To sum up the core set, here is my tier list of heroes for a 2 player game.
2 best deck strategy: Deck 1 is an ally heavy deck, decks out by Beravor and keep reshuffling events (Sneak Attack, Common Cause, Valiant Sacrifice, Ever Vigilant)
Deck 1: Bravor(Dark Knowledge, Protector, allies), Gloin(events, allies, Steward, no Stone), Eowyn (allies, UC, A Test of Will, 1, Tomb, 1 WotW)
Deck 2: Gimli(Plate, Horn, Feint), Theodred(allies, events, Steward, Stone), Dunhere/Eleanor (allies, UC, A Test of Will, 1 Tomb, 1 WotW)
No Galadhrim and Stand and Fight in both decks because strategy is to deck out and hardcore abuse of Sneak+Gandalf, which does kind of the same but better. Also SA + Gandalf means a Valiant Sacrifice trigger. CC is generally drawing as well. EV can make Gleowine draw one. A Test of Will's place is in player's hand.

Generally, in the end it's possible to: Sneak Gandalf, next phase, Sneak Gandalf, next phase, Sneak Gandalf, WotW 3 SAs, Tomb WotW, Beravor draws 3 Sneaks and 1 Tomb, next phase, repeat. 1 Loop costs 3L and 2S and Stewarded, Theodreded Eowyn gives 4 / turn. Double plated, Daughtered(+EV) Gloin taking undefended damage is easily capable of 6. So 2 loops/turn = 6 Gandalfs/turn, which is pretty good It's up to -30 threat / +12 cards / wound x 24, +4 Willpower, +4 Attack/+4 Defence(with EV both).

God Tier - rules the game
1. Beravor - the one and only truly ridiculous hero, ANY - even a very heavy combo deck simply works. Protecor of Lorien -> 2 draw = potential +2 willpower. She basically defines the tier list meaning other characters are basically high or low mainly because of how they can cooperate with her skill.
2. Gimli - I don't use that many tactics cards because of him. Plate + plate or plate + axe, horn, maybe feint and I'm all happy. Of course, I could use some other tactics cards but why bother? With this guy I already do more than enough damage. Gimli defines the deck's space for damage dealing cards but even more so, he defines what IS NOT needed, which are tactics cards in general - even the very good ones. Common Cause or Unexpected Courage are just so much better tools to deal with enemies as they multiply Gimli's damage. 12*2 = 24, 12*3 = 36 total.. so yeah.

S tier - bread-and-butter:
3. Eowyn - the real bread-and-butter card. She is such a no-brainer that actually it's not even funny. Very simple and very solid. Her skill is extremely useful but at first it may not seem so.
4. Theodred - resource management bread-and-butter card. Basically, he would even make a random pile work Still, his strong S tier position is mostly defined by UCed Beravor as you just can't get too many resources. But even without Beravor he makes quicker Gandalfs so still, hard not to give him S tier.
5. Gloin - engage, peak with Dark Knowledge/Henermath, keep him healed with 1 Daughter/Self Preservation and you've got 3L resource / turn. Not too mention plate and more Daughters.. A true beast BUT more of a late game beast - he may even play all those cost ineffective leadership allies easily. Brok has bad stat/cost ratio? Doesn't really matter for Gloin and his shiny plate(or plates . Very quick Faramir and Gandalf are often priceless. Normally, I'd give him A+ but Beravor(soooo many cards) and Theodred(+1 res of choice) do hell of a job form him as they negate 2 main disadvantages: combo heaviness from many spheres and potential resource overflow.

