Foundation of Stones - Player Card Review series

By Silblade, in Strategy and deck-building

Posted at

My takes:

SpGlorfindel is indeed a fantastic hero, and immediately displaced Eowyn as the preferred spirit splasher of choice; he was also ubiquitous in early Vilya decks to offset Elrond's high threat. Since then a lot of spirit heroes with actual useful abilities have come along, making him a much less powerful hero, which along with less weight on starting threat and less locations that can be cleared immediately by Asfaloth, have really cut into his popularity.

The sad thing is that absent SpGlorfindel, this pack would've given new life to Lorfindel. Light of Valinor would have allowed him to use his excellent spirit and combat stats, both top-tier for Lore, and Asfaloth is exactly as useful on the Lore version of Glorfindel (and in-sphere). Lorfindel's ability isn't that useful, but at least it's positive -- SpGlorfindel's ability amounts to 7 less starting threat, offset partially by threat raises until LoV shows up. For Journey Down the Anduin (possibly the most-used quest for deck testing in the game), the 7 threat difference is massive. For Shadow and Flame it's worthless. For later cycles it can matter more or less outside a few quests that mess with starting threat, but it's arguably never more important than it was in the early game with threat-triggered treacheries and bossish enemies with engagement cost in the 30s.

So SpGlorfindel is a fantastic thunderbolt from a progression point of view, but in the context of the full card pool and later quests, he's a good hero but not a great one.

One thing he *does* do, and this remains part of his role even today, is enabling three-hero secrecy decks. At the time he's released there's very few heroes that can fit in a secrecy deck with him -- at 7 we have Frodo, Bifur, and Elanor and at 8 we have Theodred, Denethor, and Dunhere, so only three 19-cost hero lineups and nine 20-cost lineups are possible, none of which involve heroes having any particular synergy with each other and only one hero who has access to Timely Aid. He also won't stay in secrecy long unless LoV is in hand and Elrond's Counsel shows up quickly. But with his excellent starting threat, he's still a secrecy option today with a much, much wider variety of decks.

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I like Longbeard Elder, and he's certainly good value in a Dain deck (like many dwarves). But I've also put him alone in majority-leadership decks sometimes despite the low chance of his scrying paying off if working blind. Several reasons for this:

As you noted, especially at this stage of the game, 2 wp for 3 resources isn't a bad deal in leadership even without his ability.

With LoDenethor he's rarely blind, and if Lore is at the table eventually Henamarth may be out.

With multiple LEs on the table, only the first one is questing blind -- all characters for a player commit to the quest at once, but the responses to committing can be executed in any order, so depending on what you see you can know whether to trigger other LEs or not. This is also useful in combination with LeAragorn, since you can see the reveal before deciding whether or not to ready Aragorn with a resource.

Even if you fail to quest successfully, he can still place progress -- this is a desparate situation, but sometimes it comes in handy.

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As a one-per deck card, you can't depend on Path of Need to show up at all, but I run one-of cards intentionally all the time and judge a card more by how useful it will be if it shows up than if it shows up at all (though with Word of Command, or later search cards, you can improve your odds dramatically).

It's true that if you're able to send every hero questing the active location isn't likely to last more than one round, with a few quest-dependent exceptions (Helm's Deep and a few locations with large progress requirements). If you play it in planning on something that's already the active location it amounts to "all heroes quest without exhausting", and if you play it on a location in staging it won't magically ready the heroes who quested. But the real value of this card isn't getting double duty out of heroes with well-rounded stats -- it's getting *infinite* duty out of heroes with excellent combat stats, and that's a very very powerful effect. A tower-defender can take all your defenses no matter how many (for the whole table, with sentinel), a strong attacker can wipe out all your enemies (for the whole table, with ranged) -- these can be game changing effects. It takes some setup to get heroes to that point, at least with the heroes available at this point in the game -- but a long lead time to prepare drastically increases the likelihood of drawing into your one copy. In this respect, the one-per-deck limitation is far less impactful than it is on cards like Gather Information or Magic Ring, that you would want at the beginning of the game and not the end. This is a game-winner, given a combat quest and powerful combat heroes.

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Trollshaw Scout -- as I wrote above for path of need, the ability to attack without exhaust is potentially very powerful, especially with ranged, but it requires high attack (which Trollshaw Scout doesn't start with) and in general exhausting a two-cost tactics ally is a far *smaller* price to pay than discarding a card, especially in card-poor tactics. Eventually Noldor decks can synergize with a card-discarding attacker, but at this point at the card pool the crippling limitation makes this a poor attacker -- even if you load him up with attachments, you can't afford to use him *at all* without cards to burn.

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Heavy Stroke -- synergizes with high-attack dwarves, which basically means TaGimli and to a lesser extent the twice-errataed Erebor Battle Master, it also combos with Khazad Khazad, so if you have this card you want that card also. The purpose, as you say, is for knocking down high-HP bosses, and in those cases this card is *not* for freeing up other dwarves to attack elsewhere. Since this doubles not the attack but the damage, you *need* other attackers to cover the defense so your attack can be all damage.

It's a sideboard card, useful in a few decks -- that's my biggest complaint about the card. I'm fine with sideboard cards that are situationally powerful in some quests while useless in others. I'm fine with trait-linked cards that require a certain trait to play. But I hate *combining* the two -- there's a reasonable number of quests where Heavy Stroke would be useful, but out of all the strong attacking heroes in the game TaGimli is about the only one who can use this card at all. (Thorin Stonehelm is the other strong dwarf attacker, but he boosts his attack with direct damage, which won't boost Heavy Stroke).

