Taking Initiative : how / when (/why?) do play that card?

By Benoit Poulin, in Strategy and deck-building

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Stroke its hair and tell it that it's pretty.

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So it's more a piece of art with a weird sabre wield by elf in it than playable card?

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Well it is such a gamble, I'd honestly only consider it in a deck that either uses Gandalf so you know what the card is or the Stargazer, so you can stack the deck and the 2 cards you'll draw. Unless you are down on heroes, you'll always have at least 3 characters, so you'll need to have 3+ cost cards in your deck. Might become more of a reliable thing once Strider attachment comes out and you build a 2 hero deck.

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It's still better than Power in the Earth or Gandalf's Search, but only barely. Even if you miraculously made a deck that used it successfully the benefit is only meh anyway. It's not worth your brain power.

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Might be a card that will see more play with the upcoming 2-hero strider decks. In these decks you naturally will try to keep your ally count low and if you know (for example via Stargazer) that a second copy of let's say your Treebeard or Gildor is on top of you deck you can play Taking Initiative to get more cards and some damage on an enemy. Could be a nice edition to a Elrond/Rossiel deck FFG suggested in their article about the new strider card.

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I use it in my 2-hero Aragorn / Arwen deck as a filter to help me find Elven-light faster.

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I use it in my 2-hero Aragorn / Arwen deck as a filter to help me find Elven-light faster.

Oh. Yes, I see now. Clever!

I suppose there is a couple of cards like that : don't really see what's their use until synergies appears with other cards.

But as you said, Power in the Earth is... yeah.

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My favorite deck is actually built entirely around this card.

Full disclaimer at the start: Taking Initiative is a bad card. It's a wonky design that's at cross-purposes with its apparent goal. The "low characters in play" requirement and 0 cost scream that it's designed to help decks get off to a fast start, but the "the majority of cards in your deck must be expensive" requirement screams that it fits best in slowly developing decks, instead. It's a ton of effort to make it work, and I won't argue with anyone who says that effort isn't worth it. I wrote up a review on RingsDB that goes into a lot more detail: http://ringsdb.com/card/04002

With that said, you *CAN* make it work, and when it does, it's actually kind of amazing. Here's my Taking Initiative deck: http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/1170/stealing-the-initiative-v2-0-1.0

As others have noted, it really works best in a 2-hero build, and especially a secrecy build. Secrecy decks and two hero decks have major weaknesses, (fewer quality actions because of your low-threat start, and a gimped economy if you're rolling with two heroes). They also have two cards that completely solve those issues-- Timely Aid to air-drop in huge allies for one resource, and Resourceful to make up for the missing third hero, (and then some if you can get a 2nd/3rd copy in play).

The major problem with two-hero decks is simply consistency. If you get Timely Aid / Resourceful early, you'll run fine. If you don't, you're going to limp along. The best way to fix this consistency issue is to stuff the deck full of draw, especially because draw increases in value exponentially the more of it you have. Each piece of draw you play has a chance of drawing into another piece of draw, which can draw into more draw, which can keep the chain going. Eventually you reach a sort of critical mass and you're seeing 15, 20, or more cards in your first planning phase. Suddenly, Timely Aid and Resourceful are looking pretty dang consistent.

Now, you need a lot of draw, but this draw also needs to be *cheap* draw so you can afford it. 3-cost Lorien's Wealth isn't going to do you any good in your opening hand in a 2-hero deck. You can't pay for it. Ideally, you want your draw to be zero-cost. And right now there are only three pieces of zero-cost draw out there: Daeron's Runes, Deep Knowledge... and Taking Initiative. (Something like We Are Not Idle isn't really draw, since it's only replacing itself.) Deep Knowledge is usually a no-no in a secrecy build because it will blow your discount, but that's another advantage of starting with two heroes-- you can get your threat down so low that you can play doomed in the opening round and still be fine. (In fact, the original version of that deck, before Denethor's release, used Sam and Pippin and had a starting threat of 14. You could drop all three Deep Knowledges and *still* keep your secrecy discount.)

So anyway, that's the base of the deck. Two heroes, Timely Aid and Resourceful, plus Daeron's Runes, Deep Knowledge, and Taking Initiative to make sure you draw into them. Plus Leadership Denethor so you can play multiple copies of each, should you get them, (you probably will), and Galdor of the Havens to further increase consistency and explosiveness of your starts.

Once that core is in place, the goal is to minimize the whiff-rate of Taking Initiative. You need a 50% hit rate just for the card to break even, and really that should be 66% or more if you don't want to get so frustrated that you pull your hair out. I took that to the extreme; every other card in the deck represents a "hit" with Taking Initiative. The naive hit-rate of Taking Initiative in that deck is a whopping 86%. It hits on everything except for Daeron's Runes, Deep Knowledge, and itself... and one of the cards that causes it to whiff is the card you're playing. Over a long timeline, six out of every seven plays will hit.

It's really only good for your opening planning phase, but that's okay, because the opening planning phase is by far the most important one in the game. The goal is to have the most explosive start possible to establish board state. Between Galdor and your 0-cost draw, you ideally want to be dropping 3 combined copies of Resourceful and Timely Aid, filling the board with monster allies at a huge discount or loading your heroes up with so much resource gen that they can pay full cost for those allies, instead.

