Merry Christmas to all!

as a little Christmas gift, I'm sending you the whole new player card reviews from The Redhorn Gate.

Link: https://visionofthepalantir.com/2019/12/17/player-card-review-the-redhorn-gate/

As obvious, write your own observations, experiences and opinions. What card you see as TOP? Which as SHEEP? And which sphere is ENRCIHED AT MOST?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Silblade

Correction needs to be made to Bofur ally -- it is NOT necessary to quest unsuccessfully to keep Bofur in play, merely to avoid questing successfully. The ideal case is Bofur providing just enough willpower to break even (and as you can commit him after staging, this outcome is completely predictable).

1 hour ago, dalestephenson said:

Correction needs to be made to Bofur ally -- it is NOT necessary to quest unsuccessfully to keep Bofur in play, merely to avoid questing successfully. The ideal case is Bofur providing just enough willpower to break even (and as you can commit him after staging, this outcome is completely predictable).

Hi dalestephenson,

so you say that you firstly reveal all encounter cards during staging and at the end of this step you are allowed to use Bofur's ability? Then you just know you will quest unsuccessfully… and Bofur can stay for its 1 cost, is that right? Well, this doesn't cross my mind.:D

My take:

From a strict progression point of view, Elrohir is a *terrible* hero. His defensive bonus depends on a character who doesn't exist, leaving him overcosted by one. His special ability to pay for readying after attack is limited by his terrible one defense.

Of course, that's a very narrow view because Elladan will be arriving in the very next pack, as could've been easily predicted. At that point he becomes a base-3 defense defender with potential for unlimited defenses (as long as the resources are unlimited). The future is bright for Elrohir, once he has Steward of Gondor, Gondorian Shield, and Blood of Numenor on him....

At the same time, the reliance on Elladan does dramatically reduce his flexibility. In order for his defense to be adequate he needs Elladan at quest start, meaning that Elladan/Elrohir consume two hero slots. More players make more room, but then run into the issue that Elrohir lacks sentinel (and Elladan will lack ranged). For that reason, you really want them in the same deck where with the help of optional engagements you can concentrate your enemies.

Is Elrohir's readying superior to pre-errata Boromir? Heck no. Whilie Leadership has great resource generation *potential*, everybody starts with ample threat resource -- and there's a lot of tools to lower it. More importantly, Boromir's readying isn't restricted to defending, it can be used to attack multiple times or battle/siege quest and ready, or fulfill any quest-specific readying. The errata does make it so that Elrohir has one huge advantage of Boromir as a defender -- his in-built readying has no limit while Boromir can only defend twice.

That using Boromir's ability will hurt your score counts exactly zero for me. I consider the official scoring to be worse than worthless and consider that it says absolutely nothing about the quality of a win.

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Taking Initiative is also a terrible card in strict progression, but it remains terrible for a long, long time. Two-hero decks aren't practical until Strider and Folco come along, One-hero decks aren't practical until the Grey Wanderer contract gets released. This card actually will be worthwhile in a Grey Wanderer deck, especially with the actual Grey Wanderer seeing the top card. Until then it's a total turky, too hard to trigger. Secrecy decks do NOT change this equation, since they're three hero decks until Strider comes out, and since Secrecy decks don't *stay* with a low character count, thanks to cards like Timely Aid.

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Timely Aid, OTOH is a *terrific* card in a secrecy deck, which at the point of this pack don't exist. Heck, even when Spirit Glorfindel shows up a few packs later there's a limited number of 7-8 threat cost heroes to pair with him, only one of which (Theodred) is in leadership. So until Black Riders comes up, there's only three lineups where Timely Aid can be played at game start for 1. (Theodred/SpGlorfindel/Bifur or Eleanor or Frodo). [I suppose technically SpPippin came out before Black Riders, and with 6 threat can expand the lineup, but his ability is completely useless in any of those lineups.]

A shot out to later quests that start *any* deck in secrecy by fiat. Timely Aid is a great card to sideboard in there.

----

Unseen Strike also suffers from the lack of low-threat heroes, but the below-engagement cost restriction is *much* looser than secrecy. The first popular secrecy deck (Sam/LoPippin/TaMerry) was in secrecy for only one turn, but can use this card all day. Besides that, there's a *ton* of quests with boss fights, and bosses tend to be high-threat enemies that automatically engage.