A+ tier - great but can't make it to top 6 because of taken sphere slots(2 spirit, 2 leadership, 1 lore, 1 tactics):
6. Legolas - very useful skill but Gimli is such a ridiculous damage dealer so his 3 damage is heavily outshined. Still, I miss him the most and often choose him over Gimli. This way game gets much more interesting but definitely not much easier It's so nice to mass(UC, CC) snipe foos engaged with Gloin with him and finish 2 stages in one turn.
7. Aragorn - his stats very strongly speaks for themselves and doesn't really require a special introduction. Also, skill is very good as he can use 2wp + 3A = 5 stat total. Unfortunately, -1 resource IS and issue because of Beravor. Her massive option draws make Aragorn a "resource waster" and put him in the A+ tier. Also, it's interesting how Aragorn is not that spectacular vs 2nd scenario because of his threat but extremely powerful vs 3rd scenario as he can get 2 resource types, so a potential teammate imprisonment is not that much of a deal.

A tier:
8. Eleanor - cancels turn 1 Eyes of the Forest and other very annoying stuff. Being unexhausted is very ok becasue of Bearvor/Gimli + CC
8. Dunhere - very powerful, but Gimli + bouncing Tooks outshine him. Owns some 2nd scenario creatures but it's a different story vs 3rd scenario creatures.
10. Denethor - not that powerful as in single player as he does "only" 50% of his skill but still very useful. It still can get a troll, surge card, Eyes of the Forest.. nothing too sneeze about - A Test of Will will not always be there on time.

B. tier
11. Glorfindel - well, great stats but a horrible skill if compared to what other heroes offer. But the most important is the fact that both Gimli and Aragorn are so much better and it's too risky to use him+Gimli or him+Aragorn because of initial threat.
12. Thalin - he kills Crows and their surging but generally he is much more of a 3+ player game hero and requires some space in a deck for wounding cards to really shine. Unfortunately for him, in a 2 player game Gimli is way too powerful to even consider this. Still, a very good hero but then again, they all are.

Interesting list.

And I totally agree about Glorfindel. I think he's the worst hero in the Core Set. A total waste of starting threat without UC.

I disagree about Glorfindel, there are some quests where higher threat doesn't matter as much as healing ability. I think he's bad ass. No one else has healing ability and the ability to heal non-hero characters. Especially if you get Steward of Gondor (and Unexpected Courage, like you said already) on him, he's awesome. I really like using him with Gloin. His healing ability really makes Gloin's ability useful. Plus he's GLORFINDEL! the most powerful elf we have at our disposal (for now...)!

His healing ability is imo an emergency action, every other healing card is way more effective in only a few turns and self preservation is also playable on allies (I know, I wouldn't attach it to an cheaper than cost 4 ally either, northern tracker, faramir and of course beorn).

But I agree about the Noldor-Awesomeness

The two main reasons I don't like the card are: 1) he is one of the 5 hit point-guys and cant take a hit from the troll and 2) he totally needs attachments to reach his potential or his stats are wasted. If Bilbos threatcost would have been 6 instead of 9 he would have totally exchanged Glorfindel for me. 25 Starting Threat with mono-lore would have been nice.

Wow. Completely disagree. In my (over hundred game experience) Gimli is close to the bottom and I now don't play Beravor either although I see her potential. Glorfindel I play from the start and never regret. He's just great. One of the few whos ability does not require anything but the resource, no exhaustion, no commitment. Great in combination with Gloin and Denethor. And even better if the other player has UC which is a must because the other deck will have Spirit surely. Dunhere and Legolas are there at the top as well. Dunhere saves so much trouble and you can build a strategy around him. Legolas just helps both with killing (especially coop but this is mostly coop game I say) and progress. Probably the only thing I would agree is the last place for Thalin.

My current deck hero combinations:

Eleanor, Theodred, Aragorn

Dunhere, Eowyn, Legolas

Glorfindel, Denethor, Gloin

...I am waiting for Boromir to include Beravor in a Lore-Tactics (or Tactics-Lore) deck, I know she works best with UC but that will be upon deck 1 or 2 from the above to have.

Plus, he's Glorfindel, the most powerful male Noldor there is in the end of Third Age Middle-earth. 8) Sorry others.