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Imladris Stargazer is a very popular card -- in combination with Zigil Miner and pre-Gandalf Vilya decks. Outside that context, she's not that popular -- while reordering the top five cards can be useful, it's just not that *powerful* early without being able to also translate it into resources (Zigil Miner) or free stuff of your choice (Vilya). Let's check ringsdb.

IS with Zigil Miner -- 15 pages of decks

IS with Vilya -- 16 pages of decks

IS without either -- 12 pages of decks

Hmm, that's more popular than I thought, though that's less than 10% of the non-Zigil/Vilya spirit decks (there's 185 pages of Test of Will decks without those two cards). Meanwhile there's 23 pages of Zigil decks without Stargazer, putting her under 50% in that combination (less than I would've thought) and 9 pages of Vilya decks without either Stargazer or hero Gandalf (putting her at about 2/3rds usage in those decks -- again seems low to me).

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Light of Valinor is an amazing card. SpGlorfindel needs it to avoid his penalty and it's a 3x in his decks; the shame is that he's very often in the early Vilya decks, and although SpGlorfindel needs LoV, it doesn't need him -- allowing Elrond to quest without exhausting allows Elrond to use his excellent defense (more valuable than 3 attack, especially in Lore) or to use Vilya. Elrohir and Elladan are also frequently more useful in the combat phase, though they give up a point of willpower. Later heroes like Cirdan (with Narya), SpLegolas, Argalad, Rossiel and Haldir also get more benefit from having this attachment than SpGlorfindel does, if you're not worried about the threat.

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Daeron's Runes is a staple. Like you, I routinely add 3 copies to my deck; outside of quests that specifically punish card draw, a 53-card deck with Daeron's Runes is better than a 50-card deck with it.

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For Healing Herbs, I agree it's overshadowed by repeatable healing, I see it as a sideboard card where you need more healing than Warden can provide (or self-preservation, for those taking repeated damage, and especially where you expect single characters to have large amounts of damage. For example, you'd definitely want to add three of these against Journey to Rhosgobel, no matter what else you have to heal. Its utility versus Lore of Imladris depends very much on who your Lore heroes are -- if it's Elrond you have much better things to do with your exhaustion, while if Bilbo is your hero exhaustions are cheap. Fortunately, you should be able to predict in advance how costly the exhaustion will be to your deck.

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Asfaloth is one of the best location control in the game and arguably the single card from Dwarrowdelf to most influence future quests. But it's only fantastic *on* Glorfindel, and as the card pool expands that's an increasingly onerous requirement -- at 2 cost for 1 progress per time it just isn't compelling, though at least it lacks Restricted. So while it's one of the best hero toys in the game, its space is increasingly narrow even with the wonderful Glorfindel ally, and in later cycles 2 progress doesn't go as far as it used to.

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Top card -- from a progression point of view, Glorfindel boosted by his wonderful toys has by far the largest immediate impact. But in the context of the full card pool the top card is easy -- Daeron's Runes. That makes *every* lore deck better.

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Bottom card -- Trollshaw Scout. Heavy Stroke is very niche and Healing Herbs is overshadowed, but both have their deck/quest combinations where they are well worth including. Trollshaw Scout can't even justify his existence in a Noldor deck, since there's so many better cards to provide the discard engine by then. And outside a Noldor deck he's worthless.

Posted at

Hiya, thank again for your response and own observations.:)

I actually agree with everything you wrote. Spirit Glorfindel is something like "WOW, what a stats vs starting threat!". He is excellent hero, when you have already 2 heroes with high starting threat, like over 10. Then Glorfindel can significantly reduce the overall starting threat and you won't be under a such pressure. But as you said, Light of Valinor and Asfaloth give the second breath for Lore Glorfindel, who lacks any negative effect, OTOH he may heal. It's just...quite high starting threat.:)

As for Heavy Stroke , I meant it that one big attack boosted by Heavy Stroke can be enough for KO of many strong enemies. Thus, you don't need the support from other attackers - they can attack elsewhere, spread their effort among other enemies. Sure, defenders haven't any vacation - still they must fulfill their defending duties.

I gain the feeling from some other reviews and tips, that Imladris Stargazer is one of the most popular cards in LOTR LCG at all. At least from the early life of the game. I see her as great support for any deck, where you search for X top cards for something useful. In other cases, still she can improve your game and give a nice advantage.

You are right tha Asfaloth in latter scenarios is not so remarkable... because many locations are imunne to effects of player cards. Thus his contribution isn't so significant as it is in Dwarrowdelf , or in non-progression style of playing Shadows of Mirkwood cycles.

Really, it was hard to choose TOP CARD . For SHEEP CARD , well, Path of Need as I said doesn't deserve this title, if I speak about "weakest card" - there is nothing "weak" about Path of Need. Otherwise I would probably pick up Trollshaw Scout as well. However... in most cases you can avoid Path of Need, even if you have it in your hands, because the opportunity for its playing doesn't occur. Maybe if you are under pressure and you face many enemies and you must quest as well, THEN Path of Need can help. Well... its very situational card, in my point of view. Everytime I tried Path of Need in my deck, it was no. 1 for discarding due to some effect (like Daeron's Runes ), because I couldn't find appropriate situation and time, where it could be useful. The reason was clear: I couldn't afford to let the active location unexplored for a longer than necessary time. The effect is remarkable, but I have problems with its conditions. Thus, I announced Path of Need as SHEEP CARD = the greatest disappointment in Foundation of Stones .



Edited by Silblade