I was bummed dwarf pipe was spirit and that was an issue with the new upcoming thorin, now it can have some use with Dain.

The woodman deck is getting some serious love. This cycle will have 3 cool decks buildable, Dale, woodman, and if we get thorin a new dwarf discard

Discover keyword is nice.

If I may comment in a different direction, I think the setting for this quest is great. Fram Framson was one of my favorite characters in the Middle Earth CCG and I loved the sword Wurmsbane. I had a deck built around getting them out and kicking some serious dragon butt.

seeing some of that setting be acknowledged by the card game has me excited. Does this mean a potential Fram Framson hero down the road? One can dream!

I am always more interested in new quest ideas or themes than the new player cards - and this one really has me excited as it looks like a real undead dungeon crawl. Hopefully it will play well but this cycle is becoming one of the most looked forward to ever for me.

Valiant determination doesn't have a lot of good targets at this time. Most allies you want to quest with don't have a reason to do much else.

The only really decent targets are Faramir, Rosie, Mirkwood Explorer, and the new dale allie that powers up with attachments

There are plenty of characters like bofur (tactics) that could quest for 2 and then use his ability but it doesn't seem worth it for the attachment. I do like it though it is a cool card

Im excited for the cheaper with attachments ally most myself, I like that deck that's brewing

If we include Rosie as a good target for being able to use her two willpower and also use her ability, you should also include any other two willpower allies that aren't dedicated questers. Eagles of the Misty Mountains comes to mind immediately, they can get to really high attack/defense in an Eagles deck, but Gwaihir, Treebeard, Quickbeam, and Yazan all have 2 willpower with better combat stats (and there's a host of 2-wp allies with decent combat stats)

If we consider global willpower buffs the list expands considerably. Kahliel's Headdress gives +1 wp to Harad allies, so that would expand the list to Jubayr and Kahliel's Tribesmen. Visionary Leadership gives +1 wp to Gondor allies, so Boromir, Anborn, Veteran of Osgaliath, Defender of Cair Andros and even Warden of Healing would qualify (though he's too fragile to invest in, I think). In a Dale deck Long Lake Trader would be a good choice. And in an Outlands deck, virtually anyone might benefit.

To expand on @player1683311's point: I question whether Valiant Determination is worth playing in the situation where all you get out of it is 2 WP. For 2 Spirit resources, we already have several good 2-WP allies that also have some kind of ability, so why not just slot those in your deck? For example, unlike Val Det they don't require you to wait to play them until you have the perfect ally on the board.

Of course, I grant there are situations where having 2 WP on an attachment (sort of) is useful—say, a quest which punishes players for the raw # of allies in play, or deals out a lot of direct damage to exhausted questers. And attachments are easier to fish out with things like Master of the Forge and Galadriel. And, Dale. Etc. Point is, you can certainly come up with uses for the card.

But overall, it seems quite bit more nuanced a deckbuilding decision than simply, "Hey, 2 WP [when I've already had to draw and play an ally with 2 WP printed on it that is still useful later in the round]!"

For 2 spirit resources, we have the following allies that provide 2 willpower:

Arwen Undomiel (awesome, but unique)

Bilbo Baggins (unique)

Escort from Edoras (goes away)

Curious Brandybuck (goes away)

West Road Traveler

Galadriel's Handmaiden

As a generic way of getting two willpower, I agree there's no real reason to include the attachment over WRT or GH, especially since with either of those you can just play the ally instead of having a suitable 2-wp ally in place already which is costly. So unless you're trying to keep the ally count down (or avoid 1-hp allies) this isn't a general purpose card.

OTOH, if you're running a thematic tribal deck then you may not want any of the two-cost allies, but this is a generic card and isn't anti-thematic for any tribe. Though except for Dale, most of the tribes that I think would benefit from the attachment for getting effectively +2 wp aren't usually running spirit. I don't think it's going to be a staple card by any means, unlike Unexpected Courage.