Note also that it's not required that the attacked enemy be enaged with you -- or engaged to anyone at all. If Dunhere's in a tactics deck (and Dunhere badly needs tactics to buff his anemic attack) this card can be used for his staging area attacks.

I don't often use this card, because I'm not generally a fan of one-time-buff events. But it is a card, I think, that you can easily predict before the quest starts whether it will be useful when drawn or not.

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Keeping Count is highly thematic and objectively terrible. It's a hard decision whether Keeping Count or Taking Initiative is worse, except with the one-hero deck coming that becomes an easy decision.

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Bofur is the best card in the pack. The ability to cheat him into play for one cost by break-even or unsuccessful questing is great value; the ability to do so after staging makes it especially helpful. You know what the effect of adding +2 willpower to the quest will be, and that could be the difference between clearing the active location or not, or questing successfully or unsuccessfully, or the difference between breaking even or taking two threat.

You can add as much to the quest by putting him in play for full price, and this saves money over playing him repeatedly -- but depending on the quest, the more expensive option may better -- quests where overquesting is a problem, or there are encounter cards that would damage/nerf Bofur if he were already committed to the quest.

At time of release you could even get the resource spent back with Horn of Gondor, if he were returned to hand. It sitll works to ready Prince Imrahil (and with assorted later cards).

At full price a non-fragile 2-for-3 quester is still good value even outside a dwarf deck.

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Renewed Friendship is a nice idea, but a weak card. As you point out, readying a hero in the planning phase is rarely useful, and giving someone else a card merely makes up for the card you drew (Renewed Friendship) that helps you not at all. Lowering threat by two is nice, but you still have to wait for an attachment to be played on your hero.

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Ravenhill Scout has a narrow usage, it is reliant on some other cards (or the active location) to get the progress it needs to nerf locations in the staging area. That'd be fine if he were cheap, or was useful when he was not moving progress around. Sadly, neither are true.

--

Needful to Know if you're actually in secrecy has some utility, it will *on average* lower your threat and also scry the top card of the encounter deck. However, I don't like it outside Secrecy in conjunction with scrying -- while that makes it safer for threat reduction, it means the scrying benefit goes away completely -- and 2 cost for a *little* threat reduction just isn't compelling. Consider that *most* cards are going to be 3 threat or less, in which case you have a maximum net threat reduction of two -- for two lore resources. Too much for too little.

I like this card best in decks that not only start in secrecy but have reasonable hopes of staying there (like a Hobbit deck with SpMerry).

---

Good Meal isn't immediately useful, between the paucity of Hobbits and the lack of expensive events to discount them with. It can come in handy later, but I find that expensive events tend to be few in number in just about any deck.

13 minutes ago, Silblade said:

Hi dalestephenson,

so you say that you firstly reveal all encounter cards during staging and at the end of this step you are allowed to use Bofur's ability? Then you just know you will quest unsuccessfully… and Bofur can stay for its 1 cost, is that right? Well, this doesn't cross my mind.:D

Correct, there's an action window between staging and quest resolution where you can put Bofur into play. But the important thing to note in the article is that you do NOT have to quest unsuccessfully. Breaking even will also keep Bofur in play.

I've become very fond of Elladan and Elrohir decks. I don't see their co-dependence as a cost so much as a deckbuilding choice and they are far from the only heroes who benefit from building to their strengths. They are in the best spheres for combat attachments so it isn't too hard to get the most out of them. They have generally useful traits too, although they are missing Warrior which would useful - thankfully Mighty Warrior exists.

One thing which is now true (although is not helpful in progression style play) is that with the introduction of ally versions of the twins you are no longer 100% reliant on using both heroes. I'm not a big fan of that though as it seems much too unreliable.

The only score I am really in disagreement with is Needful to Know. Even in secrecy that card seems terrible to me. There are better options for both scrying and threat reduction. If you are looking to use it for both it is too unreliable - high risk low reward is not an appealing proposition.

I really love the design of Ravenhill Scout, but the cost has put me off including him even in a deck with King of Dale. In almost all cases you'd be better off just running a card which actually places progress tokens.

