Just to clarify, I'm not saying that I *know* TaEowyn can't be replaced with another hero in any non-solo-mono-tactics deck to make it a better deck. I'm no master deckbuilder, and I could very well be wrong on that point. I'm saying I don't see *how* Eowyn is replaced with another hero to make it obviously better. I'd rather see a detailed example showing how I was wrong and learn something rather than "win" and learn nothing.

I'm also now madly curious about which combination of heroes would have the highest winning percentage against all nightmare quests, for each sphere combination. I was thinking about starting with Seastan's public decks and sorting by likes, but I'm not sure all those decks are meant to be broken.

I repeat a lot of points here, but I think I have a better handle on my thoughts.

It may be true that Eowyn in a Dunhere deck is powerful. I was unaware of that deck and made clear that I was expecting new decks that would feature Eowyn as a quality choice. That was a major point of what I was saying, that she would create new archtypes.

It is true that including the top 3 heroes in a lineup is rarely a good choice. It is ussually better to combine a power hero with a support hero. Boromit is strong, but not if you just randomly toss him into a lineup. He needs a deck built around him. Spirit Glorfindel, on the other hand, can be tossed into basically any deck and he makes it better. He doesn't require a deck that is built around him. All that illustrates to me, again, is that there are different ways of talking about things like good and bad. It is not so black and white. That's why I can say that Eowyn is not very good (in one sense) while still agreeing that she is good (in another sense).

Eowyn is not good as a power hero like Boromir or Gandalf. She doesn't have enough abilities to build around her. She is certainly a strong candidate for a solid support hero. Her 6 threat cost and 4 willpower make her great for that role. I am not sold that red is so great as a splash support color. Yes, obviously red is fun and worth playing and so forth, but the other colors seem stronger. Ussually when I splash red, which I do a lot, I don't add it as a support color so much as something more central. The distictiin is fuzzy. Anyway, whenever I do splash red I think Eowyn is a poor choice given how red has historically been used, but she is radically different, so she may be a good choice in a new approach to using red, something that utilizes low threat, etc. We haven't seen that yet so it is hard to say. I think the strider deck, the hobbits and ents, and perhaps Dunhere deck (haven't played it yet) will prove to be excellent decks. I hope so. Even if they are more like fun novelty decks, I fully expect somebody will come up with something more inventive later.

So, given that it doesn't work to put 3 power heroes together, we can see that each color does not necessarily have 3 good heroes. If we grant that Boromir is the best red hero, we sometimes don't want to play with him. Maybe we want to use Beorn instead. Beorn and Boromir cannot really be used together because both need to be the central focus of a deck. If a Beorn deck can be built that is almost as good as the Boromir deck then we have two archtypes that are solid choices. A hero qualifies as good, IMO, if it is one of the top 3 heroes (power or support) in a strong deck type. So for Eowyn to be good she either has to have her own strong deck type or be one of the best support heroes in a deck built around another hero. That would be my standard. The jury is still deliberating, but my prediction is that new deck types will need to be invented before Eowyn meets that standard, which I fully expect to happen.

Now I've repeated my point in several different ways. I hope people will now understand what I was saying. The phrases like unplayable garbage were hyperbole used to make it all provacative.

I repeat a lot of points here, but I think I have a better handle on my thoughts.

It may be true that Eowyn in a Dunhere deck is powerful. I was unaware of that deck and made clear that I was expecting new decks that would feature Eowyn as a quality choice. That was a major point of what I was saying, that she would create new archtypes.

Staging area attack isn't a "new" deck type, though. It's an old one-- a very, very old one. One of the oldest deck archetypes on the block. It's just an archetype that had failed to keep up with the meta, and which Eowyn provides a strong shot in the arm to in order to bring it back up to date. But there are lots of different staging area attack decks. Pretty much anything on RingsDB with Hero Haldir or Dunhere. (I even built one that includes neither, and instead relies on Hama + Hands Upon the Bow.) And for pretty much every Staging Area Attack deck, Eowyn is the optimal hero. 4 willpower, 6 starting threat, access to Tactics.

Ents aren't a new archetype, either. They've been around for a couple of cycles now. They're a very powerful archetype, though, and Eowyn at least gives TacMerry a strong argument for the best Tactics Hero in an Ent deck. (Personally, I give it to Eowyn, but I can see the argument that TacMerry + Fast Hitch + Rohan Warhorse + Treebeard = kind of sort of good.)

Mono-tactics definitely *is* a new archetype, and I think we're all on the same page that she's indispensable to it. It's only an archetype now because she exists.