I agree that in spirit it is not automatically an automatic include becouse of all the cheap 2w /2 costs cards available on sphere. However it is something we never had before in this form and it can suits very well the role of utility card to expand today available toolbox. Not a staple but not to dismiss either. Let's see some months after release what players come to use it for.

1 minute ago, dalestephenson said:

For 2 spirit resources, we have the following allies that provide 2 willpower:

You missed Ethir Swordsman, by the way. (Also, Sailor of Lune conditionally but commonly.)

Maybe a bit offtopic, but while I play the game for years, I never found a way to use the discard mechanism in other decks than Noldor - where I use it very much indeed.

So I would like someone to help me on this ... why should I want to discard cards to give Dain more defense than put his a shield or something to help him on this? Ok there is Hidden cache or Ered Luin miner , but other than that I cant find a way to use this mechanism in a dwarf deck ... you risk losing cards that could be useful the way I see it (and off course I am missing something, thats why I ask for help)

15 minutes ago, Nickpes said:

you risk losing cards that could be useful the way I see it

There's a lot to write about mining, but I want to quickly address this point: think about how far you get down into your player deck during a regular game. Most builds don't drill down through the entire deck, right? There's often a good number of cards not drawn even at the end of a quest.

So, those (randomly chosen!) cards are in a sense no more useful to you than those discarded through mining. And in a mining deck, you are presumably getting some positive use out of the mining, e.g., boosting Spirit Dain's defense and/or hitting a Hidden Cache, so overall you shouldn't really worry about it that much

As ever, things are much more nuanced than the short summary, but I think the principle that mined cards are generally no worse than undrawn cards is good to keep in mind. Once you're mining way more cards than you would have had undrawn (which Dain might facilitate), the calculus starts to get complicated…

1 hour ago, sappidus said:

To expand on @player1683311's point: I question whether Valiant Determination is worth playing in the situation where all you get out of it is 2 WP. For 2 Spirit resources, we already have several good 2-WP allies that also have some kind of ability, so why not just slot those in your deck?

As I said when you brought this up on Discord: Why not include both?

6 minutes ago, Nickpes said:

So I would like someone to help me on this ... why should I want to discard cards to give Dain more defense than put his a shield or something to help him on this? Ok there is Hidden cache or Ered Luin miner , but other than that I cant find a way to use this mechanism in a dwarf deck ... you risk losing cards that could be useful the way I see it (and off course I am missing something, thats why I ask for help)

Defensive attachments have to be first drawn and then paid for. Dain's ability is available right from the start of the game without needing anything else in play. As far as the risk of losing useful cards, how often do you draw your entire deck in the course of a game? Because until you empty your deck those cards you discarded could just as easily have been the ones on the bottom of your deck which you just never drew. You don't get them either way. Except since Spirit also has cards like Dwarven Tomb and Stand and Fight, you can potentially pick the ones you want out of your discard pile, and this ends up being a lot easier than trying to actually draw all of them into your hand.

Thank you both ... I see your points !

just for comment, sappidus, when I play Noldors I always end up all my deck ... nearly the same happens with the new Dale decks I make ?

7 minutes ago, PocketWraith said:

As I said when you brought this up on Discord: Why not include both? 

Because you can't even play all the 2 WP ally: Arwen, Bilbo, ethir swordman, handmaid, the rohan one who switch the location. And I may even forget some. Even with an ability irrelevant you still can put all of them in quest, and that 2 WP more than valiant determination can never bring. And this don't need any combo, where valiant determination do nothing if you don't have the right ally in play first.
It is a card who be optimal in very few cases, in only a few decks.