1 hour ago, dalestephenson said:

Taking Initiative is also a terrible card in strict progression, but it remains terrible for a long, long time. Two-hero decks aren't practical until Strider and Folco come along, One-hero decks aren't practical until the Grey Wanderer contract gets released. This card actually will be worthwhile in a Grey Wanderer deck, especially with the actual Grey Wanderer seeing the top card. Until then it's a total turky, too hard to trigger. Secrecy decks do NOT change this equation, since they're three hero decks until Strider comes out, and since Secrecy decks don't *stay* with a low character count, thanks to cards like Timely Aid.

Amazing how the new contracts can breathe new life into total coasters. It does seem like a good fit here. I haven't seen this point mentioned yet, but I like how well the card is designed for secrecy, even if the effect is unexciting - obviously if you have fewer heroes you will hit more often, but this also plays into secrecy because secrecy cards are over-costed, meaning this card will be more likely to hit if you include them.

Elladan/Elrohir decks can be great fun; but taking two slots of the same deck does limit their flexibility and in one-deck play there's precious few heroes who can comfortably take the third spot. (Arwen's the obvious choice, both for theme and for providing resources they need to ready). There are other plenty of other hero combos that reduce deck choice to one slot, like the way Celeborn/Galadriel is so common in Silvan decks, or Gandalf/Elrond Vilya decks, or Dori/Grimbeorn decks (OK, maybe not that one). But in no other case is it practically *mandatory* to include the other hero. Vilya decks without Gandalf work fine, SpBard doesn't *have* to be in a Dale deck, etc. I'm glad to see ally versions of the twins out, but cost and chance makes that choice more iffy. I kind of think of them as one double-wide hero rather than separate heroes that work together.

In secrecy there are better cards for scrying than Needful to Know (Henamarth Riversong, obviously, in Lore), and there are better threat reduction cards if you can afford them or qualify for them -- but there's no other card that provides scrying *and* threat reduction for free, so that makes it IMO a good card if you're expecting to be in secrecy. Of course, if you've got the repeatable threat reduction required for staying in secrecy, the value of the additional threat reduction is also a bit moot. But scrying is still valuable if Hennamarth isn't out, and there's only one copy of him per core set.

The "risk" of finding a treachery is that your threat will go up by exactly one -- I don't see that as a terrible risk.

What about in a start-in-secrecy deck? The trouble here is that by the time you draw the card, you're likely not in secrecy anymore and it'll cost two. OTOH, I think in the classic Sam/LoPippin/TaMerry deck it actually would be a pretty good card to have in your initial hand. Any Resourceful or Timely Aid in your opener would be played before this, and even if it finds a treachery going up to 21 in the quest phase instead of at the end of the round makes little difference. But if it finds a 2+ threat card, you've just bought yourself an extra turn or three of secrecy for no cost.

The main problem with Needful to Know for a secrecy deck is in common with many other 0-cost cards. You're drawing it in place of some other card that could have a larger effect. A free card really isn't free when it costs you your one card drawn per turn.

Elrohir is a great defender, as long as Elladan is somwhere on the table. Defending for 3 with a hero at this point in the game is only possible with Denethor and Dain Ironfoot. Denethor has less hitpoints and an ability which requires him to exhaust, though he has the advantage of a lower threat and a sphere match for A Burning Brand. Dain on the other hand has even more hitpoints, but he needs to be ready in order to buff the attack of other dwarves, so without a readying effect, he will lose his biggest advantage. Meanwhile Elrohir can ready as often as he can afford, so the optimal play would be to make him the Steward of Gondor. The lack of the Sentinel keyword is not as bad as it seems: For now Aragorn is the only Sentinel hero, every other hero needs a Dúnedain Signal or Arwen from The Watcher in the Water to defend across the table.

There is nothing I can add about Taking Initiative , which has not already been said.

I always had the impression Secrecy cards at this point in the card pool were made to improve 1 or 2 hero decks, because even with Spirit Glorfindel you would be restricted to using Théodred and Frodo, Bifur or Eleanor for a single round of secrecy, which makes Timely Aid in 3 hero decks nearly unusable. When it works though, it is a great card: Paying 1 resource for a potentially expensive ally is really good value. Just bring enough allies in your deck to maximize hit chances or use Gildor to make sure, a suitable ally is on top of your deck. I just don't like the idea of using weak heroes to have a chance of getting an expensive ally for cheap into play: I would rather bring more powerful heroes.

I quite like Unseen Strike , it helps you killing tough enemies, most of which have high engagement costs anyway: various trolls, orc chieftains, Nazgûls and giant squids. These are the enemies that require a lot of damage to kill and Unseen Strike helps exactly with that and a one time event is perfectly suitable in such a situation.