Really, there's nothing special or fancy about Tactics Eowyn. She doesn't need an "archetype". She needs a deck that would love to add four willpower for just six starting threat while also gaining Tactics access. Which is rather a lot of decks, because that is an absurd stat-line to threat ratio. She's the best stats-only hero released since Spirit Glorfindel, bar none. No, she's not as good as Glorfindel, but she's a solid second, and she comes with a positive bonus instead of a negative penalty.

I would like to go back to my question, if you don't mind. There are ~80 heroes released right now. If you ranked all 80 from best to worst, where do you think Eowyn would fall? Obviously I'm not looking for an exact answer, but a rough range would go a long way towards letting all parties know whether we actually disagree or not.

Eowyn is not good as a power hero like Boromir or Gandalf. She doesn't have enough abilities to build around her. She is certainly a strong candidate for a solid support hero. Her 6 threat cost and 4 willpower make her great for that role. I am not sold that red is so great as a splash support color. Yes, obviously red is fun and worth playing and so forth, but the other colors seem stronger. Ussually when I splash red, which I do a lot, I don't add it as a support color so much as something more central. The distictiin is fuzzy. Anyway, whenever I do splash red I think Eowyn is a poor choice given how red has historically been used, but she is radically different, so she may be a good choice in a new approach to using red, something that utilizes low threat, etc. We haven't seen that yet so it is hard to say. I think the strider deck, the hobbits and ents, and perhaps Dunhere deck (haven't played it yet) will prove to be excellent decks. I hope so. Even if they are more like fun novelty decks, I fully expect somebody will come up with something more inventive later.

In a nutshell, you recognize that Eowyn's statistics are outstanding for a support hero, but you don't think tactics is a useful splash based on his historical usage. I both agree and disagree.

I agree that based on how a splash tactics has been used in published decks, TaEowyn is a misfit as a hero -- tactics has largely been used to pull in a specific hero, not a support hero. The only other tactics quester is Thalin, and he's neither popular nor a good quester.

OTOH, I don't think the sphere itself works against splash. There's plenty of good stuff in the 2-or-less category. Any deck that doesn't rely on chump blocking combined with swarm attacking can really benefit from tactics. (And any deck at all can benefit from Honour Guard.)

I'm not sure we need to wait to see if ent decks are powerful. They seem plenty powerful to me, and I was under the impression that they were recognized as a very powerful tribe already. You need tactics for their ents (and the powerful Boomed and Trumpeted), and TaEowyn seems to be the perfect hero to provide tactics for it.

I appreciate you clarifying that your controversial statements were meant to be hyperbolic. I presume that the implication you could replace TaEowyn in any deck and make it better was also hyperbolic? I'm sorry you find my tone in disagreeing with hyperbolic statements to be off-putting, though I am curious why you would use hyperbolic language to be provocative if you find provoked responses unpleasant.

I would like to go back to my question, if you don't mind. There are ~80 heroes released right now. If you ranked all 80 from best to worst, where do you think Eowyn would fall? Obviously I'm not looking for an exact answer, but a rough range would go a long way towards letting all parties know whether we actually disagree or not.

Now I want to sit down and try to rate them all to find out where I'd put her in the rankings, but a lot of this game and our perceptions of a heroes worth are based on our modes of play. I haven't played solo in over a year now, so it is hard for me to examine a card with that mindset. I always consider it in a 2 player mode with the expanded focus of a 4 player game. Most of my games are 2 player, but there are plenty of 4 player ones as well. So for me, cards get judged from a different mindset than - seemingly - most of the players here.

The other issue with ranking them is trying to actually find some numerical value of their abilities when they are so situational. Sure, Dain is arguably the best hero in the game - provided you (and your fellows) bring enough dwarves to the field. If he is your only one, then he is the worst.

I think that is kind of the issue with Eowyn atm, because there is the mindset that tactics shouldn't even have WP, plus they still suck at it anyways, so she is a bad choice for a tactics player to pick, but I think she is one of the best heroes we've got for her flexability and sphere bleed. In a 4 player fellowship group I'm playing in, I was using Spirit Eowyn, who is 200% better at questing that Tactics Eowyn, but me giving her up to the tactics player allowed that player to have an invested character in each phase, as opposed to only during combat. I was running the support deck, so adding Snowmane to her was perfect in letting her add to the quest then ready for combat. Eomer was her main attacker, and while he could typically manage the enemies as they came, Eowyn, who later got an Rohan Warhorse - was able to single handedly smash through some of our bigger enemies, leaving the rest for Eomer to ride down.

