Following the suggestion of user Boored about trying to use a card that rarely sees the light of day.

I finally resurrected Keeping Count from the sticky protective sleeves of the binder. The cards came out with a satisfying sheekkkk, sound.

I am not going to post the whole deck. If anyone really want's to see it let me know.

I set up a quick deck with Aragorn Lore, Spirt Glorfindel, and Tactics Boromir. All are great targets for Keeping Count. The deck only has 6 allies, a ton of attachments, and a few events. The allies were of course Master of the Forge and Gandalf OHaUH.

Just a refresher on Keeping Count text for those of you who do not want to go digging through binders and boxes.

Text

limit 1 per Hero

Attached Hero gets +1 attack for each resource token on another copy of Keeping count that is above the current number of resource tokens on this card.

Forced: After attached hero attacks and Destroys an enemy, place 1 resource token on this card.

Long story short, I played 7th level and it took 17 rounds for the win and I ended with 36 threat.

Keeping Count tokens for each hero.

Boromir 10

Glorfindel 5

Aragorn 1 (but it was a mighty blow)

When we look at the bonus to attack it is kind of ridiculous.

Glorfindel could attack for 8, and also had 1 Rivendel blade. LoV and 1 UC

Aragorn could attack for 18 he had 2 copies of UC on him.

Edit: i don't believe this to be the case anymore read my thoughts 2 posts down.

Glorfindel would be 8 attack and Aragorn would be 12. Still pretty impressive.

Fore extra shenanigans I also had a copy of Gondorian Fire and Blood of Numenor on Aragorn and Boromir with so Many low cost cards they usually had about 5-6 resources to spare, not like they needed the extra attack or defense though. They were also equipped with Burning Brands (SoW for Boromir). All the heroes got equiped with Gondorian shields to keep count on too. PoL was there for extra willpower or defense.

Of course all this extra attack and defense is really not needed, but it is fun to see it all work.

I sort of felt bad for the Cave troll when he was hit by 34 attack, and Gandalf helped a bit on that one by adding 4.

Pretty sure this deck will not stand a chance on many scenarios, but I'll play around with it on some others, particularly battle and Siege quests.

I would love to see your deck and how you play the cards. I have a deck with those three and have thought about KC, but it seemed mostly unneeded.

I would love to see your deck and how you play the cards. I have a deck with those three and have thought about KC, but it seemed mostly unneeded.

Although this deck did just fine on PiP and Gandalf never entered play, and I also took it through Into Ithilien on it's third try.

Most of the cards are pretty self explanatory in terms of who is getting what attachment. Aragorn can also do a bit of defending to relieve Boromir from the task. At first I was playing my copy of keeping count on Boromir first, and I am still experimenting with what the best order is. I think the first copy should go to Glorfindel if he has LoV. Since he is pretty much going to be attacking an enemy and destroying regularly. Before I get the second copy he will have 3-5 resource tokens already on the card, so then I can put the 2nd copy on Boromir, and he will be 8 attack. Which is awesome for Battle questing, at this point he and Glorfindel will be taking down enemies, and each card will be getting a token, so there is no net loss for Boromir. By the time the third Keeping count Comes out and is placed Aragorn he will be a beast. I think the order you play KC on the heroes is also dependent on what happens during the scenario, since that has dictated the best order. The Order seems to change up if Glof does not get LoV early on.

Blood of Numenor with PoL with Gondorian shields helped power through Siege portions of II, and Gondorian Fire was also working nicely on Battle quests. There are a few attachments that are really not necessary, and could easily be replaced for Warden of Healing, but I always liked Healing Herbs in this attachment heavy deck.

Hero (3)

Boromir (TDM) x1

Aragorn (TWitW) x1

Glorfindel (FoS) x1

Ally (6)

Master of the Forge (SaF) x3

Gandalf (OHaUH) x3

Attachment (29)

Gondorian Fire (AoO) x2

Gondorian Shield (TSF) x3

Keeping Count (TRG) x3 Will replace with Deep Knowledge in VoI. Can use this as proxy till then.

