I just today posted a short article on why Spirit's my favorite Sphere when it comes to the starter, you can find the article here. What's your favorite faction, and why?

So far Leadership is my favorite. I really like their extra resources, Theodred and Aragorn and some of their allies like Faramir.

Abilities/combos/playstyle:Leadership by far.

Art:Spirit.Galadriel's art (the favor of the lady card) is more than awesome.

I leave Gandalf out of the contest cause my name says all.

I've only ever been able to complete solo games with the Spirit sphere, making it my favourite for now.

My favorite is Lore. I think it has the best tools to deal with what I consider a troubling aspect of the game: Decreasing the luck factor.

Leadership is too strong for my taste. It doesn't appear to have any weaknesses like the other spheres. The resource boosting can get ridiculous _and_ it has the single best combo in the game (Sneak Attack / Gandalf).

Spirit's threat reduction and recursion is very nice but it almost feels like cheating to me to use it.

Tactics is too one-sided right now, making it the worst choice. Winning fights does not win the game and it has to rely on Legolas to make quest progress, leaving you at the mercy of the encounter deck.

Right now it's Leadership for sure. Their resource generation puts them heads above the rest.

I picked the game up today, and have been playing solo all evening, when not working on my aGoT decks. Going to my buddy's after he get's done at the gym to try co op. I am yet to beat the first part of the first quest. That said.... I think I realllly like Leadership and I'm thinking of a Leadership/Tactics deck.

Leadership is hands down the best sphere in the game so far, without contest. It's a powerhouse in solo at 30 cards, and I believe it's currently impossible to build a working 50-card deck without using Leadership.

Even so, Spirit is my favorite. I just kind of enjoy questing, and Spirit is a powerhouse at it. Now if only they had some more allies so they wouldn't suck and die during all the other parts of the turn, things might be good. Once an Adventure Pack or two hits the shelves, I suspect Spirit has a lot of potential.

Ack. Crazy double post. Disregard.

Just one game done but Leadership was kicking ass and taking names. Lore didn't do nearly as much, though supported the other deck nicely.

(yes, just posting to get the "new" tag off this thread)

I feel safest and most comfortable playing Leadership. Sometimes I still lose (grr...scenario 3) but I always feel that I have the best chance with Aragorn and Faramir by my side.

For characters, nothing beats Tactics. I love the friendship forged between Gimli and Legolas in the novels, and I'm always a big fan of Beorn. Plus the Tactics Attachments are fantastic.

I like Rohan. Spirit gives me two Rohan heroes, and they are fantastic. Eowyn remains my single favorite character, she blew me away in the novels. Plus I have nothing to fear from Hummerhorns thanks to the Spirit men of Rohan.

Lore is very tricky, I never quite know what to expect from it, but it is always a boon.

Also, lest I forget neutral cards, Gandalf will always be 3 per deck for me. And I eagerly await Radagast, my first and primary Wizard in the original Middle Earth Card game.

So, I guess it's a tie?

After struggling through a couple of catastrophic early-turn Encounter & Shadow draws, I learned to love the Lore sphere.The durability and foreknowledge (through Denethor and Henamarth) really fit my approach to gaming. Now, if I can just get through quests and combat a little faster!

I enjoy the tactics deck. Once you get the hang of it and the feel of how to play the cards the only thing that can stop it is locations that bog down the staging area, but that only slows down the deck. I've won the first two scenarios with tactics only a few times now. Haven't tried the last one yet though with tactics only.

Kinda strange to me that they didn't realize during playtesting, that Leadership would be grossly overpowered and Tactics would have some serious trouble.

Leadership seems the easiest to play with Solo, but I really enjoy the Lore deck with it's sheer card drawing power and ability to control the field.