The trouble with judging most heroes, is it is pretty impossible to rate them in some perfect vacuum. They each have their variations of stipulations as to when they are great, and when they are terrible. SpGlorfindel was brought up earlier as an example of the perfect hero to just drop in and make any deck better. To that, I completely disagree, from my 2+ player mindset. Nearly any time I've played SpGlorfindel, he is simply standing during the combat phase and does absolutely nothing until my partner can grace me with a bow to give me ranged. Just because Glorfindel has great stats, doesn't mean they actually get any use. If you aren't fighting anything, than any hero with 4 WP is better than him, or a hero that offers resource acceleration like Arwen.

I would like to go back to my question, if you don't mind. There are ~80 heroes released right now. If you ranked all 80 from best to worst, where do you think Eowyn would fall? Obviously I'm not looking for an exact answer, but a rough range would go a long way towards letting all parties know whether we actually disagree or not.

Now I want to sit down and try to rate them all to find out where I'd put her in the rankings, but a lot of this game and our perceptions of a heroes worth are based on our modes of play. I haven't played solo in over a year now, so it is hard for me to examine a card with that mindset. I always consider it in a 2 player mode with the expanded focus of a 4 player game. Most of my games are 2 player, but there are plenty of 4 player ones as well. So for me, cards get judged from a different mindset than - seemingly - most of the players here.

The other issue with ranking them is trying to actually find some numerical value of their abilities when they are so situational. Sure, Dain is arguably the best hero in the game - provided you (and your fellows) bring enough dwarves to the field. If he is your only one, then he is the worst.

I think that is kind of the issue with Eowyn atm, because there is the mindset that tactics shouldn't even have WP, plus they still suck at it anyways, so she is a bad choice for a tactics player to pick, but I think she is one of the best heroes we've got for her flexability and sphere bleed. In a 4 player fellowship group I'm playing in, I was using Spirit Eowyn, who is 200% better at questing that Tactics Eowyn, but me giving her up to the tactics player allowed that player to have an invested character in each phase, as opposed to only during combat. I was running the support deck, so adding Snowmane to her was perfect in letting her add to the quest then ready for combat. Eomer was her main attacker, and while he could typically manage the enemies as they came, Eowyn, who later got an Rohan Warhorse - was able to single handedly smash through some of our bigger enemies, leaving the rest for Eomer to ride down.

The trouble with judging most heroes, is it is pretty impossible to rate them in some perfect vacuum. They each have their variations of stipulations as to when they are great, and when they are terrible. SpGlorfindel was brought up earlier as an example of the perfect hero to just drop in and make any deck better. To that, I completely disagree, from my 2+ player mindset. Nearly any time I've played SpGlorfindel, he is simply standing during the combat phase and does absolutely nothing until my partner can grace me with a bow to give me ranged. Just because Glorfindel has great stats, doesn't mean they actually get any use. If you aren't fighting anything, than any hero with 4 WP is better than him, or a hero that offers resource acceleration like Arwen.

I was really surprised at reading through this topic, while I agree with you on several points, we don't draw the same conclusions.

Let me talk about spheres/ color bleed first. Frankly I don't really see what all the fuss is about. If any color needs a little bit of bleed, it's certainly Tactics. If I want to make a Eowyn(t), Theoden(t), Merry(t) deck that quests for 11 out of the gate, what is wrong with that? It's fun, it's crazy thematic, it's certainly not overpowered. I don't see why anybody has a problem with that just because they happen to think "red shouldn't have willpower". If we could rewind time and carefully select the role of each sphere when we were printing every card, perhaps it would be a decent enough idea to aggressively avoid color bleed. The cat is out of the bag now. It's out of the bag, its running around the room knocking stuff out of your cabinets and clawing your face. You are not going to fix color bleed by saying; 'okay, so NOW we are going to really start restricting sphere roles'. The way FFG is doing it is smart. Give a few cards that bleed colors to each sphere, but just a few cards. Let tactics have a little bit of willpower, but just a little. Enough that they don't have to feel useless during an entire phase of the game. If they want more, they will still need to splash. If they're just fine with contributing 4 a turn, let them have T Eowyn and call it good. There's no harm in tactics having a little bit of willpower so long as the idea that it's focused on combat remains intact, and I think that it does.

Let me provide one last bit of evidence for my point that color bleed really isn't a big deal. If it was a big deal, if it really were true that one color could attack, defend, quest, all at the same time... we would see a TON of monosphere decks out there. But we don't. Actually we see the opposite of that. We see tri-sphere all over the place, dual-sphere is common too, but hardly any monosphere decks at all except for niche decks like Caldara (spirit).