Keeping Count should not be used for a killing contest between your attacking heroes but rather for buffing a single hero for the endboss of a scenario. Give the first copy of Keeping Count to an attacker like Gimli, Legolas, Boromir or whoever you use in this role and play the second copy on a quester like Bífur. After enough enemies have been killed, Bifur will get a significant attack boost to kill the boss, while you should not miss his 2 points of willpower at that point. Of course you need to find your second copy of Keeping Count for it to do anything at all, but with a Master of the Forge, which comes out in Shadow and Flame, this should no longer be a problem.

Spirit Bofur is of course an awesome ally. Being able to adjust willpower after staging is really helpful and even better, if it gets you permanent 2 or 3 willpower for only a single resource.

Even as a determined group player, I have never found place for Renewed Friendship , because of the reasons already mentioned.

The Ravenhill Scout is a nice card in theory, but just too expensive for his stats as well as his ability. Of course it can be useful to accumulate progress faster on obnoxious locations, but for the same amount of resources you could play a Rivendell Minstrel, who does not only provide 2 willpower on her own to quest over the location but also card draw. In a dwarf deck, the Erebor Hammersmith is similar in strength while slightly cheaper. The biggest problem for the Scout is, that he only moves progress instead of placing new one. In Foundations of Stone there will be Asfaloth which can place 2 progress on a location without taking it from elsewhere, when he is ridden by Glorfindel. And considering that another location in turn will stay in staging longer, the net benfit of this card is minimal.

Needful to Know combines 2 different effects with less than stellar results. Using it blindly for scrying might increase your threat and there are better options to do so reliably, like Henamarth or Denethor. And while it is the only card in Lore for threat reduction besides Loragorn for a very long while, it is too expensive outside of secrecy and has a variable effect. Playing Gandalf or including Spirit in your deck are just better options.

A Good Meal is a great card for Frodo to reduce the cost of The Galadhrim's Greeting to 1 in order to use his ability more often and it can even be worth to make Lórien's Wealth cheaper, in order to draw some cards and thus thinning your deck faster. A very good target when playing in a group is naturally Gildor's Counsel, or Untroubled by Darkness, For Gondor! and even Grim Resolve (with a Song of Kings). Just be sure there are enough characters to benefit from these events.

The best card for me is Bofur: he can go into almost any deck and provides cheap emergency or permanent willpower. He has enough hitpoints to take some damage without dying and with Dain he becomes even more amazing.

The worst card is tough to decide, as I neither like Renewed Friendship nor Taking Initiative. At least the former one only wastes deck space, while the latter one also can discard some important cards, only works with a low character count and thus has a high chance to do fail spectacularly, as long as you do not specifically build for it. But then you will have a deck with expensive cards and possibly only two heroes to pay for them: A recipe for quick failure.

The most enriched sphere for me is Spirit because of Bofur's greatness, even though Leadership also has 2 potentially strong cards with A timely Aid and Elrohir, but unfortunately they both restrice you in your hero choice: one needs his brother on the board, the other requires a low threat.

8 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

The "risk" of finding a treachery is that your threat will go up by exactly one -- I don't see that as a terrible risk.

I guess you're right about this, but when most cards come with zero risk, even some risk seems like a lot. Maybe I should try it and see.

Thank you guys for your comments.

Because I didn't take into a consideration that Bofur can be used at the end of staging and he will stay in-game even if you haven't been successfull in questing (=when willpower is equal to overall threat), I will adjust the review with Bofur, add him rating and probably announce him as TOP CARD.

In my point of view, Bofur will deserve such title, because when you know your overall Willpower and overall threat in the staging area, then purposeful playing Bofur for 1 cost is amazing. There is much less uncertainty on the contrary of my original conclusion. In this situation, Bofur is winning over Timely Aid , which has great effect, but still you don't know, what cards await you in deck (if you don't play Gandalf's Search or Imladris Stargazer ).

