I think Elenore is one of the most powerful heroes in the game ... of course Khaz has chanegd things up a bit but she is still awesome. I use her in many of my decks.. Her ability is one of the most powerful in the entire game

booored said:

During the last deck tweaks, I dumped Eleanor just because she doesn't really have a lot to do in KD, too many cannot be cancelled or non When Revealed Treacheries (god I hate that Doomed 2 + surge one).

i may be missing something but, sorry i cant agree, from a solo view, she isnt much use stats wise, and her action only doesnt even properly get rid of the card-it just replaces it with another one from the deck, and then she's exhausted and you're a hero down and probably not much better off seing that whatever comes from the encounter deck will probably be 1.another treachery or 2.an enemy and yet again you're a hero down

ok so her threat's 7, and with core that was great, but now we have much better 7 cost heros which in my opinion have much better stats and actions

Solo is were she shined the most... as Dam said, Khaz changed things up... but her ability to control treachery is awesome... you are simply not worried, you have a instant test at all times. she has a decent defence low threat... all in all a fantastic card. Perpetually good in solo as you are only drawing a trivial 1 card a round, her ability dose get weaker as you add more draws form the encounter deck as any attachment that tries to ready her is at action speed so for now there is no way to ready her after she cancels an effect.,

During the last deck tweaks, I dumped Eleanor just because she doesn't really have a lot to do in KD, too many cannot be cancelled or non When Revealed Treacheries (god I hate that Doomed 2 + surge one).

agreed.

1. Most Powerful - Leadership: Rear Guard - especially in single player. I mean for the price of 1 resource, 1 card from hand, and a discarded ally in play you can easily get 2 or even 3 additional willpower for questing! Ok so seriously . . . Sneak Attack or Steward of Gondor are probably the card, but I give a HEAVY honorable mention to Timely Aid which I think is more universally useful than Sneak Attack and doesn't have uniqueness limitations of Steward.

2. Most Powerful - Spirit: Northern Tracker - I can't believe this hasn't been posted as a winner yet. I would argue it is the most game changing card you can put in play - and by game changing I mean after you play it, you are playing a significantly different and much easier game. Unexpected courage is cool and all, but outside of a very short list of heroes (Beravor, Denathor, Eleanor and possibly Gimli) or crazy attachment stacks, it is roughly matched by playing a powerful ally. Test of will - one time only, not game changing. Zigil Miner is awesome as well and probably is the best card IF you build your deck around him - although one of the key reasons my Ziggy deck kicks so much asphalt is because it makes it easier to buy a certain Dunedain. Northern Tracker fits in any deck and dominates.

3. Most Powerful - Lore: Daughter of the Nimrodel - Probably not a sexy pick, but Lore isn't particularly top heavy in overpowered cards. I MISS having a Daughter available in games and is one of the primary reasons I am looking to buy another core set so that they can be sprinkled in more of the decks I maintain. It keeps heroes alive and synergizes with Gloin for a resource machine that can match Steward plus you can have multiple in play to stack the fun.

4. Most Powerful - Tactics: Landroval - Eagles rock. It is almost unfair to call one out. But this guy attacks at 3, is a good defender, is sentinel, AND it operates as a Fortune or Fate. The only problem is the expense. Winged Guardian would be my second choice as the ability to get out a 4 defense Sentinel cheaply is incredible.

5. Most Powerful - All Spheres: Northern Tracker - I am guessing that people hyped themselves out on this card a year ago. Sure the recent quests have been more beefy in their number of quest tokens required which mitigates its power. But keep in mind all of those games that you've lost because you got behind on questing and locations. If you can't overquest the staging area, you can't get past the current location, which means you can't clear any locations and they just pile up getting worse and worse. Now think back to those games, I would bet you didn't have an NT in play. Why? Because that doesn't happen with NTs where you are always just a few turns from auto-killing locations. AND it is one of the better all around combat allies in the game as well. Those that can defend better - Gandalf, Gildor, Beorn, Eagles of the Misty Mountains. Those that can attack better - Gandalf, Beorn, Veteran of Nanduhirion, Landroval, Vassal of the Windlord

6. Most Thematic Card: Keeping Count - very cool . . . but so useless unless I go buy 3-6 more.

7. Nastiest Encounter Card: Sudden Pitfall - the king of suck, blow, and unfairness. See http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/773906/overpowered-encounter-cards for details. It has been banned in my house.

