Event
. Cost: 0.
Action
: Discard the top card of your deck. If the discarded card's printed cost is equal to or higher than the number of characters you control, draw 2 cards and deal 2 damage to any enemy.
What an awful card, right? Well, I noticed it flipping through my binder the other day and I feel like it might not be so bad. Maybe.
For a start, the potential reward for this card is exceptional given its cost. Discarding the top card of your deck is as minimal a cost as exists in the game (it's not like you could have used it anyway, and it is replaced instantly with a new top card). Unless you're running single copies of cards it's unlikely to ruin your game. 0 resources to boot, so the only significant cost of the card is the opportunity cost from having the card take up space in your deck/hand in the first place.
Using cards like Gildor Inglorion (
http://ringsdb.com/card/02079
) and Imladris Stargazer
(http://ringsdb.com/card/04106)
we can control which card is discarded, limiting the cost even further.
And there are a significant number of cards in the game now that we
want
to hit our discard pile. Elven-Light (
http://ringsdb.com/card/10145
), Lords of the Eldar
(http://ringsdb.com/card/10121)
and Anchor Watch
(http://ringsdb.com/card/11007)
turn a cost into a benefit should they be drawn from the deck.
But it's still a gamble, isn't it. To receive the full benefit of the card, the cost of the top card must equal or exceed the number of characters in play; a difficult proposition in most decks. We need expensive cards and a small number of heroes to have much hope of success.
Secrecy it is, then.
Two heroes increases the odds significantly over three, both immediately and further into a game. That's just basic maths.
Secrecy cards like Out of the Wild (
http://ringsdb.com/card/04036
), Out of Sight
(http://ringsdb.com/card/04081)
and O Elbereth!
(http://ringsdb.com/card/04132)
offer us a high printed card cost but a lower practical cost int terms of our resources, while threat remains low.
And since we're limiting the number of characters we're likely to play, we should focus on expensive allies, like aforementioned Gildor, Erestor (
http://ringsdb.com/card/04077
) who offers a second use for those cards we want discarded, and the secrecy-ready Dunedain Wanderer
(http://ringsdb.com/card/04029)
So we can increase our odds of success quite a bit. We could likely fill most of a deck with 4 and 5 cost cards and work with a small number of characters. But is that going to be effective? Would the deck actually function as a whole?
How would we pay for all the expensive allies with only two heroes? Well, there's this neat card called Resourceful (
http://ringsdb.com/card/04062
) you might have heard of. A printed cost of 4 means it makes a good top card, and for a single resource in secrecy it massively increases the rate at which we can play cards for the rest of the game.
There's also To the Sea! (
http://ringsdb.com/card/11014
). Low cost, but allows us to discard those cards we want gone in place of resources that can be put to better use.
Two heroes? That's a big problem, right? Well, the upcoming Strider attachment (terrible name) provides a big bonus to both two hero parties, and parties of 5 or less. A pair of heroes, one Strider, one with Light of Valinor, makes a fearsome pair.
I'm bored of typing now so take a look at what I'm working on:
http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/2043/the-hidden-vale-5.0
Edited
by Edheliad