With Eleanor or Spirit Merry.

So how are people feeling about this combo? It's existed ever since the Tireless Ranger boon was introduced, but I think people just kind of accepted it because it can only happen in campaign mode.

Merry with Wingfoot means you can reduce your threat every time an enemy is revealed. That means you can pair Merry with any 2 other heroes -- why not Elrond and Gandalf for example? -- and reasonably expect to get down into Secrecy in games with a higher player count.

Eleanor with Wingfoot means you can ignore all treacheries in every game. You still have to be prepared for 1) cards that say "cannot be cancelled," and 2) more locations and enemies to replace the treacheries you're cancelling. And of course you still have Doomed and Surge to deal with. But still, this 2-card and 2-cost combo (3 counting the hero, but you don't have to draw into that card) shuts down one type of card in the counter deck permanently.

Just wondering how people feel these combos. Cool with it? Think it deserves errata? Have you tried it or seen others try it?

I would be disappointed to see either of these combos receive errata before something like Boromir and Blood and Fire. Eleanor is meant to cancel treacheries, and Merry is still dependent on enemies coming up to lower your threat with. That being said, I wouldn't doubt Wingfoot has a once per round limit coming its way.

Can't say I have tried either one yet, but in theory they both feel overpowered. I definitely think it would be fair for Wingfoot to receive errata to exhaust when it does its thing--I don't think that would break too many decks, and it would leave this combo in a "useful but not overly so" spot, which seems appropriate.

I get where you are coming from GS. I still think that Burning Brand is the worst of these attachments that does not exhaust to create awesome effect. I don't quite think we're ready for a reboot, but these things have to be watched. As a pure solo player these two are innocuous.

I don't think they're is something wrong with any of this combo. I even found them weak. Not that they shouldn't be played but because they need a whole team construction to be used. So with specific decks at 4 players they can be great. But there is so many things, including more powerful ones, we can do with 4 players synergic builds.

Outside the 4 players situation when we are playing Elanaor or Merry it is not even easy to find one good target each turn. So it is spectacular to find two, three of four. Something that would happen only once per game.

In a Elrond/Gandalf you can reach secrecy anyway. You want to play event since they can't be played at any phase with Gandalf. Elrond counsel is a 3x mandatory. Playing Merry combo or additional galadhrim greeting, double back or so is not what will make the deck insane.

Eleanor is probably the one who can be activated the most, because if we replace all the event by another cards we will see more cards, that will sometime be also event, that will then be replaced again. But what the point? You don't want to replace easy ones by a random location or enemy. And it will still be powerful to play as many test of will possible because revealing 1 card less for only only spirit resource is one of the most cheapest possibility in the game. So it is fun to replace any treachery with Eleanor but it is not the best things you can do. The combo probably more about allow you to go to quest, cancel at least one treachery, may be two, and then get Eleanor ready to use it in the fight (with a gondorian shield it is not that bad ). Cool but not overpowered.

SpiMerry is great anyway. But it is not easy to use well a big threat reduction. It is in fact a 3-card combo with Song of Eärendil. Still easy to set-up and when you can use threat for powerful things like doomed cards or Boromir is worth the shot. It is for me potentially the powerful combo of the two. In a 4 players specific environment (we need to use well this threat gain) it could be strong. But it is for me what the game lead: at 4 players there is even more synergy possible and even if some effect scale pretty badly too (like every player search for an enemy, or the whole travel one once per turn mechanic) the more player there is the most easy the game can be (if decks goes well one with another).

Since I never play at 4 players I don't play those combo and I will never get a chance to experiment they real power level. But I think there is no need of any change for that. LoAragorn (with desperate alliance) is way more dangerous, and is the result of a strange ruling. We must get back to once per game that can only be used...once per game. For the group. Test of will is also too powerful even if there is no good way to solve this problem (he must cost 2 but it is too late for doing that, a V2 is not appropriate, cannot be canceled effects is frustrating).

I guess instead of suggesting Merry makes Secrecy too easy, I should have said he provides you with this text: "Ignore forced engagement checks. You cannot be eliminated due to threat." Are those effects commensurate with the level of difficulty it takes to set up the Merry combo? Again, talking about games with 3 or 4 players here. He is not such a big deal in smaller games.

To me it is not about getting in a "Ignore forced engagement checks. You cannot be eliminated due to threat." situation since Merry can still do that by itself (in a hobbit secrecy deck for example), and can't lead to this situation fast even with the combo.

On one hand, not worth changing; on the other hand, once-per-phase on Wingfoot wouldn't be high-impact.

One-per phase mean the combo doesn't worth to be played anymore. This way it can still time by time (among once in a game I think) give great things and rest of the time those hero can go questing and using their ability two time. Play 2 cards just for a untap outside of the action sequence is way overcosted.