That being said, he could/should have had 4 in either attack or quest and 4 hp perhaps (although the 5 is very useful, too) which would make him more like it, maybe.

lleimmoen said:

In a 2 player game? Dark Knowlede gives safe woulds, Plates give up to 12 damage. Just do the math dude..

lleimmoen said:

That's exactly why you don't understand the tier list. She is the main factor that defines the tier list.

lleimmoen said:

Then please name heroes weaker than Glorfindel. And yeah, good luck with that UC on Glorfindel is nice but IMO only in a bad deck(and yes, that is the one that runs Glorfindel in the first place). This tier list is about good decks.

lleimmoen said:

Sure they are. Then please enlighten us how they are better than the listed above them. Everyone knows what they do, lol.

lleimmoen said:

So what is the combination that you propose for a 2 player game? Because I wrote that tier list for a 2 player game.. Maybe you missed that becasue you bahave like you did.

I happen to agree with the original list. I think Glorfindel's almost worthless. His threat is super high and he's got less willpower than Eowyn (3 points less) and the same attack/defense as Legolas (3 points less). For someone to say he's a beast with Steward and UC is ridiculous, ANY of the heroes, even Eleanor would be more useful with Steward and UC. So without attachments you HAVE to quest with him, because the other Lore heroes are weak questing, which means your best attacker in Lore is out. His healing costs a resource for 1 point, so you can't use him in a Lore minor because there are so many other things which are better to spend on.

I am not sure why you felt the need to be so hostile towards lleimmoen, and I don’t understand the purpose of the thread. You aren’t actually ranking the heroes in any abstract sense, but ranking how you use them in a very narrow circumstance, and then complaining when anyone talks more generally.

Your entire discussion seems to be based not on how useful a card is, but its “win more” value. It’s pointless to brag about how well you can do AFTER you have the game locked. Any recursive deck performs amazingly at that point. You focus on purely theoretically numbers optimization, that don’t correspond to how one actually plays the game. One would never actually keep Gimili at -10 health with two citadel plates on him, because it makes you incredibly vulnerable to a huge range of card effects without giving you much benefit.

If you want to talk about how awesome you deck is, focus on how you overcome the part of the damage that is actually difficult. Give tips on how new players can overcome specific challenges of individual scenarios.

In terms of honing you deck, look to take out Valiant Sacrifice, since Campfire Tales makes it obsolete in with multiple players.

avgzxc said:

Dude, relax. It's ok for other people to have different opinions

Bohemond said:

I wouln't be hostile at all if he was kind enough to give some reasons why the hero x is stronger than the hero y. We all know that all heroes are good but I believe the new players want to know who is better than who and that's what the tier lists are for. You compare them. Not say hero x is good, hero y is good but say hero x is better than hero y because of reason z. Also, narrow circumstance is what you get when you talk about the best decks. So yes, I gave a narrow circumstance becasue you have to base a tier list on sometning - if you do not then, like you said, what's the purpose?

Bohemond said:

The whole point of the discussion is about how useful cards are. Win more = more useful so I don't understand your point. Brag? I just give the information. I have to write what the best decks are because that's the only why to give a reliable tier list.

Bohemond said:

Dark Knowlegde.. Vulnerability is countered by up to 6 A Test of Will, Daughters, can be Self Preservation. Hmmm. I think I should have been more specific about spheres. For optimal 2 decks you need both players to use spirit. That's 6 A Test of Will togeher, 6 UC etc. Also 2 Leadership are a must. 6 Sneaks, 6 Steward(yes I mean it).. Remember, you need to base a tier list on something.

Bohemond said:

I write objectively and use logic. I just used the term best decks to show where I start to build. So relax, I just want to be clear on this: you need to base the tier list around some solid grounds. You have to give good ground because imagine that: dude 1 says he uses lore/tactics and the dude 2 says he uses leadership/lore. Then what? The whole tier list is pointelss. You have to give solid grounds to construct it. Ground is: 2 spirit, 2 leadership, Lore, Tactics BOTH beacause of heros and spheres' cards. Hmmm.