Mighty Prowess (TDF) x2. edit x1

Rivendell Blade (RtR) x2. edit removed

Spear of the Citadel (HON) x2 edit removed

Blood of Numenor (HON) x2

Light of Valinor (FoS) x3

Unexpected Courage (Core) x3

A Burning Brand (CatC) x2

Asfaloth (FoS) x2 edit x1

Protector of Lorien (Core) x3. edit x2

Song of Wisdom (CatC) x3 edit x2

Healing Herbs x3. Added

Elf stone x 2. Added. Without KC, x2 Rivendell Blade is better choice.

Event (15)

A Test of Will (Core) x3

Gondorian Discipline (EaAD) x3

Elrond's Counsel (TWitW) x3

Daeron's Runes (FoS) x3

Lay of Nimrodel x3. Added

Deep Knowledge (VoI) x3 see Keeping Count attachment above.

After reading keeping count card again I think it will not stack. So the character who gets the last copy will not take advantage from both other copies in play. Seems like the card with the most resources on it will provide the extra attack bonus to the 2 other cards.

No big deal in terms of the deck, it's not like a hero really needs an extra 15 attack at that point anyway. The wording is a bit confusing, but I think that my current interpretation is correct.

I haven't posted my updated build, but I've added Protector of Lorien as well. I think it will be particularly useful in Dunland by helping to keep excess Unique attachments out of your hand. I'll try your build soon.

A few changes to the deck I'll edit above on the list.

This deck is built on resource hoarding. A strategy that can be built around Blood of Numenor and Gondorian Fire for defense and Attack respectively. This will turn Tactics Boromir with burning brand into a brick wall and an unstoppable force for attacking. Aragorn will also benefit from these cards, but his resources are being used more regularly. Glorfindel also builds up a mound of resources, and I just realized that I forgot a card that would fit perfect into this resource hoarding deck.

Lay of Nimrodel work perfect for Glorfindel resources. And later in the game it can easily add 7 or more to a willpower based quest. Also, i put in 2 Elf-stone for getting gandalf into play, which was always a resource set back. In an ideal situation with locations it might work well, but I can see most of the time needing to get him into play more urgently. I also added 3 Healing Herb which is making a big difference, and their just nice to have around incase things start to look bleak for a hero.

Edits in the deck list above.

You've really taken the archetype in a different direction. Nice job. I always included Arwen for the defense buff, but she isn't needed in your build. Herbs are great to remove some of the early damage to Boromir, but aren't usually needed later.

Another victory on II. Lay of Nimrodel blew past stage 3 in one turn. It's a good fit for the deck when you need an extra willpower boost.

Keeping Count is totally unnecessary for this deck. I think it is more trouble then it's worth, might still be useful for battle quest, but it had it's day of fame but instead of coaster material which it will be once VoI comes out I decided to use it as a Proxy for the Lore event Deep Knowledge. Which is another great fit for this deck. Raise threat by 2 and draw 2 cards is no brainer for Aragorn lore.

Played the last game like this and I really like it.

Yeah, this deck is kind of a different archetype. Distribution of the cost of cards is really interesting.

0 cost - 19

1 cost - 19

2 cost - 9

5 cost - 3

38 cards are 0-1 cost! So, you would think your heroes would end up with a mountain of resources with nothing to play, but really resources are being used in a completely different way, since cards like Gondorian Fire, Blood of Numenor, and Lay of Nimrodel only work better with more resources, and they get consistent use. With not many expensive cards in the deck using resources to fuel the powers of this cards is what drives the engine of the deck, and are what make it successful on a scenario like II.

I'm pretty happy with the direction it's taking.

Whoa, I just had the most epic game against TSoCA with this deck, after two close games I decided to give it another try.

