There has been much talk about the Spirit version of Glorfindel, the consensus being his (dis)ability is not much of an obstacle due to very low threat cost and the obvious combo with the Light of Valinor. I would now like to share one aspect of it that may not have been discussed. And that is the "usefulness" of the forced effect. In our coop games, we've been starting with the initial threat levels of 24 (player controlling Glorfindel) and 25. It has proven useful on quite a few occasions to raise the threat of the Glorfindel player to equal up to the other player on round 1. It allows for more strategy options, the most obvious being the Snaga Scouts in MaO or Caught in a Web. Thus we often opt not to play Light of Valinor on round 1 even when we already have the card.

ps: For similar (and more potent) strategic reasons (and the beautiful art) I am a big fan of the Song of Earendil but I currently cannot find place for it in the two decks we run…

In solo play it can be helpful if you're threat is already 30+ and you have one or more Goblin Scouts in the staging area. It's easier to raise your threat by two each round to get quickly to 37 than to get it down to 24.

In general I think the forced effect isn't that terrible once your threat is 30+ points. Most of the enemies would engage you anyway, and it's way too difficult to trigger the secrecy keyword (unless you have Loragorn).

In mu opinion most cheeting card in the game. Beravur is angel against this New Glor. He is incredible unbalanced!!!!! If is going like this in future soon we will get the cards like Lore event cost 5: play this card and you win the game. My new deck is crazy powerful cose of him, Light of valinor and Asfaloth. i complain about tracker before???? Tracker is pure baby against Asfaloth. This card is crazy powerful! Even MIO i can win now quite easy.

Ok sure i will not use him for my deck building in currently metagame. He is just broke everything. I can see already 2 decks

Glorifindel/ Aragorn/ Denethor.

Beravur/ Legolas/Eowyn.

Those 2 deck can win any quest MIO included. And not just win but win any time ( only bad draw can screw you. But encounter deck will have no surpise for you at all. This is we call good game design??? This we call amazing Designers??? I play lot of card games before: Magic, Decipher Lotr, Desipher Star wars, Desipher Wars, Middle earth ccg but i never see such a briliant game idea as a lotr lcg and for me is pain to see how game go more and more casual style.

Among all this casual players at least i happy we have here players like Leptokurt, Bohemond, Radiskull, Narsil, Juicebox. I always have a respect to people who know what they doing and talking about.

He's very strong, but not overpowered. First you have to get Light of Valinor or Asfaloth in your hand to get all these advantages. Then if you compare him to Bifur, he's not much stronger. He has 3 ATT and 3 WP. Bifur also has 3 WP (with Dáin in play) and can easily improve his DEF to 3 (Dúnedain Warning, Ringmail, Arwen). Erebor Boots give him another HP, his starting threat is only 2 above Glorfindel's, and he has an awesome ability while Glorfindel has none. Erebor Record Keeper can ready him when needed etc.

Or take Bilbo - one Dúnedain Warning, Arwen, Fast Hitch and Celebrían's Stone, and he's The Wall. Not to forget Burning Brand.

I like that Glorfindel offers some new deck building options, like Loragorn did before.

leptokurt said:

Try my deck Leptokurt and then tell me what you think about it. Please do it Leptokurt you mention is important for me.

About starting hand. If i did get LOV in my starting hand i have Elrond Councel which cost zero to reduce my threat by 3 for couple rounds i save, then i got Daeron runes to draw cards to get it. And i won many games even Without LOV. This is not really important. You can reduce your threat with EC GGreetings and Gandalf. Important is you have 2 heroes in my deck Glor and Arogorn they are quest for 5 and ready for attack 6. From the begin!!! Try my deck please and you will see! I try play like Glor still cost 12 threat. Sounds more fair for me. More reasonable in my opinion rule: ad threat every time when you exhaust Glorifindel.

I think it's actually kind of cool and unique to have a game that has cards which might be a bit unbalanced to make the game more casual. Since it's not a competitive game, you can build your decks to play casual or try something out that might be more of a challenge or thematic. I know my wife probably wouldn't be begging me to play every night if we weren't winning the majority of the time because that's what she enjoys. When I play by myself I can experiment some with other types of decks and I really don't care if I lose. I just enjoy playing the game and the challenge of figuring out how many different combinations I come up with the combat these quests. There are enough competitive "professional" card player games out there to keep you at bay if that's your thing. Here's to hoping this game just continues to introduce fun quests and card mechanics we can all enjoy (although I would love some better tactics cards).

leptokurt said:

leptokurt said:

Hmm, but these cards you also have to draw - and they're from three different spheres even.