Just as a "for example" of how the deck runs, I just simulated a hand on RingsDB. To be clear, I'm not cherry-picking the best of several trials, I'm simming a hand right now and recording it exactly. (So I hope this doesn't suck.)

Draw: Dunedain Wanderer, Deep Knowledge, Resourceful, Ithilien Lookout, Timely Aid, Steward of Gondor.

Discard to Galdor: Dunedain Wanderer, Ithilien Lookout.

Draw: Haldir of Lorien, Resourceful, Dunedain Wanderer.

Play Deep Knowledge. My threat is now 19. Draw two copies of "Taking Initiative". (Good, I was worried that might not show up, which would be embarrassing.)

Play Taking Initiative. Flip an Ithilien Lookout. Draw the third Taking Initiative and Gildor Inglorion.

Play Taking Initiative. Flip Steward of Gondor. Draw Faramir and Gimli.

Play Taking Initiative. Flip Rivendell Scout. Draw Daeron's Runes and Wellinghall Preserver.

Play Daeron's Runes. Draw Timely Aid and Treebeard. Discard Haldir of Lorien.

Play Steward of Gondor on Denethor.

Play two Resourcefuls on Galdor and two Timely Aids. (RingsDB doesn't have a reshuffle feature, but the next five cards featured my choice between Hobbit Gandalf and Treebeard, and the five after that featured my choice between Leadership Anborn, Faramir, Haldir, and Hobbit Gandalf.)

Final result: 19 threat, Hobbit Gandalf and Leadership Anborn on the table, six cards in hand (Dunedain Wanderer, Gildor Inglorion, Faramir, Gimli, Wellinghall Preserver, Treebeard), six damage distributed among enemies in play, Denethor and Galdor both generating three resources per round.

All told I had 19 different cards in hand at one point or another and had actionable decisions on 10 others thanks to Timely Aid, all thanks to the way that draw comboed into more draw which comboed into more draw.

This was an *amazing* start, and I'm really glad, because I'd feel pretty silly if it had sucked. But it's not a particularly *unusual* start for this deck. I'm almost always getting at least two Timely Aids or Resourcefuls out, and often a couple Rivendell Scouts and Ithilien Lookouts, besides. I've played the archetype without Taking Initiative and the draw combos fall apart much faster, (plus you're not getting the damage tokens on early-revealed enemies). It's really a much less explosive deck.

So Taking Initiative... it can be cool. In this deck, it's crazy powerful. (But this doesn't really change the fact that it's a pretty bad card overall.)

(Also: I have zero desire to add Strider to this deck, since that would represent another card for Taking Initiative to whiff on. Same reason the deck doesn't include Vanish from Sight. If it's not draw, and its printed cost is lower than 2, it's not going in the deck.)

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I just simmed another three hands since that last one was so bananas, trying to get a more representative sample.

Attempt #2:

Draw: Treebeard, Wellinghall Preserver, Treebeard, Haldir, Resourceful, Wellinghall Preserver.

Discard to Galdor: Everything but the Resourceful.

Draw: Daeron's Runes, Quickbeam, Elrond, Timely Aid, Resourceful, Rivendell Scout.

Play Daeron's Runes, draw Gildor Inglorion and another Rivendell Scout. Discard Elrond.

Play two Resourcefuls, two Rivendell Scouts, and a Timely Aid. Top five cards are Dunedain Wanderer, Anborn, Anborn, Daeron's Runes, Warden of Healing. Gimme Anborn.

So... less bananas, but I'm still getting Anborn, two Rivendell Scouts, and two Resourcefuls in round one. I can live with that.

Attempt #3:

Draw: Quickbeam, Anborn, Warden of Healing, Rivendell Scout, Taking Initiative, Resourceful

Discard: The first four.

Draw: Rivendell Scout, Warden of Healing, Treebeard, Haldir of Lorien, Quickbeam.

Play Taking Initiative. Flip Gildor Inglorion. Draw Hobbit Gandalf and Timely Aid.

Play Resourceful, Rivendell Scout, and Timely Aid: top five cards net me my choice between Hobbit Gandalf and a Wellinghall Preserver.

Hobbit Gandalf, Rivendell Scout, and one Resourceful. Not too shabby.

Attempt #4:

Draw: Steward, Wellinghall Preserver, Dunedain Wanderer, Hobbit Gandalf, Deep Knowledge, Taking Initiative

Discard: Preserver, Wanderer, Gandalf.

Draw: Preserver, Taking Initiative, Daeron's Runes, Ithilien Lookout.

Play Taking Initiative, flip Quickbeam, draw Elrond and Resourceful.

Play Taking Initiative, flip the third Taking Initiative. Bummer.

Play Deep Knowledge, draw Rivendell Scout and Wellinghall Preserver.

Play Daeron's Runes, draw Treebeard and Deep Knowledge, discard Elrond.

Play Steward on Galdor, play Rivendell Scout, Ithilien Lookout, and Quickbeam, play Resourceful on Denethor. (Hold back Deep Knowledge in hopes I can keep my secrecy discount for one more round.)

The weakest start, ally-wise, but I still got three on the table and I'm generating 5 resources a round going forward.

You get the idea. Taking Initiative might not seem like a cornerstone card when looking at the deck list, but there are a lot of times where it's the only thing that keeps the chain going at the start. It makes a pretty drastic difference in consistency.