How much is too much? I love control, to a fault true, but play along. Pretend for a moment you are playing a quest with a few nasty treacheries that you absolutely want to cancel... Where do you stop?

1. Three Tests of Will.

2. Three Dwarven Tombs.

3. Three Elven Jewelers?

4. Three Maps of Earendil?

Or some combination? Let me hear your thoughts!

Edit: spelling.

I only have two cores, so my spirit decks typically have three Tests of Will and Two Dwarven Tombs.

Elven Jewelers never will help you to cancel. May be you want to name another ally?

Since I don't adapt my deck to scenario it will depend on deck. I always put 3 test of will in my non Erestor spirit decks. When coming to mono spirit I put some dwarven tombs but map of Earendil don't get played very much since Caladara errata.

Another interesting question is: how many test of will in multiplayer games? At 2 players 6 test of will are fine I found. At 3 players I vary between 8 and 9 test of will. I do sometime also play decks without spirit so it lower a lot my proportion of test of will ^^.

I actually rarely include Test of Will. Honestly I don’t know why except that in some of my decks I don’t have spirit.

I guess I just don’t mind rolling with the variance.

Elven Jeweler has nothing to do with cancellation AFAIK. Also Map of Earendil doesn't exist.

Map of Earnil can't recur A Test of Will because that would require an action window, something you don't have while revealing a treachery during questing.

Also, it's interesting that you didn't mention Eleanor, I find she is a rockstar in multiplayer since Test of Will could run out or not be available at the time

Maybe this is the kind of thing you would like. It's a deck I built a long time ago that recurs A Test of Will as many times as possible with cards like Dwarven Tomb, Galadhrim Weaver, and Will of the West. Card draw thins the deck down, and Galadriel's mirror fetches the copies of Test of Will from the deck after they've been shuffled back in.

This deck was able to cancel every reveal of The Savage South and Biting Insects in one particular 16 round game of The Mumakil.

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/3857/the-mirror-s-gaze-3.0

The Jewler and the map can bring back the tomb right? Which can then bring back Test?

I meant Weaver... duh.

And Elenor is a good point for sure, but she requires the card to be replaced.

Yes, I've definitely done Dwarven Tomb recycling with Map of Earnil before, for the express purpose of re-using A Test of Will.

You're totally missing the Lore side of things though. Scout Ahead (side quest) and Out of the Wild to remove the treachery of your choice (or enemy or location!), with The Door is Closed as a hard cancel to extra copies of that card later. Scry, and then Gildor's Counsel to reduce the chance that you even reveal that treachery, or Risk Some Light to put it where you want it. When you see it come out as a shadow card on the same turn, you can rest assured you have done something similar to cancelling it. The Door is Closed did some nice work for me on my saga playthrough versus Shelob's evil treacheries.

@WingfootRanger Yes, that’s the kind of deck I’m talking about. Good job cancelling all those. Savage South is a home wrecker for sure. So in your opinion, how much is too much? All the recurrence cards hinge on you having AToW in the first place. (Obviously you had fetch cards too.)

@GrandSpleen I’ve played the Lore cancellation decks too. During the last Fellowship event my deck’s job was just to remove key cards using OotW, ToW and TDiC. That was an extremely finely tuned set of decks for a specific quest though. I’ve tried a similar strategy two player and found that it ended up “condensing” the encounter deck so much that it was hard to beat.

Usually I don't use Test of Will at all...

yes it's very power,but just face those "when revealed" effects is also very good feeling.

and Test of Will can't combe with any other cards, when I forfeit this card , I find more positions for those combo cards , and that makes me happy.

57 minutes ago, kainveus said:

Usually I don't use Test of Will at all...

yes it's very power,but just face those "when revealed" effects is also very good feeling.

and Test of Will can't combe with any other cards, when I forfeit this card , I find more positions for those combo cards , and that makes me happy.

I certainly use Test of Will plenty, but I agree there is a certain perverse pleasure in taking all treacheries in a quest to the face. Winning that way often demands a more nuanced view of the encounter deck and modifications to how you would otherwise play your own deck… These can be quite fun.

@Bullroarer Took I usually use Test of Will whenever there is Spirit in my deck, and sometimes throw in Dwarven Tomb as well if I am building a questing deck. That deck I shared is the only one I have built to recur Test of Will so many times, so it is a bit of an odd one out for me. I sometimes use Eleanor or The Door is closed in multiplayer as well.

For multiplayer games, I prefer that one or more people bring treachery cancellation such as Test of Will, depending on the number of players. Treacheries can get very nasty in multiplayer where they can interact with more cards than they otherwise would in solo. That is why I sometimes play without treachery cancellation in solo, since you can get away with it in many scenarios.

Though you don't always need cancellation in every situation, I would say too much is when you consistently have cancellation cards stagnating in your hand throughout the game, or you are so trigger happy to cancel treacheries that you even cancel those that wouldn't hurt you too badly. In that case, you should maybe play other cards that fill other needed functions.

One of my next articles on playstyle for my blog is going to talk about variance and I’m actually going to be using the test of will versus taking treacheries to the face example. It’s definitely an element of playstyle or personal preference that isn’t talked about as much!

Great topic! I use test of will x3 and dwarven tomb x2. Used to run x2 Halfling Bounder too.

Too much is not enough! Especially if playing Nightmare ?