I believe the answers may depend on quests that the posters prefer. I agree about Northern Tracker being one of the most powerful cards in the game but with the expansions there are quests in which he is not THAT useful, he is always useful but he completely steals the ones like Dol Guldur (nasty locations that need 1 or 2 tokens only). I, for instance, really like playing the Carrock and there I often leave the Tracker sit even though I get him because I just need not quest that heavy or get rid of numerous locations. Thus I would still argue Courage is generally more powerful Spirit card although I like Tracker better from the point of theme and art.

As for the Eagles, I like Vassal the best, especially in combo with the Support. But the Guardian is just as great, probably depends what the deck (or scenario) needs more.

Best Overall Card for Questing/Escape Tests:

Unexpected Courage is very strong by itself for obvious reasons, but I also like Dunedain Quest or Favor of the Lady to boost characters not usually seen questing. For Escape tests, this allows for much greater flexibility in overall strategy and hedges bets against losing main questers to treachery cards.

Along with that I would also list Dain. For my builds his main purpose is all of the ancillary quest he brings through dwarves in play. Again he benefits questing, but is has far more impact for escape tests.

Best Overall Card for Defense:

Allies: Winged Guardian, Gondorian Spearman, or Erebor Hammersmith (cost 2 for 1 Def and 3 HP)

Attachment: Burning Brand - in a game where threat is built on unpredictablility, any sure thing is positive

Best Overall Card for Attack:

Completely situational so I'll say Gandalf because 4 automatic damage to any enemy in play is too potent to ignore

Best Overall Card for Shadows:

Dunedain Watcher - a fairly solid character for the cost without her special, but the special puts her over the top.

Best Overall Card for Hero Support(Could be Healing or Resources):

The songs for multi sphere decks otherwise maybe citadel plate

Best Overall Card for Resources:

On its own Steward of Gondor, for dwarf decks its Narvi's belt.

Beano said:

My post stayed accurate for only 24 hours. http://fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3135 Sleeping Sentry is hands down the worst Encounter card. Now I have to figure out a punishment worse than banning from my house otherwise I am not being fair to Sudden Pitfall which is a cuddly teddy bear in comparison..

Voting is now closed. 10 people submitted votes and below are the results. A few popular cards, but overall a lot of diversity. I wasn't intending to include them, but my instructions weren't clear so some people voted on heroes so I left them in. I'll do another poll at the end of the Darrowdelf cycle to see if the new cards introduced replace some current favourites. Below are the results. Number of votes each card received beside the card name:

Most PowerFull Card_Overall
1st Steward of Gondor 3
2nd Zigil Miner 1
2nd Unexpected Courage 1
2nd Northern Tracker 1

Most PowerFull Card_Leadership
1st Steward of Gondor 5
2nd Sneak Attack 4
3rd Rear Guard 1

Most PowerFull Card_Spirit
1st Unexpected Courage 3
2nd Zigil Miner 1
2nd Dwarven Tomb 1
2nd A Test of Will 1
2nd Ancient Mathom 1
2nd The Galadhrim's Greeting 1
2nd Eowyn 1
2nd Northern Tracker 1

Most PowerFull Card_Lore
1st Protector of Lorien 2
2nd Forest Snare 2
3rd Rivendale Minstral 1
3rd Gildor Inglorion 1
3rd Longbeard Mapmaker 1
3rd Gleowine 1
3rd Beravor 1
3rd Daughter of the Nimrodel 1