@dalestephenson
Exactly, from strict progression view, Elrohir doesn't make sense. But because he must be considered as the part of tandem with Elladan , then I'm judging him as fully-developed hero. And with Elladan, he is really good hero, able to defend multiple times, and everywhere, if you attach him Dúnedain Signal (it's almost duty to include this card). In solo game, including both heroes is restricting, in two-handed single game or multiplayer game, it's okay, you have 4+ other heroes with which you can play.
(OT: For me, scoring is some indicator, how well the game went. For me, it's not enough the result WIN or LOSE, but how did I win? Was it difficult, or peace of cake? Although not perfect, still it is some indicator, which tells me many things about my deck.:))
I must oppose you in this thing - going secrecy card with 2 heroes in this moment is very viable. Except for Shadow and Flame , Secrecy deck consisted from 2 heroes works very well. My favourite combination is Bifur + Glóin (and because I play two-handed, the second deck is something like trisphere Leadership-Spirit-Tactic deck, whatever). It's almost the only reasonable way, how to effectively play Secrecy deck. In such environment, you see that for example Timely Aid is very desired card, mabye Taking Initiative can contribute by its effect as well.
Thank you for your point with Bofur, this must be taken into consideration, so I'll update the review.

With other points I fully agree.:)

It's true that Elrohir isn't at all unusual lacking sentinel, my point was just that with multiple decks it makes sense to have Elladan and Elrohir in the same deck -- so Elladan can attack the enemies that Elrohir defends against, without requiring ranged/sentinel to have shown up yet. When I first created my Dori and the Twins fellowship, I had Elrohir in a leadership/lore deck so the Song of Wisdom did more for him than enable ABB, and Elladan in a spirit/tactics deck with Dori, but it worked much better when I redid it as a combat/questing deck pairing with a Noldor deck. Of course, with Dori around I could defend across the table for any inadventarant engagements even if Elrohir hadn't found his Elven Mail yet. Still, as long as the questing deck can handle a small amount of emergency work, Elladan/Elrohir can do their thing even if sentinel/ranged don't show up. I'm not sure I'd even include Dunedain Signal if the other deck can handle an occasional enemy, at least when other sentinel-granters come on line. The best of those is just a few packs away (Arwen), though she doesn't co-exist with her hero version who is also fantastic with the twins.

I will concede that if you partner a 2-hero secrecy deck early with a strong partner deck (one capable of doing the questing and fighting that your two hero deck won't be doing) you can beat some quests with it. But it's certainly not popular -- of all the decks using Gloin and Bifur Aid at ringsdb, only you and Beorn's (also the case of a 2-hero deck being carried by a strong partner deck) are two-hero. Heck, even looking at just Gloin and Timely Aid shows just your two decks, along with three creators who made 3-hero Gloin/TimelyAid decks (Gloin can afford a full price Timely Aid once his engine is up). The issue as I see it is that the deck would be immediately better by adding a third hero -- ANY third hero. The Secrecy cards just aren't good enough to compensate for playing them cheaply for the first five (or less) turns.

Consider sort of a best case hand, where you have Resourceful and Timely Aid in hand, and Timely Aid hits for a hefty permanent ally. Now you're at par with a normal three-hero deck -- you're generating three resources per turn, and your hefty ally is providing an action comparable to a hero action. But you're now equivalent to them *before* the three-hero planning phase, instead of playing the two best secrecy cards to get to par, they're spending three resources for *other* cards to get better fast. The only advantage the two-hero deck has is lower threat, and that by itself rarely makes up losing a turn of planning even in the best case, in my opinion.

And the other secrecy cards just aren't as strong as Resourceful and Timely Aid. The one place that secrecy cards shine iin this cycle is in Shadow and Flame -- not with two-hero decks, but with any deck.

OT: I'm surprised you find the scoring system useful for learning "many things" about your decks, given that the score is largely a product of turns taken (which itself depends heavily on player strategy and quest variability). What sort of things have you learned?

@dalestephenson
OT: To scoring, I'll send you the link about my monosphere session through Core set scenarios, where I analyze each dual-monosphere combination on the basis of scoring. Here I leatn some interesting things:

To be more precise, it tells me, how effective my made up deck was. You can win twice, but each of victory can be diametrically different. According me, it's difference if you win with all living heroes during 5 rounds than win with only 2 living heroes during 2 rounds. Every scenario has different "average scoring value" (compare Passage through Mirkwood vs. Escape from Dol Guldur), so if I successfully made a scenario, I record the final score. But, if you want to know more, you can write your comments and observations into linked topic.:)