While the mining dwarves are getting there pretty fast as we can see, IMO LeadershipDáin-less dwarves need some serious willpower boosts to be playable solo (as a strict tribe obviously). Once you take away LDáin's boost, you're left off with some pretty underwhelming Spirit dwarves. Combat shouldn't be an issue though, as Tactics Dwarves and axes are still pretty strong (also presumably Thorin III is going in the deck). But it's the willpower I'm worrying about. As ridiculous as it might sound, I would love to get a 2-cost 2-willpower spirit dwarf to compensate for the lack of global boosts and raw willpower in Dwarf allies.

As for @TheSpitfired point: As much as MECCG had Fram as a playable character, he's way out of timeline for our game. My money is on Fram being the final boss in the scenario, the eponymous Ghost of Framsburg we have to fight in order to get Wormsbane. Why would he impede us from getting it and slaying a dragon? Well, ghosts grow surly in their tombs and we are grave-robbing him. He might want to "test" our worthiness for using his legendary sword by fighting us. Makes sense IMO.

To come at it from the other direction, speaking purely within Spirit, Valiant Determination can be considered being 2 resources for 2 attack—an excellent exchange rate in Spirit—when played on the likes of a Northern Tracker or Rhovanion Outrider, allies you often want to be questing with. Still draw-order dependent, but worth a thought.

2 hours ago, Nickpes said:

Maybe a bit offtopic, but while I play the game for years, I never found a way to use the discard mechanism in other decks than Noldor - where I use it very much indeed.

So I would like someone to help me on this ... why should I want to discard cards to give Dain more defense than put his a shield or something to help him on this? Ok there is Hidden cache or Ered Luin miner , but other than that I cant find a way to use this mechanism in a dwarf deck ... you risk losing cards that could be useful the way I see it (and off course I am missing something, thats why I ask for help)

Imagine instead that it discards the bottom cards of your deck. But seriously, Dwarf mining is quite a strong archetype and Dain fits right in.

@sappidus That's the whole point of the card in my opinion. Like others stated, two extra willpower isn't scarce in Spirit, but two attack is certainly profitable. And don't forget the big neutral allies like Thalion or Treebeard. Hmm. Valiant Determination looking good in a Caldara deck.

1 hour ago, sappidus said:

To come at it from the other direction, speaking purely within Spirit, Valiant Determination can be considered being 2 resources for 2 attack—an excellent exchange rate in Spirit—when played on the likes of a Northern Tracker or Rhovanion Outrider, allies you often want to be questing with. Still draw-order dependent, but worth a thought.

I think you have it. Those allies are not the classic cheap 2w/2costs bodies spirit can so easily throw in.

Both are expensive, useful allies which bring something different on the table when questing and have strong combat stats to be put at use later in the turn.

I did miss Ethir Swordsman as a 2-for-2, though if it's in a full Outlands deck Valiant Determination could be well worth playing on a well-rounded Outlands.

New Dain has synergy with mining targets like Ered Luin and Hidden Cache, but the "Dwarven Mining" deck often has LeDain to buff the dwarves. With that said, I think Spirit Dain would fit just fine with a couple of Noldor and a Noldor-heavy deck -- or with Caldara. If you're worried about the cards he'll discard, give him Dwarf Pipe. This Dain can be splashed, rock solid defense is one of the things I love most. Too bad he doesn't have sentinel, though he's a sphere match for Arwen.

Dain + Dori can defend for eight without any attachments, events, or allies. Insane.

I think we're missing that Dwarves need massive willpower. Dwarf mining could easily function as a combat deck that also throws a little willpower to the rest of the group

47 minutes ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

I think we're missing that Dwarves need massive willpower.

...I just mentioned that...

Power creep.

Bad art creep.

It is possible that some killer card to enable dwarf discard archetype and push it the next level is lurking in the depth of the unspoiled card of this cycle...

1 hour ago, Gizlivadi said:

But it's the willpower I'm worrying about. As ridiculous as it might sound, I would love to get a 2-cost 2-willpower spirit dwarf to compensate for the lack of global boosts and raw willpower in Dwarf allies.

Untroubled by Darkness?