Now let me get to what I really want to talk about; Eowyn. Actually I've used her quite a bit. I think she's great. I think she's really great as a matter of fact. I think she's one of the best, most game-changing heros we've had for some time. Her stats are good, her threat is low, she works for staging area attack (I guess), helps out with dagger of westerneese/merry, etc, that's already been discussed a lot. She's got the Rohan trait which can be good for certain attachments -meh, don't even care.

So lets get to what really has me excited about Eowyn. DAT OPG!!!! I can not tell you how useful her once-per-game is as an ability. How many times do you start with a difficult enemy engaged with you, or in the staging area, or you just draw one on your first quest phase and there is just nothing you can do about it? It happens a lot. Or even a moderately hard enemy that has an annoying ability. It happens a lot. Eowyn gives you the tools you need to deal with practically anything and she gives it to you right away. Eowyn belongs in the category of heros like Ld Denethor who give you a good start. What is the hardest, most win-or-lose part of this game? The first couple of turns. Eowyn gives you the ability to deal with the first big nasty that comes knocking on your door while you're still trying to get set up.

A perfect example is in the campaign mode at the battle of Pelinor Fields, you get a turn or so to set up and then what shows up to ruin your day? The Wraith on Wings. But with Eowyn he's no problem. This son of a beast has 12 hp and 4 defense, but Eowyn can slam into him for 10 attack, if you've got Theoden with Snowmane and F-Aragorn who doesn't exhaust to quest (you did get the palantir, didn't you?) helping out, he's down. One less problem to deal with.

And that's just one example. Hill Trolls? Please. Southron Companies in Into Ithilien? Handled. Orc Vanguard? Done. Almost anything that you want to die, you have a freebie. And all you have to do for it is raise your threat back up to the point it would be at if you didn't have Eowyn's discount. I really feel this makes Eowyn an incredibly powerful hero to have on your team.

Red was a four legged chair with 2 legs missing while blue seemed to have 5 legs.

I agree with this.

When you use Mono-Tac for solo, the normal mode becomes the nightmare mode, even some quest most for killing and quest card with Battle keyword.

When solo a nightmare quest, adding a tac hero means nearly beaten at the setup phase.

@dalestephenson I explained in another post why I said it was off putting, the next post chronologically. I have zero problem with strong responses or with getting challenged. In fact I may be to fond of debate :-)

Ents are good, but not top tier because they are too slow IMO. Even if it is an unquestionable power deck, Eowyn may prove to not be the best hero, or maybe she will be.

@dalestephenson I explained in another post why I said it was off putting, the next post chronologically. I have zero problem with strong responses or with getting challenged. In fact I may be to fond of debate :-)

Ents are good, but not top tier because they are too slow IMO. Even if it is an unquestionable power deck, Eowyn may prove to not be the best hero, or maybe she will be.

Ents are only slow for the first turn or two. I've dug into the stats, and based on the costs of similar allies without negative effects, Ents are undercosted by about 1.4 resources. Getting two ents on the table is like saving an entire round's worth of resources. It's like if someone dropped a Legacy of Numenor on you without the accompanying threat game. Or, at least, it's like that as soon as your ents ready.

On turn 1, this is a problem. By turn 2, it's a much smaller problem, since you have that underpriced bit of work you dropped in turn one readying to help cover the lazy git you just dropped in turn 2. By turn 3 or 4, you've already made up the pace disadvantage, and everything after that just puts you further and further ahead in terms of tempo. (Aside: if you include ally readying, whether in the form of Gandalf/Narya or Leadership Faramir, even this meager tempo hit doesn't apply.)

So I'd say Ents are pretty clearly a power-archetype whose biggest deckbuilding constraint is figuring out how to survive the first two turns until your army wakes up. Which is why I think T'Eowyn is pretty clearly the best hero for the archetype, because she's MRS. "Survive the first two turns". Like I said, she's questing for 4 and attacking for 10 in round one without a single other card on the table. (Or skipping the quest and attacking for 10 twice.)

Tactics Merry was the old standby for the Ents, but Tactics Merry is the ultimate "win more" card in that deck. Once your Ents are already roused, Merry can get them extra attacks, but he doesn't do anything about the wait for them to wake up. Slothgodfather mentions Mablung as another good Ent hero, and while I'll never argue too hard against Mablung, (I think he's a top-3 hero in Tactics and a top-10 hero overall), I think the whole point of the Ents is they're already extremely resource-efficient, but that efficiency is offset by action disadvantage. So I think they're better served by a hero who mitigates that action disadvantage than one who further piles on resources.