The reason, why to play 2-hero deck (in progression mode; you certainly can wait on low-starting threat Hobbits from future cycles) is you can simply effectively play Secrecy deck with Secrecy card - that means you keep your threat under 20 as long as possible. With Glóin and Bifur , it means you start with 16 threat, so you have a time to utilize some Secrecy card. Of course, I recommend to have some threat-reducing cards like Galadhrim's Greetings (or Needful to Know :P) in opening hand. The strength of Secrecy deck lies in lower starting threat (so you avoid many enemies during engagement checks and at the same time you have very wide choice as for the optional engagement). The key is make from Secrecy deck supportive/questing deck, while the second deck must be made from strong heroes able to manage combat duties. This combination works perfectly in 5/6 scenarios from Dwarrowdelf cycle (in Shadow and Flame , missing of 1 hero is too considerable loss, which Secrecy cards can't compensate).

From Secrecy cards, except for Timely Aid and Needful to Know, we will get other useful Secrecy cards ( Resourceful , Dúnedain Waderer , but about them let's wait until the next articles ;)).

However, the main weakness of 2-hero Secrecy card is very evident - losing of 1 resource generation per round.

@Amicus Draconis
I agree that these two brothers ( Elrohir + Elladan ) on the board can do a huge work in defense and attack. It's only pity that they came within Dwarrowdelf cycle, which is aimed at Dwarves . You then have to do without at minimum 2 Dwarves you would substitute by Elrohir and Elladan. OR you have to make non- Dwarf deck, what I consider within Dwarrowdelf cycle as disadvantage, because in this moment we don't own better developer trait than Dwarf ( Rohan are not really well developer IN THIS MOMENT and Eagles are good, but only for combat duties).

Exactly - when Timely Aid works for Secrecy cost, what else you can wish than calling to game any ally for 1 cost? Because Secrecy is concerning mainly Leadership and Lore sphere, you can use it for Haldir of Lórien , Gildor Inglorion , Faramir (**** yea, even Brok Ironfist , if you have courage to include him ). But you know what is worst? If you shuffle all these very costy allies on the bottom and you reveal only cheap allies. It annoys me.:X

Can't admire Unseen Strike , which forces you to boost only character you control. It would be very good, if you target character of ANY player - for example player with Secrecy deck. Because Secrecy deck has limited combat skills, the boosting of +3 Attack would come in handy. Alas, the holder of Tactic sphere (at most) must target own character. Tactic sphere tends to have quite high threat from the beginning, so many enemies will engage you earlier than you could use Unseen Strike. So it is only for really big bosses and tank enemies with high engagement cost. However, players should avoid the direct confrotation with them because of saving allies and Hit Points of heroes (see Great Cave-troll , Mountain Troll ).

Keeping Count - can imagine only in boss-fight - like in Shadow and Flame (hello, Durin's Bane !)

As you said - Ravenhill Scout looks good on the paper. I had always compulsion to také him into some deck with Northern Tracker. In theory, they cooperate greatly. In practice, both are pretty expensive and you rather end your game than the combo would happen. Even the suitable situation needn't to ever happen.

In my point of view, Needful to Know works perfectly and it would be shame to not utilize it within Secrecy deck. Just include Henamarth Riversong, who costs 1 resource and you gain two advantages: you scry and reduce your threat. Never used Needful to Know outside of Secrecy deck.

In practice, Good Meal is the reason, why include such expensive events like Grim Resolve, which you hardly include to a deck.

@dalestephenson
Wanna know, which cards are for you the best, worst and which sphere is most enriched?

I'll respond in the other thread, but I agree that winning in two rounds with a lost hero is a qualitatively different experience than winning in five rounds but not losing a hero. But while different, I don't think one is intrinsically *better* than the other (outside the LOTR saga campaign, where there are consequences to hero death), and I don't think the official scoring's method of having the death of a 10 threat hero be equivalent to taking another round to win fits anyone's subjective preferences who cares about the difference. It's not uncommon in a boss quest to be in the end-game position of being able to finish off the boss this turn instead of next *if* you take an undefended attack that will kill off an already-exhausted hero. Is that better or worse than waiting until next turn? Purely subjective, unless going one more turn carries with it risk of actual defeat. Given a threat gain of one to go with the extra turn, official scoring says it's better to kill off the hero if it has threat of ten or less, but better to wait another turn if it has threat of twelve or more.

A fully damaged Gimli with two Citadel Plates (i.e. TaGimli at the peak of his core set form) is more valuable dead than alive to official scoring.