And the difference between threat cost 5 and 7 is already not just marginal, the difference between 5 and 9 can be huge. The 5 really allows for so many options, including secrecy.

leptokurt said:

Glaurung is right. Glorfindel is stupidly powerful when combined with Asfaloth and Light of Valinor. Sure, you have to start out with LoV in your hand. If you mulligan for the card (and if you are playing Glorfindel, you almost always should), that means you start out with the card about 58% of all games. If you include Runes you increase your odds considerably. In the 40 or so test games I ran with my Glorfindel deck, there were only a couple occasions that I didn’t get the card in play by turn 3.

And a 5 cost hero who quests for 3 without tapping, attacks for three and has 5 health is far superior to Bifur plus any other attachment of your choice. And that’s in comparison to Bifur, one of the most powerful heroes on in the whole game.

Of course Frodo is powerful with 4 or five 5 attachments, but so what? That takes a ton of card draw and resources and he still isn’t as good as Beravor with half as many attachments.

I urge you to run some tests with the new Glorfindel. Use my deck, use one of Glarung’s decks. GLorfindel and his attachments are game breaking. Now, as Valyrian Steel said, that may not be a bad thing, but we shouldn’t be disputing the power level of this combination of cards. It’s off the charts.

Hey, I've seen pleanty of losses while playing with Glorfindel. See CardboardoftheRings' 3 player Foundations of Stone game for example.

I was just using Glor/Elrohir/Elladan yesterday and lost against the Carrock.

Is there anyone suggesting dare I say it…."banning" Glorfindel (sp)? There isn't an organized play system as of yet, so officially banning isn't an option but players could simply not use him out of some code of honor etc., but would anyone do so when he is available them? I think every game follows Newtonian physics to a certain extent, where something comes out and some shout "powercreep!," and then something else comes out and "nerfs" or makes less effective the thing everyone was concerned about. I'd say its a bit early to run for the hills as for every action in gaming there there tends to be an equal and opposite reaction. Powercreep eventually comes to all games and I'd say Glorfindel's (sp) release trumpets that. Now it comes down to whether or not FFG manages this powercreep well.

I have no doubt that you can make a deck using Glorfindel that doesn't work well, but that is hardly the measure of a broken card in LCGs and CCGs.

I'm currently using Glorfindel, that's why I think he isn't overpowered or game breaking. However, I will try Glaurung's deck (as far as I can build it with one core set) to see how it works. I stoll think that Glorfindel without Light of Valinor is pretty unimpressive and quite jobless during the first couple of rounds. That's almost half of the games.

leptokurt said:

How is he jobless? It's not like you can't still quest with him without Light of Valinor. In fact, you can quest like 7 times before he even EQUALS what his threat should be. Then once you find a Light of Valinor (or worst case an Unexpected Courage) you get double use out of him. Cancelling out the threat loss is just extra bonus.

No, even if you mulligan for the card (LoV, or any), your chances of having the card in your opening hand is less than 50%, given you run three copies and 50 cards. However, the chances of having it early enough rise dramatically with extra card draw.

As for Glorfindel being broken I say Nay, as for him being the best hero out there I say Yea!

lleimmoen said:

If you have a 50 card deck and three copies of LoV, here are the numbers (I think, math was never my strong suit, so feel free to correct).

Your odds of drawing a six card hand without LoV

47*46*45*44*43*42 / 50*49*48*47*46*45

or 7731052560 / 11441304000

or 67.571429%

So, if you don't draw it you mulligan. Your odds of a seven card without LoV

Your odds of drawing a six card hand without LoV

47*46*45*44*43*42*41 / 50*49*48*47*46*45*44

or 62.96429%

Odds that you don't draw LoV in either of the two hands 42.5459%, so your odds of getting it are around 57.5%. Obviously including Runes in your deck inproves your odds, but I don't want to do the math to crush those numbers

Yeah, math is not your strength, really. You did the first part well but you ****** up the mulligan. I am not great in math either but I checked this out. I will post the right number if you want but it is better to learn it from proper sources.

lleimmoen said:

If you are going to tell me that I am wrong, please let me know how I am wrong. The odds of the draw on the mulligan are exactly the same as the odds on the initial draw, save for the fact that you end up with a seventh card by the time you start playing. If the first part is right I don't see how the second part can be in error.