Bohemond said:

Nope. You need to deck out asap for quicker event reshuffles(Sneaks) so it's quite different. Also, don't forget SA + Gandalf trigger VS.

Winning or losing is binary; you get one or the other. Winning more isn't about whether you win or lose, but how much you win by when you win. Focsing on the combos you generate at the end of the games has nothing to do with winning or losing, it's entirely about trying to win more. If you have a recursive deck with threat reduction, the amount of resources generate at the end of a game is totally irrelevant. What matters is how easily you can establish a guaranteed win, not the amount tricks you can do after you have already secured victory.

I 'm not sure how you can talk about people ignoring numbers and claim Valiant Sacrifice is better than Campfire Tales. In a two play game, they generate the same number of cards and has the same cost, but Campfire Tales and lacks any kind of restrictive trigger. Valiant Sacrifice only helps you after you play central combo of the deck (Gandalf and Sneak Attack). Campfire Tales helps you draw into your combo when you don't already have it set up.

As an aside, do you actually own six core sets?

edit: fixed cost of valiant Sacrifice

Bohemond said:

Aaaah, ok. The point is you establish a guaranteed win mainly by Beravor+UC. The whole point is: those tricks ARE what secures your victory. Normaly, combos are hard, even more so - should be hard but with Beravor they just aren't. That's why she defines the tier list - she makes some combos too easy, while they obviosly weren't mean to be that easy (SA + Gandalf, Faramir + EV,..)

Bohemond said:

Ok. I'll try to explain the best I can. Combo aspect is competly taken care of by Beravor + mass UC + mass Common Cause.

1. Campfire costs 1, VS costs 1 as well... Thank you for trying to give false information for everyone. Very helpful..

2. What's better for drawing a 2(or more) card combo: 1 player gets 2 cards OR 1 card goes to each of the players? Answer: yes, obviously 2 cards for 1 player and please sir do read more carefully - I mentioned decking out speeds up WotW event reshuffling.

3. Player 1 has 40 cards. Player 2 has 20 cards. Each of them have already have drawn 1 UC. Is it better to draw 2 from 2nd players or 1 from each? Answer: 2 from 20 gives better odds than 2 from 40 so player 2 has a better chance.

See, false information from you again. But ok, I think it wasn't intentional. You just didn't know.

4. Is it hard to draw SA + Gandalf and trigger Valiant Sacrifice in a Beravor draw focused deck? Answer: no it's not - and that's exactly why she defines the tier list. She can draw any combo very fast.

Bohemond said:

I have 2: native(polish) and english. Rest is proxy.

So, you making rankings that are exclusive to a set of decks that 99.9% of all players, including yourself, don't actually have the cards to play with. And then get snippy when people argue for a more general ranking of cards?

Your campfire vs. valiant example perfectly illustrates what you should reconsider. If you have one player with 40 cards and a UC and another with 20 cards and UC you have already won the game. It doesn't matter if one card performs slightly better in those circumstances; the game is effectively over. The ease of playing campfire makes it better in the early game, when victory still lies in the balance.

And, for what it's worth, I added the error fixing the cost of valiant about an hour before your post.

I just noticed that the OP's "ground level" is meant to be 2 spirit, 2 leadership, 1 lore and 1 tactics. But his top 6 heroes are 2 leadership, 2 tactics, 1 lore, and 1 spirit. The other two spirits are apparently tied for 8th.

Mestrahd said:

For what its worth, I would think that Frodo would work well with the decks he has. You could potentially slide him in to round out your 6.

2 Questions

1. Do you plan on adding the new heroes to the tier as they come out or are you just sticking with the Core Set heroes. (I do realize the title is "Core set hero tier list)

I am curious to see where some of the new heroes stack up in your opinion. I imagine Bilbo Baggins would be somewhere in the middle. High A+ or low S tier.

2. Would the ranks you've given each hero change if you restricted your cards to only one core set?

I only own one core set, and while it's interesting to read about other players decks it's absolutely useless to me if I need another core set to create that deck and play with it.

