How are we feeling about this guy now that dwarven mining has been developed some?

I like him with Leadership Dain in play, but in a mining deck you are strongly tempted to use Dain’s new spirit version. And then he is very lukewarm, even when he is free. He is just not impactful and requires a card slot.

I think he would be most useful in a deck which uses a lot of allies and A Very Good Tale, which is *not* the mining deck that gets built when I sit down to build one. I just cut him from my combat-focused attachment-heavy mining deck and I haven’t missed him. Other thoughts?

How big do you make your mining deck? I let mine bloat, so plenty of cards slots for the few cards that like to be discarded.

Yes, he's not so impressive without LeDain around, but that's true of most dwarf allies. Free is good, especially if you're playing any get-to-five-dwarves.

I still want another card that likes to be discarded.

Agreed, would love to see more sphere-theme options. Direct damage from a discarded tactics event, add willpower to a character from a discarded spirit event ...

I still keep my mining deck to 50 cards. I can discard through it pretty easily, but that is a long term consideration. I am still hoping hard to get that Imladris Stargazer on turn 1 or 2, so smaller deck is still important for faster ramp up. (Developers: help us out with that. Totally need a dwarf card that scries your own deck)

In a mining deck or a deck with Expert Treasure Hunter he’s great. In a multi color deck he’s a reasonable meat shield, but you will rarely be happy playing him from your hand. In those cases he’s a last possible resort card. (As opposed to Guardian of Rivendell who you can play for the same price while pitching a couple of useless unique duplicates and then realize “this guy’s pretty good”.)

I generally agree that mining needs “one more card”, but I also worry that the one more card might make the archetype borderline broken. So I really think care must be taken.

You could give it a new keyword and have that keyword be 'limit three per deck.'

The best use of this card, honestly, is a Gandalf deck plus expert treasure hunter. You get in a free chump blocker and if you accidentally draw it otherwise, you can put it back on top with the pipe. But even then, I hardly think it's worth the price of a slot in that deck.