For a change of pace, I'd like to change up my current Spirit Major/Lore Minor deck. My current heroes are:

• Eowyn
• Dunhere
• Bilbo

Overall, it's been a pretty good deck. But I'd like to give Tactics some love.

So I was thinking about replacing Eowyn with Thalin. At first, I started stressing out about losing Eowyn's questing ability. But then I realized I could pull off questing as follows:

• Thalin will deal 1 damage to each enemy as they enter the staging area, damaging these opponents (and in some cases destroying them)
• Dunhere can attack into the staging area, finishing off the enemies that Thalin has attacked
• I can use some good spirit "sprinters" to make a dent in the locations
• I can use POL on Bilbo (or Thalin) to ramp up Willpower

I have used Eowyn so far in literally every deck I've constructed. I thought it might be time for a change.

Do you see this approach working?

My concern about tri-sphere decks is that it is difficult (I assume) to play high-cost cards from your hand. If I want to play Elfhelm or Citadel Plate - that is four turns of saving resources for one hero. Another option that may help is songs, but then I don't want to ramp my card count way up by including a bunch of songs.

Have you found tri-sphere to be effective? How do you make it most effective?

I don't know about that line up. It certainly does seem a bit low on the willpower. You're right that you can make up for it with allies, but you won't get enough allies till mid game, so you may find your threat increasing drastically in the beginning. Plus, as you've noted, you won't be able to play too many (any?) allies on your first turn. Most Spirit allies you will be buying every other round. Personally, I have at least one Leadership hero when I have a trisphere deck so that I can get some resource acceleration. But you know what? You should just try it anyway. There's nothing wrong with losing, and you may learn something from losing with that combination that will help your overall deck-building. And maybe you won't lose. By the way, which scenario are you planning on tackling with this combination of heroes, or are you just making a deck for all scenarios?

i think tactics is support deck- in solo it is the hardest to pull off out of the 4…..whenever i want some fighting power i go instead for leadership which is find a much more refined approach

i rarely go tri sphere - i usually stick to two, as i find watering down my deck, even with songs, hard to play with….also as for the cost i once again fall back on leadership for steward of gondor

there is already a divide between the love/hate eowyn so i do not wish to bring this up, however i think the sooner you at least get used to building decks without her the quicker you will progress and find it easier to use alternate combos

rich

Budgernaut said:

You and richsabre both brought up using leadership as a sphere. Maybe that is the way to go instead of tactics for a tri-sphere.

Regarding your question about scenarios, I was trying for a generalist deck.

if this helps here are my favourite combos of dual spheres in descending order of usefulness (the numbers refer to the hero split)

1. 2x lore / 1x spirit

2. 2x lore / 1x leadership

3. 2x spirit / 1x leadership

4. 2x spirit / 1x tactics

when it comes to tri sphere,. when i do go for it i go

tactics / lore / leadership or more favourably leadership spirit lore

i have recently built a dunedain themed deck with lore aragorn and the twins elladan and elrohir (not technically dunedain but they spent enough time together to justify it)

i havent given it enough play time yet but it works- the extremely high start threat of 32 can be dealt with by aragorns reset

I like 3 sphere decks. They give you a lot more opportunity to fill out a theme/strategy and are more well rounded. You definitely have to be careful about including high cost cards, but resource acceleration is often needed anyway to support those cards (which you can target to the needed sphere - Ziggy is GREAT for this).

I still think you should just try replacing Eowyn with Thalin and see what happens.

But I've been thinking about it and there was one tri-sphere deck I made without Leadership. I had Boromir/Frodo/Bilbo. I called it my "Defend the Hobbits" deck. It was good because Unexpected Courage, Fast Hitch, and Boromir's ability meant I could ready my heroes multiple times. The rest of the deck tried to focus on 1- and 2-cost cards except for Galadhrim's Greetings which was necessary since Frodo and Boromir can potentially ratchet up the threat really fast.

I don't remember if I used songs, but you could easily include them or exclude them to your liking.

Budgernaut said:

I believe that deck can be fun. I would say though Courage is a waste in such a deck, surely you won't place it on a Hobbit when you've got Fast Hitch and placing it on Boromir is redundant - it is much better to spend 1 resource more (or less with Good Meal) to have the effect 6! times.

I think the best approach is to play dual-sphere and, if you want to add a splash of a third sphere, do just that: add a splash and no more. The deck I use is comprised of Spirit and Lore to a 2:1 ratio and a splash of Leadership - just 6 cards, two copies each of Faramir, Sneak Attack and Steward of Gondor. I use 2 Rivendell Minstrels and 3 Songs of Kings to get there. To put it short: if you really want to go the 3-color sphere tactic, try and include Lore as one of your two main spheres and use Leadership as the "bonus" one. It runs really smoothly. And, conveniently enough, all you need is just one AP: The Hunt for Gollum. It includes everything for the above combination.

gvaughn1 said:

Not ture… Tri-Sphere is really easy to run now days. Though since the inclusion of the Songs and Minstrels it is more common run splashes… say 2x Lore and 1 other hero and then splash into the other spheres (4 is easy as well btw).. as running say 3 songs + 3 Minstrels is a 6 card chance to draw your needed splash colors. Running 2 Lore means you can get minstrel out on turn 2 if needed.

Tactics used to be a hell of a sphere to try solo, but after the Eagles of Misty Mountains and stuff it is now extremely strong so trying to use it for solo shouldn't put you off. It used to be terrible, but now isn't but many of the old players form the Core days have not really given it another look at so say it is bad.. it is not any more.

Serazu said:

i agree on this- i do this especially when not fielding spirit so i can put in the test of wills hasty strokes UC and the like