Narsil0420 said:

Maybe i sound bad but i saw this game and……. You was ok Narsil but other players……sorry but even Glorifindel cannot help you if you dont know how to play this game. The players level is important! We cannot talk really serious of you even dont know rules well.

First you dont even remember the cards. And for sure dont remember cards game text. You cannot be a good player if you dont remember ANY cards game text in your mind.

You correctly computed the probability for not getting it in a 6 card hand (67.57%) and the probability for not getting it in a 7 card hand (62.96%)

So, you get it in your opening hand in the following ways:
1) You get it in your first hand. OR
2) You miss it in your first hand, mulligan, AND get it in your second hand + first draw.

So, the probability is:

(1-P(miss on 6)) + P(miss on 6)*(1-P(miss on 7))

Which is: (.3243) + (.6757)(.3704) = .5746 (ish).

So your final probability is 57.48%, which is pretty **** close to Bohemond's answer (if not identical, depending on how we both rounded).

And math IS my strong suit. I should get my PhD in May.

Glaurung said:

Then you should go help them out. I'm sure they'd welcome your constructive feedback.

Edit: Just so we're clear, I'm not trying to be snarky. If you think they made some poor decisions during the gameplay videos, you should suggest alternative strategies.

First, I appologize Bohemond, I thought you are not minding the 1-P time P rule because you didn't show it among the numbers. The way you computed was right, I just didn't see how you added the two numbers within the post. I am sorry I didn't recognize the right thing.

Minor point, you don't mulligan for 7 cards, you still mulligan for 6. I was talking about the opening hand (and I thought we both were). But that doesn't change things much. The correct number is about 54% which makes my initial statement that it were below 50% totally incorrect.

Radiskull, way to show you didn't study your PhD for nothing, thanks for the clarification. Again, the final number is slightly off because you do 7 cards in stead of 6 but that is indeed a minor thing.

lleimmoen said:

Not to worry, I certainly could have erred as well. We all make mistakes.

lleimmoen said:

I did 7 cards in the second draw because I'm interested in the probability that I "start the game" with the card. Since there's really not anything to do between the initial draw and the first Planning phase, I included the first draw from the resource phase as well.

You're right, though - it doesn't change the probability much at all. 54.34%, as you found.

I know, it makes sense. I thought it'd be better without it because then you've got some factors like Bilbo giving one extra card, encounter cards forcing you to discard, etc; thus the crude opening hand might be the best starting point, from which one can go with Beravor, Runes, etc. to further pull the scales.

To come back to the OP, having this (way) over 50% chance of having any card from the early start really makes the "one player card + hero" combos very powerful. Not that it is a new thing by any means, it just reminds me that the likes of enLightened Glorfindel or enCouraged Beravor are "quicker" and likely more effective combos than the likes of Stargazing Miners.

I'm playing with Glaurung's deck against FoS. Win/loss ratio is 2-1. The first two games were easy wins, although Aragorn got 2 damage in round 1 of the first game which made me a bit concerned, but then the rest of the scenario was location heavy - with Asfaloth in my starting hand it wasn't that difficult. Game 2 saw no trouble at all.

Game 3 was the most interesting. LoV, Asfaloth, Haldir, Gildor - all in my starting hand, and "Steward of Gondor" in round 1 which I played on Denethor. In round 2 I lost Aragorn to Unexpected Trap, but got to stage 4B without any bigger problems. There I faced a "Nameless Thing" which got Gandalf and Protector of Lórien as attachments when I engaged it. I defended with Haldir, but got "Unexpected Trap" again, this time as a shadow card. Haldir - dead! Denethor - dead!

In the next two rounds I planned to sacrifice Gléowine and Riddemark's Finest as meat shields in the last turn of stage 4 and stage 5. With 10 cards in my hand (thank you Gléowine!) and Protector of Lórien attached to Glorfindel I had a good chance to finish stage 5 in a single turn. But first I had to defend Nameless Thing. Riddermark's Finest bites the dust, and the shadow card was "Lost and Alone". All my cards gone! Then I sent Glorfindel and Gildor questing, and my encounter was - drumroll - "Lost and Alone"! Game over!

However, it was a loss I enjoyed because it was so, uhm, elegant and epic.

I will play some more games, perhaps against other scenarios too, to properly evaluate this deck. So far I like it, although it seems to be a bit vulnerable against enemies in the first couple of rounds. And I would always choose Westroad Traveler over Riddermark's Finest. Or more copies of Arwen.