Anyway, that's a digression from the player card analysis. I'll take your word that an early two-hero secrecy deck "works perfectly" against not-too-difficult quests when paired with a strong partner deck capable of making up for what the two hero deck is not giving you. But I stand by my contention that it would be a stronger deck with any third hero added despite the loss of secrecy cards, and that will still be true at the end of this cycle when you get great secrecy cards like Resourceful and utter drek like Dunedain Wanderer. Once the hobbits arrive, starting in secrecy becomes a viable *solo* archtype, and later threat-reducing heroes allow the creation of decks that stay in secrecy. But two-hero decks don't become an archtype until Strider arrives. (Then with Boffin, two-hero decks become three hero decks again, unless using Lore Aragorn.)

Losing a resource per turn is *a* weakness of a two-hero deck, but not IMO the *main* weakness. Arwen or Theodred could make up that deficiency by themselves. The main weakness is losing a hero that can be used to quest/attack/defend and that typically has some special ability to help your chances.

18 minutes ago, Silblade said:

@dalestephenson
Wanna know, which cards are for you the best, worst and which sphere is most enriched?

Best -- Bofur. This guy was in all my spirit decks for a long time.

Worst -- Keeping Count. Very thematic, miserably inefficient. I'll concede that it can be a big plus in a boss fight when the first copy is placed early, but that means using three copies in my deck and hoping for one to come early and a second to be drawn when there's no way I'm going to mulligan for the card. Too iffy in the best case, iffy in the worst case.

Sphere -- in the context of the full card pool, leadership is clearly the most enhanced -- they got a useful hero, one of the very best secrecy cards, and a coaster that will become a useful card with Grey Wanderer. But through Redhorn Gate alone, leadership got a useless hero and two useless cards. As of Redhorn Gate the only useful card in the pack is Bofur, and if you're running a Dain deck he's extra useful. So Spirit in true progression.

@Silblade Well, I started my progression playthrough of this cycle with 2 dwarf decks containing of Gimli, Thalin, Dwalin on one side and Dain, Glóin and B´ífur on the other. While playing through Dwarrowdelf, I slowly replaced them with Elladan, Elrohir, Denethor, Beravor, Théodred, Glorfindel (Spirit and Lore), Loragorn, Elrond, Éowyn and Frodo, depending on the needs of each scenario. The only trait I always relied on was Eagles . Only once did I lose 1quest of all 9: I had to replay the Seventh Level with 6 dwarven heroes because of an untimely reveal of a Cave-troll. His 4 threat meant questing unsuccesfully, raising threat, engaging it right away and a dead hero shortly afterwards, as even Dain can block him only once. On my second attempt the troll went unnoticed as a shadow card and the quest was a breeze.

Thalin and Legolas both have 9 threat, with Bifur or Frodo they can have a starting threat of 25. In all of Khazad-dûm there are only 2 enemies with lower engagement cost: Goblin Spearmen and Goblin Swordswam, which require at 3 or 4 attack to kill. Should not be a problem for Thalin and Legolas, right? And everything else can be targeted with Unseen Strike, as long as you bring some threat reduction. And for Dwarrowdelf the pattern is the same: All Tentacles, the Goblin Sneak, the Rock Adder and Orc Raiders can be killed by Legolas with the help of Thalin. This leaves only Durin's Bane and the Mountain Goblin, where you need some help and otherwise keep your threat low (it will improve your score ).

And by the way, if you want to use Unseen Strike to help a friend, use a ranged character or a Wandering Took.

What do you mean with players should avoid confrontation with trolls? If your threat is low enough to not engange them, you can always use Unseen Strike to kill them faster. Otherwise you will have to quest past them and risk engaging them later anyway.

I am with dale when it comes to secrecy decks in Khazad-dûm: their only advantage is low threat, but with a dedicated combat partner deck, you will not need it, while the disadvantages are too huge: less resources and hero actions.

@dalestephenson
I agree that from the strict progression view, the Leadership sphere doesn't bring anything useful - Elrohir needs his brother and Timely Aid needs more secrecy cards. I extraordinarily took it from the future view, where Elrohir and Timely will shine (can be said since the next AP).

Agree with Bofur and Keeping Count .

@Amicus Draconis
Yes, it looks same at me - I always begin to play Dwarrowdelf cycle with Dwarf heroes, then I gradually substitute some of them by other heroes ( Lore Aragorn , Spirit Glorfindel , Elrond - such strong heroes you can't let aside :)).