I'm curious if Wingfoot as written can only ready a hero once anyway due to the effect text being part of the "Response: After attached hero commits to a quest".

(1.08) Responses per Trigger

If a response or forced response is triggered, the effect can only occur once per trigger.

1 hour ago, donkler said:

I'm curious if Wingfoot as written can only ready a hero once anyway due to the effect text being part of the "Response: After attached hero commits to a quest".

(1.08) Responses per Trigger

If a response or forced response is triggered, the effect can only occur once per trigger.

Good Point ??

Let see the full effect of wingfoot:

" Response: After attached hero commits to a quest, name enemy, location or treachery. If a card of the named type is revealed during this quest phase, ready attached hero. "

So of course the response only occur once, when you commit. It is why you only name once. Enemy with merry and treachery with Eleanor. But the second effect is not a response effect (we can't ready when commit, because we don't know what we would reveal). It introduce a passive effect who can ready many times.

57 minutes ago, Rouxxor said:

Let see the full effect of wingfoot:

" Response: After attached hero commits to a quest, name enemy, location or treachery. If a card of the named type is revealed during this quest phase, ready attached hero. "

So of course the response only occur once, when you commit. It is why you only name once. Enemy with merry and treachery with Eleanor. But the second effect is not a response effect (we can't ready when commit, because we don't know what we would reveal). It introduce a passive effect who can ready many times.

I find the Wingfoot wording ambiguous at best, so I am not confident on either way to rule it, but typically Attachments that have passive effects are given their own separate paragraph outside of the bold "Response:" trigger word paragraph (see Blade of Gondolin).

So what is your interpretation? The response can't ready the hero right when it resolve since you haven't revealed any card yet. Since you don't propose any clear interpretation I can't follow your thinking. It as nothing to do with blade of Gondolin since the two effects of the blade are different but wingfoot need to get the response do be able to ready later in the quest. They need to be related!

And I think that you misinterpret the quote of the FAQ. To me it means that you can't do a response twice for the same event. For example you can't draw three with Gandalf and then draw another three just because you make the response action another times. It seem obvious but you can't activate an action twice so the precision is needed. Plus there is some tricky case. For example:

Card A: response: when you draw a card, put a resource on the hero

Card B: response: when you put a resource on a hero, draw a card

Does it make a loop? Nop, because it is the same initial event so you can't do his response twice. I don't know if there is any examples of this kind in LoTR. But this exact ruling mean that in MTG rulebook.

And if I'm right that mean even if wingfoot is a two-response effect (a response when you commit, a response when the type of card is revealed) it work the same way that passive effect would have worked.

No need to argue about this, it's been officially confirmed to work.

Could still worth it to think about why does it work, how do those effect are worded and what do this imply. Could lead us to understand others cards, or simply help me for the day I want to create my own adventures ^^.

Personally, if I were designing a game and there was a card combo someone could reasonably get on turn 1 that would nullify 1/3 of the cards I design, I'd errata it, regardless of whether people think it's good or not. So I'd expect Wingfoot to get an errata requiring it to exhaust to ready the hero, considering that's how Caleb imagined it working it the first place.

But given that we went this year without our regularly scheduled FAQ update, I'm guessing our ability to self-police silly combos over the years has been noticed and errata is not considered as important as it once was. I would like a FAQ update with all the rule clarifications that have been made about the last couple cycles though.

18 hours ago, Seastan said:

nullify 1/3 of the cards

That's not true! Some of them have Doomed and/or Surge! Here is a solution: Just print all future Treacheries with Surge!

More to the point, neither hero actually "nullifies" 1/3 of the cards, which would be awesomely overpowered. Eleanor can *replace* a third of the cards (well, the "When Revealed" part), but a steady diet of enemies and locations is generally not a good thing. In practice, she wouldn't replace all the treacheries in most quests, just the especially harmful ones, and for 1-2 players she typically manages to do that all the time anyway. (There may be a few quests [Dread Realm?] where you would want to replace a large percentage of treacheries.)

Merry doesn't nullify enemies at all, he just gets a -1 threat for each one revealed, which doesn't seem especially overpowered to me. Taking surge into account the typical quest would reveal ~0.5 enemies per player per turn, which even in four players is only -2 threat per turn. In order for an every-enemy Merry to get Gandalf/Elrond/Merry down to secrecy, assuming no other threat-raising/lowering card effects, there would have to be (13+# of rounds) enemies revealed -- by which point Gandalf/Elrond have Vilya/Pipe set up and can play expensive cards for free anyways. I don't see a late-game secrecy Elrond/Gandalf combo being substantially more powerful than a late-game Elrond/Gandalf combo without secrecy. (Not that the threat reduction wouldn't be welcome in avoiding threating out, the chief danger with such a high starting threat.)

