I need to settle differing opinions on Keeping Count. A fellow player (really wants to) believe that the resources put onto Keeping Count can be spent to play cards or resolve treachery card effects. What do the experts say?

no it cannot - the resources are there to represent something, ie more kills, whereas the 'real' resources respresent for want of a better word, money.

same with chieftan ufthak- he gets a resource but obivously cannot spend either

rich

Incidentally, how many people use this card? I have not had it for long, but can't really imagine using it.

It is literally useless unless 2 copies are in play. Once you are in play, its bonus essentially degrades as you use it (if you have +2 attack thanks to having 2 fewer kills than the "competitor," and then you kill an enemy, you're down to +1). So you it is a +attack card that encourages you not to use this hero to attack.

The only thing I can think of is to put one copy on, say, Eowyn or Bilbo, who would never attack. Then at the end of the game, when s/he is +10, release a massive strike!

I've tried to build decks with my friend to use this card in 2-player games; however, in the two games we tried, we can only draw one copy (out of two decks) each time. So we do not have any success in using it, although there are some resource counters on it at the end of the quest.

ive tried several times to use it as i really like the idea of such a thematic card, however i think its always going to be one of the those 'collecting dust' cards that could have been a bit better thought through

rich

richsabre said:

That's what I thought. Thanks Rich.

Maybe it'll get errata'd at some point and become more usable, because I also like the idea behind it.

I haven't tried this yet as I've been playing The Hobbit lately with a dwarf deck, but my idea was to put 3 copies into my Elladan & Elrohir deck. The first copy would go on Elledan who does a lot of killing and so the card would be building up resource tokens. The next copy would then go on Elrohir late in the game when I wanted a big hit on a boss. I would use Elledan in this attack too so the count difference would stay the same and Elrohir would keep his big bonus.

It's the only way I can think of getting use out of the card.

You can keep count of the number of times you give this card the stink eye as you're flipping through tactics cards to build another eagles deck.