So I've been wanting to fit this card into a deck somehow, but I just can't seem to make it stick.

I include Scout Ahead and 3x Out of the Wild, and they work well, but when I try to put in Leave No Trace or None Return, I just don't want to spend 1 resource just to add the extra effect. Why not just save that 1 resources for Keen as Lances, or just spend it on something useful.

I've played in a multiplayer game where 1 person has 3x Out of the Wild, and each of us (3 ppl) had Scout Ahead and it still didn't become useful...

So my question is obviously - do you find Keen as Lances (and The Door is Closed!) to be useful? What strategy do you employ to ensure their effect?

edit - I guess The White Council can shuffle it back, and Scroll of Isildur can let me just re-play Out of the Wild, because it does not go to the victory display with the target... Or maybe just play with multiple people who use Out of the Wild as well as Scout Ahead? We play multiple people out of my card supply, so that can't be done at this point...

If you play 3-4 player a lot like I do, an entire table with Keen as Lances is a lot of fun.

I had a deck with Keen as Lances which was focussing on healing and encounter deck shengeningians (how do you spell that?), so in other words a typical support deck. It was nice to play and everything. But as No Return and Leave no Trace are only viable when cycling often enough through the encounter deck (so mainly 3or 4 player games) and Keen as Lances kind of depends on them my games don't See that card often. Still, I like it much.

The Door is Closed on the other hand... it feels like a dead card in my hand. Just had one time where that card came in handy. (was a deck I took from ringsdb, it had only one copy of Door is Closed) So it is the same: I want to make it work, but there is not enough space in a deck for that card. :/

The door is closed is super powerfull, but it usually needs to be comboed with other Lore cards...

Victory Display Manipulation decks are definitely a long-term investment and pays off a lot more with each additional player. In my VDM decks, I run 3x Leave No Trace, 2x None Return as well as Scout Ahead (side quest). Then generally just 2x of The Door is Closed, occasionally 3x depending on the encounter and deck space. If any other player is using Lore, I request they also add the side quest. I don't tend to run secrecy levels enough to use Out of the Wild, but it is VERY strong if you can get there. If you hit a treachery with it, it is like a preemptive permanent cancel.

Granted, generally the initial pay off is to remove a troublesome card from the encounter deck, which only matters if you cycle through. The side quest (and secrecy event) are good for removing treacheries or some other troublesome card before you have to deal with it. Once you trap 2 things, Keen As Lances only cost 1. After one use, it is then free for the table. It is basically a free Gandalf trigger for each player in the group. This is a really good asset to the group and the variety of options provide a ton of versatility.

Additionally, once The Door is Closed is enabled, it gives you the most powerful cancel in the game - though obviously VERY situational. You can literally cancel anything provided you've trapped the matching card already. I've found this to be great late game as usually the Spirit player has already gone through their cancels and this - typically along with Quick Ears - gives you late game denial options. Yea, I know Quick Ears isn't VDM, but I like to run Beravor in my VDM/Support decks, and so it is an natural include. (and Wingfoot).

TL/DR: Keen as Lances is exponentially more awesome with each player in the group. Get them all to use it and any other Lore players to include Scout Ahead to make trapping more reliable.

Oh I didn't realize that - None Return and Leave no Trace both add themselves to the victory display. I knew they did this, but I didn't realize they didn't have victory points. I think I'm seeing how this comes together now, and I also see this as being much stronger in 3-4 player games where multiple people can use these cards, increasing the influence on the encounter deck, and speeding up the point when Keen as Lances becomes cheap / free, and also these games are where the encounter deck can be played through several times, allowing None Return and Leave No Trace to be much more useful.

Thank you for the feedback guys

Victory Display Manipulation decks are definitely a long-term investment and pays off a lot more with each additional player. In my VDM decks, I run 3x Leave No Trace, 2x None Return as well as Scout Ahead (side quest). Then generally just 2x of The Door is Closed, occasionally 3x depending on the encounter and deck space. If any other player is using Lore, I request they also add the side quest. I don't tend to run secrecy levels enough to use Out of the Wild, but it is VERY strong if you can get there. If you hit a treachery with it, it is like a preemptive permanent cancel.

Granted, generally the initial pay off is to remove a troublesome card from the encounter deck, which only matters if you cycle through. The side quest (and secrecy event) are good for removing treacheries or some other troublesome card before you have to deal with it. Once you trap 2 things, Keen As Lances only cost 1. After one use, it is then free for the table. It is basically a free Gandalf trigger for each player in the group. This is a really good asset to the group and the variety of options provide a ton of versatility.

While I've only used Out of the Wild with Rossiel deck, and then generally used it to buff Rossiel rather than target obnoxious cards, I don't think it's true that removing a troublesome card from the encounter deck only matters if you cycle through. For example, Road to Rivendell has 60 cards in its deck, 3 of which surge. Suppose you reveal/shadow 40 times from the deck, only 2/3rds of the way through it. Sleeping Sentry is by far the most obnoxious card in the deck, either as treachery or shadow. With two copies, the odds of not revealing at least one copy while using 40 cards are about 11%. If you manage to snag one copy with out of the wild that nearly triples to 32%. If you only go through half the deck, the odds of missing it by removing a copy rise from 25% to 49%. (Removing a 1x card like Sudden Pitfall makes your odds of missing it rise to 100% regardless of how far you go in the deck.)

Edit: Sorry, I see you were talking about the benefit of Leave No Trace and None Return -- not Out of the Wild.