But that's just my take on the archetype; I don't think it'd be too difficult to build a truly wicked Mablung/Ent deck, either. I'd rank him 3rd for the archetype, or maybe even 2nd over Merry depending on who my other heroes were, what my starting threat looked like, and how much that starting threat mattered for the quest I was playing.

I'm now trying to beat the Pelennor quest from the Flame of the West saga in pure solo, and it's quite difficult. I want to build a thematic full Rohan deck, and in mymmind, it makes more sens to use spirit Eowyn and Theden than tactics Eowyn and Theoden.

Why? Because the spirit Rohan allies are way more effective than the tactic ones and Theden makes them super affordable, and spirit Eowyn, with Elven light, can give you access to good card draw.

I think that tactics Eowyn will be even cooler with a pure solo 2 heroes deck, or maybe she can be more useful in a 2 handed deck.

I'm now trying to beat the Pelennor quest from the Flame of the West saga in pure solo, and it's quite difficult. I want to build a thematic full Rohan deck, and in mymmind, it makes more sens to use spirit Eowyn and Theden than tactics Eowyn and Theoden.

Why? Because the spirit Rohan allies are way more effective than the tactic ones and Theden makes them super affordable, and spirit Eowyn, with Elven light, can give you access to good card draw.

I think that tactics Eowyn will be even cooler with a pure solo 2 heroes deck, or maybe she can be more useful in a 2 handed deck.

What 3rd hero are you using with Theoden and Eowyn?

With spirit Eowyn and Theoden, it would be Eomer, that benefits from the Rohan ally discarding mechanic. Nothing new here, but I tried to do it with one spirit Rohan hero and tactics Eowyn and Theoden, but it donesn't work very well (weak card draw and questing, plus some too expensive tactics Rohan allies).

I think that if you're going the Rohan ally route, with Háma, Escort, Gamling, Spirit Théoden is better, yeah. Also, Elven-light synergizes with Eowyn, even though I think Arwen might be better that Eowyn as you can get 1 extra resource at the cost of 2 willpower, which with all the allies should not be an issue (and with that extra resource you can get your main allies way faster). You'd be breaking theme though.

I still really want to try mono-Tactics with Eowyn and Theoden though, I think the general idea of Some Sort's deck that uses Elven-light and Háma should be pretty powerful.

I'm trying my Rohan deck with Flame of the West, so Arwen would break theme, like you said, but of course, Arwen hero is so good that she could fit in almost any spirit deck!

I will try a mono sphere tactics deck but with tactics Aragorn, to give him his toys to boost the questing.

And tactics Eowyn will probably make pure solo tactic decks more viable (and be interesting to try such a deck against nightmare quests!).

.

I've been using her automaticaly now if I build a deck with Tactics (pure solo decks), I really like her.

With my lastest Ents deck, with her 9 attack ability, it can be quite ridiculous!!! http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/2603/to-catch-an-orc-nightmare-mode-crusher-1.0

Read through the OP but not much else. I don't think the new Eowyn sucks. On the contrary, I think she opens up Tactics for solo play in a way that was needed. More importantly, it gives Spirit/Tactic decks a place in the game rather than having to go Spirit/Lore. Instead of going after healing and good attack Lore allies like the one that ignores defense when it attacks alone, Frankly, creating an opportunity to add cheap weapons and armor instead of healing reduces the need for healing even more, which IMO is a good thing.

Also, I'm not sure comparing this game to Magic is completely fair, either. At least, not in terms of a color wheel. The mechanic for playing cards in this game is incredibly prohibitive. You can't play a 3-cost tactics card from your hand on the first turn if you only have a single tactics hero on your team.

The game did skew toward Spirit in the beginning because the designer(s) undervalued the importance of willpower. Willpower is, in most cases, how you win. Creating keywords like Siege and Battle were meant to give high-attack characters in other spheres a place but it just wasn't getting the job done. Those scenarios created alternate deck designs, designs that had to be shelved when playing the more traditional scenarios. The solution, ultimately, is to finally add characters with high willpower to the other spheres. Because it's the most important attribute in the game.

Spirit Eowyn is still superior, as it should be, but Tactics Eowyn has a place in the game because it opens up deck design in a whole new way. No longer is Tactics the "second player" sphere. I'm looking forward to a solo deck design with Tactics in its rightful place without having to be gimmicky.