True, that Unseen Strike can be used on Ranged characters that can help other players.

I meant it that trolls in Dwarrowdelf cycle are very tough and hard to kill due to their high Defense. If you don't have a solid attack arsenal, it's better to let them in the staging area - they have only 2 threat.

The main advantages of Secrecy decks with 2 heroes are very low starting threat and you can use Secrecy cards for their Secrecy cost for a quite long time. Next advantage, which follows from low starting threat, is ability to avoid many enemies during engagement checks, therefore you have a wide choice, which enemy do you want engage. Note, that this is very important ability during engaging Goblin Scout , who is "imunne" to optionally engaging, if you have above 25 threat. And you really should get rid of his 3 threat from the staging area, especially more Goblin Scouts occupy the staging area. Secrecy is right answer for this enemy.

Because Secrecy 2-hero deck lacks one hero, I recommend to use heroes, who are more stand-alone as for resource generation. So I think Bifur and Glóin are good options for Secrecy 2-hero deck. The heroes shortage is eliminated when Resourceful appears. And "the body", which can quest/attack/defend, may be substituted by strong allies coming due to effect of Timely Aid , for example, Gildor Inglorion , whose stats can compete with stats of a proper hero.

@Silblade

The Cave-troll is 4 threat and the only card responsible for my single loss in Khazad-dûm. Sure, a lower starting threat might have kept it in the staging area, but then I would have lacked another 2 willpower or attack with the same result 2 rounds later. And if you can deal with a Hill-troll in Journey along the Anduin, you can also kill a Cave-troll.
I would rather have a third hero with his action, stats and resources than the possibility to draw into Timely Aid, which also only has the possibility to put an expensive ally into play. If I do not get either cards, my board state will be severely weakened, leaving the partner deck alone for combat. I just do not see an advantage in avoiding to engage an enemy, that the other deck then has to engage anyway and kill it without the help of a third hero on my side.

In my opinion, a better answer for a Goblin Scout is Dúnhere.

And Bifur does not generate resources, he just takes them from another hero, who will then be one short. As I said earlier, I do not like to rely on Timely Aid, Resourceful and a strong ally on the top of my deck, just to save some threat. Elrond's Counsel will in the end do the same for you, while not costing you any momentum.

2 hours ago, Silblade said:

The main advantages of Secrecy decks with 2 heroes are very low starting threat and you can use Secrecy cards for their Secrecy cost for a quite long time. Next advantage, which follows from low starting threat, is ability to avoid many enemies during engagement checks, therefore you have a wide choice, which enemy do you want engage. Note, that this is very important ability during engaging Goblin Scout , who is "imunne" to optionally engaging, if you have above 25 threat. And you really should get rid of his 3 threat from the staging area, especially more Goblin Scouts occupy the staging area. Secrecy is right answer for this enemy.

It's true that the main advantages of a secrecy deck with 2 heroes is the ability to play secrecy cards for a while. The issue is that by the end of Dwarrowdelf cycles, the secrecy cards just aren't good enough for this advantage to be worth enough to make up for a missing hero. The best of the lot (Resourceful and Timely Aid) merely make up for what you're intentionally missing. Dunedain Wanderer is decent value for 2, but not special. The three lore events are worth playing with the discount, but don't improve your board state. The spirit secrecy events aren't very good. And when you are no longer in secrecy, all these cards are hideously overpriced and you're still down a hero.

Coupling a two-hero deck with a stronger deck can cover for the secrecy deck's weaknesses, but there's no corresponding advantage the secrecy deck is conferring on the partner deck. Its ability to leave enemies in staging just means that the other deck will have to fight them.

It's true that a two-hero deck can optionally engage the Goblin Scout and get its three threat out of staging. There are other ways of dealing with it, but having a 25-or-below threat deck on the table (easily done with SpGlorfindel) is a clean way of doing so. But Goblin Scout just isn't that vital -- all he does in staging is contribute the three threat, and that's usually not quest-ending. You can quest around that -- especially if you have another hero to quest with!

Guys, I have updated the article. The review about Bofur, chapter Allies and Overall evaluation were adjusted, also the Final rating of Bofur was changed.

Thanks to @dalestephenson who has pointed out the real usage of Bofur, which I didn't realize at all.:)