I'd have to say Spirit. Though Leadership is certainly strong (so strong, I think, that it is currently pretty much required to be one of the spheres if you are making a strong dual sphere deck), Spirit is more fun to play. It's a subtle strength at first, but once you get a feel for the cards and how it can completely control the board you can theoretically tread water infinitely via recursion (Dwarven Tomb & Will of the West are just amazing cards) and threat reduction. And, when it comes down to it, Threat is the most important 'currency' in the game. Though Sneak/Gandalf is a powerful combo, I really think that Galadrim's Greeting/Dwarven Tomb/Will of the West is far stronger, and I'm fairly sure that at some point Dwarven Tomb is going to be altered so that it removes itself from the game once used.

So yeah, Spirit ftw.

Yes i enjoy spirit cards more than any other sphere.Leadership is more powerfull now and as a Gandalf fan i enjoy sneak+Gandalf but generaly spirit is more interesting than any other sphere and i love the art on spirit cards.

I can't wait Radagast to comes live and make a deck with spirit sphere and Radagast with his beasts.Also i can't wait for Galadriel.She and Gandalf will allways have 6 spots in my decks.

So far my favourite to play has been Lore. The healing along with event and shadow card peeks are really useful. Plus you get a good spread of stas on the Heroes. 3 Defence on Denethor, 3 Attack on Glorfindal and 2 Attack on Berevor makes it pretty decent in combat.

Looking forward to giving old Bilbo a go with it soon.

HyenaSpotz said:

I managed to make a deck that gets through Mirkwood, using Spirit and Tactics but it can only win consistently with three keyword/card changes (Sentinel, Ranged, and Wandering Took), so it doesn't really count. Both spheres contain cards that are useful to the decks of your teammates, and far less to themselves. Which is quite thematic, but weakens them severely in solo play.

Spirit is my favorite sphere even in solo, even though solo is a disaster for it. I love Éowyn, she's quite the questing powerhouse, and Bereavor's ability to kill treachery cards has been a life saver more than once. And the being able to sneak through quests by massively lowering threat is neat. The Galadhrim's Greeting is one of the best event cards in the game.

I'm getting good results with a Spirit/Lore combo too (Eowyn, Glorfindel and Denethor). Even without help from the rest of their deck, the trio has a nice combination of questing strength, defensive durability and attack damage. With their events and attachments they become rock-solid defenders and questing powerhouses. They're not as powerful on the attack, but foes rarely last more than a couple turns.

ArachneJericho said:

Right now it's really tricky to play a legal 2 sphere deck that does not involve Leadership, as you will have some serious resource problems. This is probably your biggest problem with this deck. I've got a Leadership/Knowledge deck that can beat the first scenario 90% of the time and a Leadership/Spirit deck that can beat the first 2 scenarios 90% of the time. I'm hoping that after a couple of packs this won't be the case, but a Tactics/Spirit deck is just going to be rough overall. I'm not a fan of improving a deck by changing the game rules, it seems extremely unintuitive, but hopefully you won't have to do that when the card pool grows a bit.

That being said I'm shocked to hear you say solo is a disaster for Spirit. As it's impossible to play a tournament legal solo sphere deck now, I assume you are talking about the 'base set' Spirit deck, which, due to it's small size, can completely tear apart the first two scenario's due to it's threat reduction.

CAlexander said:

I don't think people are playing tactics correctly. I've won nightmare mode a couple times now with a tactics/spirit deck...

Still, the problem with Tactics is that it can't do anything when three locations show up in a row. No enemy to kill means the Legolas / Blade of Gondolin way to progress doesn't work and with max. 5 Willpower available (excl. Gandalf), 6 Threat in the Staging Area means end of game.

Also, Nightmare mode is not even remotely hard. I'm 0-5 against the third scenario with a deck that handily owns the first two, but I beat it without breaking a sweat on nightmare mode.

I have beat the first and second scenario with tactics only. Yes, it depends on the staging area and locations. However, spirit wouldn't last long if the first 5 encounters were all enemies...

Anyway, people are counting tactics out of even dual spheres. Just saying, its not that bad.