Well, it is true that I gave little reasons for my claims. But how am I to argue with someone who is almost impossible to understand in English? "Dark Knowledge gives safe woulds?" Is that some kind of code language?

But seriously, relax. I don't think I behaved badly. I may have just given very little ground to my statements, that is true. However, in your thread I saw very little ground to the ranking. You just ranted a bit here and there and I happened to disagree. You may be a great player and have great tactics, your thread just gives me no indication of either.

We usually combine two of the three decks I listed. So I was also talking about 2 player game as well, if you happened to miss it. And they do very well. And, from our experience, they do better than they used to with either Gimli or Beravor.

Bohemond, I think, said it right. The examples given are very extreme and have little to none value to new players as they will have a hard time achieving such points in their game. And the whole comparing think is of course absurd because the heroes themselves are not made to be better or worse. Of course we can argue them into rankings but they really work differently under different circumstances. I actually mentioned the list to one of my friends yesterday and he thought the op was crazy. I am not saying such. I think the list has some logical points. However, as said above, the whole thread does seem very pointless and the main point of comparing which the op think so invaluable is rather useless.

Bohemond said:

Well, yes. It's just better to have a tier list based upon stronger decks. Strong decks use very specific heroes - Beravor, Gimli(fine, maybe Legolas), Eowyn, Theodred.. Hmmm, so to talk more generally I think you need Beravor, Eowyn and Theodred always for the best performance. Gimli can be sometimes weaker than Legolas but overall he is too beasty with UC and CC. It was hard to rate him because he can overkill weaker enemies. So, like half of his great damage can be a total waste. Still, I gave him 2nd because he makes easy one hit kills vs any enemy. Gloin is hard to rate as well because he has to be properly equipped and supported - Dark Knowledge, can be Hasty Stroke, healing cards. He got 5th mainly because of Beravor as I assumed she is there.. If she is not there Gloin becomes much weaker. Hard to say where. Spirit makes a headache as well - both 8th but they are spirit: I chose to rate them more because of the stats and game text - not because of the 1 spirit resource they generate. The main problem is: only one of them is needed in top 6. So, yes the tier list is flawed by game complexity but I decided to give it a shot anyway.

Bohemond said:

Yes, I know what you mean but I assume encounter deck worst case scenarios. The tier list assumes Beravor focused deck. So the ease of playing campfire is almost the same as sacrifice's.

Bohemond said:

Then, for what it's worth, I'm sorry - I didn't notice.

Mestrahd said:

Mestrahd said:

Kiwina said:

1. Yes, I will try. I'm still waiting for my Hunt For Gollum. I know the fellowship cards but don't know anything about shadow. I hear it's easy so maybe the list won't change much, I don't know.
2. One core set for 2 players or for 1 player?

lleimmoen said:

lleimmoen said:

lleimmoen said:

lleimmoen said:

"op" is either Original Poster or Over Powered depending on the context. Nothing derogatory.

Sorry I could not read through your whole post. I will though when time comes. [edit: I have now] I just want to say now, please, no hurt feelings. It is hard to compare heroes but yes, I think it is safe to say that some are usually more powerful than others. As for Beravor, I think she has a great potential, surely. Her UC combo is very strong, obviously. Still, I would hesitate to say she is more powerful (in general) than Glorfindel although majority may think so or time may prove it, too. It may be that I sometimes lean too heavity toward theme - and I like Noldor very much.

So, enjoy gaming - and comparing. I will do, too. Bye for now.

avgzxc, I would agree with you that, your ranking of Eowyn and Beravor. The game rewards specialist heroes that excel at specific tasks. It appears that, against all odds, women rule middle earth (at least, the LCG).

And, my apologies if the discussion got heated. Good gaming to all.

There's a tier in my bier.

Frodo/Eowyn/Beravor may just be great for solo play, but I see myself trying an Eowyn sandwich on hobbit bread.

qwertyuiop said:

That sounds like bad fanfic.