Yea, the two that add themselves to the VD (Leave No Trace and None Return) only work after you had to deal with those cards already. Out of the Wild is VERY powerful since it lets you grab out whatever. I personally try to get a treachery with it and with the Side Quest but it is situational and maybe the treacheries aren't as bad and dodging some horrid enemy/location is a better option. Half the power of these cards is the pure versatility of that option. That is essentially a permanent cancel on that copy and it opens your capacity for using The Door is Closed later on.

Also note, it is very important to realize the power of the side quest Scout Ahead. It lets you put those cards back in ANY ORDER, so you can stack the deck to make sure you know what shadow effects you are going to get during that combat phase AND potentially the next few cards you'll get from the next phase. It's actually a really strong side quest even if you aren't doing any other VDM stuff.

Oh I didn't realize that - None Return and Leave no Trace both add themselves to the victory display. I knew they did this, but I didn't realize they didn't have victory points. I think I'm seeing how this comes together now, and I also see this as being much stronger in 3-4 player games where multiple people can use these cards, increasing the influence on the encounter deck, and speeding up the point when Keen as Lances becomes cheap / free, and also these games are where the encounter deck can be played through several times, allowing None Return and Leave No Trace to be much more useful.

Thank you for the feedback guys

Alright so armed with this knowledge, and playing in a 2 player game I'm going to try the Keen as Lances again. One deck will have Scout Ahead and 3x Out of the Wild, 1x Keen as Lances, and the other deck will have Scout Ahead and 2x None Return, 3x Door is Closed, and 2x Keen as Lances. I'm hoping with so much opportunity for putting cards into the discard, that both Door is Closed and Keen as Lances can come into play by the 2nd half of the quest. We're doing Fly's and Spiders, and during the part where we separate it could be useful to have a few boosts to get us through.

Keen is also great of you play a deck with hero Gandalf.

Keen is also great of you play a deck with hero Gandalf.

How so? Other than both being awesome. What is the synergy?

Keen is also great of you play a deck with hero Gandalf.

How so? Other than both being awesome. What is the synergy?

When someone plays Hero Gandalf, everyone else loses out on playing Core Gandalf; Keen As Lances is just a replacement for those effects.

Yeah I was considering dropping Sneak Attack / Gandalf for Keen as Lances after my recent play through. I mostly do Sneak Attack to Gandalf, and rarely play Gandalf straight up, so it's basically a 2 card combo. Keen as Lances fits in similarly, requiring some other cards played in advance, but overall I feel those other cards are useful on their own as well, where SA or Gandalf may be a dead card without the other. Keen doesn't have the direct damage option that Gandalf does, and I do find the direct damage useful, so it's not a direct swap, and I may look for an alternative direct damage option if I feel that's lacking...

I think the biggest difference between Gandalf vs Keen is in a larger multiplayer game. When I have played 4 player games before I've found that Gandalf can be a bit tricky. Not just the hero Gandalf, but there can also be conflict if 2 people want to play the ally at the same time. Compare this to Keen which actually makes it easier to play, as multiple people putting cards into the victory display, as well as the fact that playing Keen puts it into the victory display giving everyone a bigger advantage with less work.

Keen as lances works great with Elrond + Vilya

If you play 3-4 player a lot like I do, an entire table with Keen as Lances is a lot of fun.

I bet two decks with a set of Out of the Wild each, with a Scout Ahead would severely disable any encounter deck haha. I wanna try 4 player, all lore with OotW / SA / KAL and maybe some traps to just completely disable the encounter deck and walk into Mordor completely unhampered lol

Victory Display Manipulation decks are definitely a long-term investment and pays off a lot more with each additional player. In my VDM decks, I run 3x Leave No Trace, 2x None Return as well as Scout Ahead (side quest). Then generally just 2x of The Door is Closed, occasionally 3x depending on the encounter and deck space. If any other player is using Lore, I request they also add the side quest. I don't tend to run secrecy levels enough to use Out of the Wild, but it is VERY strong if you can get there. If you hit a treachery with it, it is like a preemptive permanent cancel.

Granted, generally the initial pay off is to remove a troublesome card from the encounter deck, which only matters if you cycle through. The side quest (and secrecy event) are good for removing treacheries or some other troublesome card before you have to deal with it. Once you trap 2 things, Keen As Lances only cost 1. After one use, it is then free for the table. It is basically a free Gandalf trigger for each player in the group. This is a really good asset to the group and the variety of options provide a ton of versatility.

Additionally, once The Door is Closed is enabled, it gives you the most powerful cancel in the game - though obviously VERY situational. You can literally cancel anything provided you've trapped the matching card already. I've found this to be great late game as usually the Spirit player has already gone through their cancels and this - typically along with Quick Ears - gives you late game denial options. Yea, I know Quick Ears isn't VDM, but I like to run Beravor in my VDM/Support decks, and so it is an natural include. (and Wingfoot).

TL/DR: Keen as Lances is exponentially more awesome with each player in the group. Get them all to use it and any other Lore players to include Scout Ahead to make trapping more reliable.

This is a good explanation of how it is used successfully, at least in my experience. Even when my partners aren't using it, it is a great card in my scrying deck. My deck uses Galdor, Pippin, and Mirlonde to start at 20 threat. Since I can't stay in Secrecy for too long, Keen as Lances is one of the few cards that allows me to re-enter Secrecy in the mid-game.

In that deck, I use 2x None Return, 2x Leave No Trace, 2x The Door is Closed!, 1x Scout Ahead, 3x Out of the Wild (3x Scroll of Isildur to use them again), and 3x Keen as Lances.

None Return, Leave No Trace, and The Door is Closed! are all good cards, but since they require some set up or a specific situation to occur 2x of them is usually sufficient and if I draw them in my starting hand, I usually discard them with Galdor's ability because they provide no immediate benefit. I also tend to discard Keen as Lances.