While I certainly like having healing handy, I don't tend to view it as requisite. Plus Spirit has at least two options that are just as good or better than healing. You can use Fortune or Fate to bring a hero back if they die. Or Frodo can simply take damage as threat and hence never needs to be healed - I prefer this to healing, especially if you have threat reduction to back it up.

In the end the argument between Lore and Spirit is probably not necessary. They have numerous high impact 2 card combos that cross the sphere boundary that they are a great pair of spheres to play together. Fast Hitch/Frodo, Asfaloth/Glorfindel, UC/Beravor, Hammersmith/Mathom, and Ziggy/Gildor. come to mind off the top of my head.

Yes, whilst I agree totally that Spirit is the strongest sphere at the moment I would not hesitate that Lore-Spirit is much better than Spirit-mono.

lleimmoen said:

Yep, but that doesn't stop me from playing tactics-leadership (Háma, Brand, Théodred) right now. Have to say that Háma/The Eagles Are Coming is a nice combo. Especially when you also have Radagast and Steward of Gondor in play.

Oh, I love to play Tactics-Leadership as well. But I have little success with it solo; much more in coop, of course.

Do you really take these three around for solo play? That's brave. Especially if Brand's abilities only work coop. I guess you have him there for some initial questing or defence (using Steward and For Gondor! to make him a 3 defender)? Still, how do you manage questing, threat, locations? I would say Legolas could add a bit more to the party.

Healing is not the only thing that Lore can do that Spirit cannot. Lore is much better at drawing cards and at manipulating the Encounter Deck.

IMO, for solo games with a mono-sphere deck, (although heaven knows why anyone would limit themselves to that) the best for many of the quests is Spirit. The one that can more reliably handle a variety a of quests is Lore. With some good card draws, an Eagle-centric Tactics deck can scrape by some quests, but has too hard a time getting the questing strength to reliably beat most of them. As for Leadership, I dunno. Leadership has some nice cards, but they seem to lack in a cohesive theme; it's never occurred to me to make a mono-sphere Leadership deck. Instead I very often have Leadership as the third leg of a bi-sphere deck.

Of course, since this isn't a competitive game and you needn't just build your decks from a single sphere, I'm not entirely sure what the point of this all is. I don't feel the game is any worse because it's hard to play a solo game with a mono-sphere Tactics deck. Instead, I'm generally glad that is the case as the more the sphere's overlap, the more they lose their uniqueness. Is there anything wrong with only using Tactics in multi-sphere decks or multi-player games?

leptokurt said:

I almost always have a Tactic/Leadership deck on hand as well. Right now, mine is also an Eagle-centric deck with Hama, Brand, and Theodred. Although, I'd swap out Brand for Legolas right away if I was trying to use it in a solo game.* Previously, my best Tactics/Leadership deck for solo play was Legolas, Elrohir, and Elladan. I really like the brothers for solo decks as their special abilities help make up for your action deficit. It would be nice if we got some cards that keyed off of the Ranger keyword; I'd like to make a deck with Aragorn, Elrohir, and Elladan, but right now, neither version of Aragorn really offers anything especially useful to those two.

*There's only even a few quests I would try this deck with in solo, and I'd almost certainly mulligan if I didn't get Radagast or Stewart of Gondor in my opening hand.

Spirit sphere: easy questing, "counterspell", menace reduction, draw,…what is missing ?

in solo games it is The color, I usaully build my game blue + another….