the defense of the enemies engaged with you when you activate it. Enemies that you engage after you activate it won't get an additional -1 Defense from Knife-work because of the most recent update in the FAQ about "lasting effects".

If you get more hit points to Ioreth, se becomes THE best healer of the game.

If you get more hit points to Ioreth, se becomes THE best healer of the game.

I doubt she would be OP with 2 HP. Even though she is free, she constantly Drains ressources from you, if you use her every turn. 2nd She is unique so there can be only one.

While healing for 3 is a strong and useful effect, there often will be situations where the damage is splashed between your allies and not stacked on 1 target so warden of healing, silvan tracker etc. would still remain highly relevant. If you have 1 spare lore ressource per turn you aren't to far of to get multiple uses of a warden of healing, it is defenetly a slower Play as the warden costs 2 by himself, but the potential numbers arre much higher. Also a Group of 2 or even 3 wardens are insane. Lastly Ioreth might be the healing Card to Profit the least from Elrond, as healing 4 poits of damage is only usefull if you have a 5 HP character who is nearly dead, while boosting a healing of 1 up to 2 is much more useful (100% increase insted of 33%).

There are only few Scenarios in which you can't place damage in a way that other healers can't compete with Ioreth.

TL;DR: Ioreth with 2 Hp wouldn't be so strong that she would be the single best healer in the game.

If you get more hit points to Ioreth, se becomes THE best healer of the game.

Eh I don't know...

Warden of Healing when you have a bootload of lore resources and Elrond in play can heal a ****ton of damage in a single turn.

I just played a round during a game of Fate of Numenor in which I used two copies of Imladris Caregiver and loads of spirit resources to abuse a single copy of Elven light into healing 2 damage four times from any character (healing more or less all damage across the board accumulated till that point including a point of damage on one of the Caregivers) and also drawing me four cards as well. Because I did this during the planing phase I was able to play 3 of those four cards I drew that same phase (UC, Sailor of Lune and Silver Harp. I was able to do this as I had crazy stacked up resources because I was forced to discard many cards early/mid game due to nasty encounter effects).

This boost was just what I needed to get that deck started back up again and churning cards out faster and helped lead to a a victory.

Warden can heal more and across more characters so long as Elrond is in play or you use lore resources to get multiple uses in one turn.

Caregiver is not only a very decent healer and heals an equal amount to Ioreth with Elrond in play each turn but also helps boost the Noldor discard/draw engine overall as well.

Hell even Silvan Tracker is still better as it heals all Silvan characters which means if you are running a dedicated Silvan deck/s you have healing across the board for free every turn and with more than one in play or Elrond boosting them they will be absolutely more than enough for the rest of the game.

Ioreth, with or without more hitpoints, is in my opinion not even close to as good as some of the healing options we already have .

So in a four player game, could you use 3 copies of Message From Elrond to give one player, 3 more copies of Justice Shall be Done? A player could get 15 resources and 13 cards in one round.