I think everytime-Merry might be most useful with TaBoromir, help paying for the readies that Boromir uses to kill those enemies. Still, it's not Merry that would be the overpowered part of that combo.

It's a cool combo, but two cards that aren't useful to Merry/Eleanor until you have both of them makes me think it wouldn't even be worth the deck space to try to set it up in a 1-2 player game. (With Tireless Ranger it's only a 1-card combo, so it'd be worth it there; except I don't think I'd ever waste the +1 defense on Merry just for a chance of a little additional threat removal. It'd be cool on Eleanor, since the boon would get her to 3 defense and she's Gondor.)

Merry don't make a -1 threat, it is more an average 2.5 threat per enemy revealed. I still agree with your conclusion.

1 hour ago, dalestephenson said:

More to the point, neither hero actually "nullifies" 1/3 of the cards, which would be awesomely overpowered. Eleanor can *replace* a third of the cards (well, the "When Revealed" part), but a steady diet of enemies and locations is generally not a good thing. In practice, she wouldn't replace all the treacheries in most quests, just the especially harmful ones, and for 1-2 players she typically manages to do that all the time anyway. (There may be a few quests [Dread Realm?] where you would want to replace a large percentage of treacheries.)

Merry doesn't nullify enemies at all, he just gets a -1 threat for each one revealed, which doesn't seem especially overpowered to me. Taking surge into account the typical quest would reveal ~0.5 enemies per player per turn, which even in four players is only -2 threat per turn. In order for an every-enemy Merry to get Gandalf/Elrond/Merry down to secrecy, assuming no other threat-raising/lowering card effects, there would have to be (13+# of rounds) enemies revealed -- by which point Gandalf/Elrond have Vilya/Pipe set up and can play expensive cards for free anyways. I don't see a late-game secrecy Elrond/Gandalf combo being substantially more powerful than a late-game Elrond/Gandalf combo without secrecy. (Not that the threat reduction wouldn't be welcome in avoiding threating out, the chief danger with such a high starting threat.)

I think everytime-Merry might be most useful with TaBoromir, help paying for the readies that Boromir uses to kill those enemies. Still, it's not Merry that would be the overpowered part of that combo.

It's a cool combo, but two cards that aren't useful to Merry/Eleanor until you have both of them makes me think it wouldn't even be worth the deck space to try to set it up in a 1-2 player game. (With Tireless Ranger it's only a 1-card combo, so it'd be worth it there; except I don't think I'd ever waste the +1 defense on Merry just for a chance of a little additional threat removal. It'd be cool on Eleanor, since the boon would get her to 3 defense and she's Gondor.)

I don't see any issue with the Merry+Wingfoot combo. There are easier and more reliable ways to reduce your threat in this game. I will say that it's stronger than your argument makes it out to be though. I've played several 3 player games with 28 starting threat and ended each one in secrecy, and they sure didn't last 13 rounds.

The Eleanor+Wingfoot combo is a whole different matter. I can't remember the last 4 player game I've seen or played in that was lost from an enemy or location being revealed. It's always those brutal treacheries that target everyone and scale horribly with 4 players that put an end to a multiplayer game. If Eleanor by herself was so good at preventing this, I wouldn't see it happen so often. But in reality two brutal treacheries coming out in 4+ cards is not at all uncommon. And often times Eleanor won't cancel the second-worst treachery in the deck out of fear of a worse one following behind. As a recent example, in Beneath the Sands Eleanor is going to be saving herself to cancel each instance of Forced Off Track. But this means you'll be taking the full effects of each copy of Injured Companion and Enfeebled, both of which target every player, and I've seen these cards end games all on their own. In Race Across Harad, do you use Eleanor on Sandstorm, Heat Exhaustion, or Fear of Mordor? Again, each one targets 4 players that I'm sure would rather see an enemy or location.

Personally, I think these multiplayer-scaling treacheries are an unfair design since the main source of scaling is already present in the number of cards you reveal each turn. So being able to cancel them all makes me happy. But if I put myself in the place of the designer, I don't think I'd be happy with someone taking a third of the cards I design and adding the text: "If you don't like this card, replace it with the next one instead."

This is another overpowered combo with just only 2 cards, that should need an errata.

The best solution is to add the sentence on her: only one per phase (the same need is for Boromir tactic)

Exhaust Wingfoot to ready attached hero...

Exhaust Burning Brand to cancel the effects of a shadow card...

35 minutes ago, Bullroarer Took said:

Exhaust Wingfoot to ready attached hero...

Exhaust Burning Brand to cancel the effects of a shadow card...

Funny, you made me backtrack to my rework project and it was exactly what I did that time:

Asked Caleb and here is his reply :

It is good to hear that an errata is coming.