Most PowerFull Card_Tactics
1st Feint 4
2nd Eagles of the Misty Mountains 1
2nd Horn of Gondor 1
2nd Citadel Plate 1
2nd Gimli 1
2nd Landroval 1

Most Thematic Card
1st Gandalf 5
2nd Keeping Count 2
3rd Dunedain Mark 1
3rd Frodo 1

Nastiest Encounter Card
1st Sudden Pitfall 2
2nd Festering Wounds 1
2nd Eyes of the Forest 1
2nd Witch King 1
2nd Sacked 1

Best Artwork
1st Dawn Take You All 1
1st The Old Ford 1
1st Longbeard Mapmaker 1
1st Gandalf 1
1st Bifur 1
1st Legolas 1
1st Eleanor 1
1st Fanuidhol 1

Nice tally ! It's cool to see so much diversity. Keep on doing these pools...they make for interesting discussions :-)

Bummer about the poll closing. I was hoping to vote at the end of this week. That'll teach me to procrastinate! I just don't know the cards well enough yet to vote without rifling through my entire stack.

If I had known I could not vote for Gimli and Eowyn (I assume my Elenaor vote was permitted) I would have gone with Northern Tracker and probably Feint.

The_Fallen_Arises said:

as interesting as this was i see a problem.....

the problem now is that when would you do the next one? next month and the results are likely not to differ- most countries are still waiting for Dwarrowdelf #1

you would have to wait for everyone to get say an entire 6 cycle, to make the results above differ any.....and with the spread of countries and when they are released it may take a while before it would be a fair vote

I plan to do the next one several weeks after last adventure pack from Darrowdelf expansion is released.

One interesting thing to note. All of the player cards people selected as the most powerful, come from the core set (in fact 80%ish of the votes went to core set cards). And most of the power cards were uncommons, not rares.

What can we learn for that? Despite some initial concerns, we aren't seeing a huge amount of power creep Also, if you want to field top flight decks, you probably want two sets of core, but you probably don't need a third.

thats a good observation there. shows that ffg are doing their job well if nothing else

Yes, good call. UC being an exception, that card should have been there at least twice in the core set. I understand why not have more of Beorn's Hospitality, Grim Resolve, or even Horn of Gondor (being unique) but with Courage they just wanted people like me to run for more boxes.

Zigil being usually the one non-core card that gets most love. It is Gildor for me though.

Bohemond said:

Not sure about the other LCGs but in CoC some of the most powerful cards are still from Core as well and that game is like 6 cycles deep + 2 xpacs... ..

Bohemond said:

My roommate and I just proxy in the extra cards rather than buy an extra core set.

ragnarhedin said:

ive always wondered about proxy cards- i mean cant you then tell whats coming up in your deck?

what you do is use sleeves.... place a "real" card in the sleeve, then place the print of the new face in the front of teh sleeve.. so the card looks exactly like the rest of the cards in your deck form the back. Incidentally this is also how you run custom scenarios.

Yes sleeves rocks... just another reason why.

oh booored booooored booored why do you push me so? did we not have a 6 post argument on sleeeves just a few months ago?

what are you talking about?

You asked how to play a custom card with out being able to tell it is different form the other cards.. and I told you how it is done...

i thought you were putting a hint in aimed at me in regards to an something i previously posted about, but as you werent, sorry, never mind

Look if you want to not use sleeves then the only other way is to print out your entire deck your planning to play with. Otherwise your right, there will always be a visible difference in the cards that you can see and will inform you of the next draw..

One of the entire points of the opaque sleeve covers is for exactly this function. It was a device that came into being form the CCG days when a single card could be like a 80 bucks easy. It isn't "me" it is how the card games work.. you think it is a coincidence the Official LoTR opaque sleeves have the encounter deck and player deck card backs on them? No it is for exactly this use.. custom encounter deck cards and proxies.

Also worth noting that when you do a proxy this way you can print on normal paper, no need to print on card baord or print double sided.