Here are a few Highlights. I got hit with Master's malice in the second round. Mumak was revealed in the 3 round. He engaged and destroyed the banks, and I dealt him 3 damage, in the 4th round he destroyed the Approach, and got a shadow card to attack again, which put 9 damage on the Citadel with shadow card, now he is up to six damage. Next round Boromir has to defend him and a few other enemies, but at least I could play Gandalf, at this point I had already reset my threat with Aragorn. Boromir is healed by Aragorn with the herbs between defending Mumak and another 8 attack beast. With Gondorian fire I am able to get Mumak up to 9 damage and take care of the other enemy. Start of the next round the Citadel is dealt damage on when revealed, so now all locations are lost. Now it is Mumak and another 7 attack enemy. Boromir defends both with Gondorian Shield, Gondorian discipline and Blood of Numenor. He is down to 2 hp again, although he gets up and takes down Mumak with Glorfindel, and Gandalf and Aragorn take down the other enemy. Now on to stage 2 and 2 cards off the encounter deck first is 2 threat enemy and second is Master's Malice. Test of will, yes! That with Lay of Nimrodel clears stage 2. Stage 3 is passed on the Battle quest first try. On to stage 4 siege quest also passed on first try. On to stage 5 reveal 7 attack enemy with doomed 2. Yikes! Threat is at 45 now. Boromir needs to ready threat is at 46. Aragorn heals him with herbs, and boromir takes 3 damage. I need to save his resources for a big push next round as well a use cards to fuel PoL. I do not ready him again to finish of the enemy and can only put 4 damage on him. Threat is now a 49 at the start of the 10th round, it is a SiegeI quest and with only these 4 characters Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir and Glorfindel i only have 11 committed to the quest i need 15 to win, but that's not the end of the story. A 2 threat enemy is revealed of the deck. Phew no Doomed. i only have 3 cards in hand to discard for PoL, Boromir is the only Hero with BoG. He has 4 resources and discards 1, and now has 3 more def to add to the quest. I had just enough, 17 def to put those 15 glorious progress tokens on the quest card.

That may have been my most epic game ever. I did 2 things in this scenario that I was never able to do before. One was defeat Mumak and win the scenario, and the other was lose all Battle ground locations and make it through all 5 quest cards. And this all happened in the same game with only 4 characters in play. That was cool!

Sweet! Will try this build this weekend.

Awesome... that sounds great.

Keeping count is a silly card but it works well with Dunhere decks as well, as in those decks you are attacking with one guy, as in Dunhere himself, at almost all times. So the bonus just goes super super high. One shot Nightmare Carrock trolls stuff like that.

I wouldn't call Keeping Count underrated.. but it is far from the coaster people think it is.. still most of the time after you stop having fun and start things of how to make the deck better... and then it is taken out. Usually it is kinda not needed in the grand scheme of things.

Still it is always fun to use cards you do not use often.

Sweet! Will try this build this weekend.

I made some major strategy changes you might want to try/think about when you test it out.

I decided to remove Gandalf from the deck, which was a major change. Now all threat increase is due to using Boromir multiple times a round. I replaced Gandalf with Resourceful x3. I also took out the two Rivendell Blades and replaced them with Song of Travel x2, I also took out 1 PoL and Healing Herbs and added 1 more copy of Blood of Numenor and Gondorian fire.

Here is the main strategy now, all copies of Resourceful, Blood of Numenor, and Gondorian fire, now get attached to Boromir. In addition he will get Song of Wisdom and Burning Brand, and Song of Travel. He will also get Gondorian Shield, Might Prowess, and PoL. That's 15 attachments! I just finished II and this is what he had in the end, so it is possible.

So, this can get out of hand, and is probably broken having multiple copies of BoN and GoF in this situation, because the boost from BoN gave Boromir an extra 61 Def on a Siege quest to win II on the last round!

He had 19 resources in his pool, and I triggered each copy of BoN.

So, remove one resource and he has 18, another resource, for 17, and another resource for 16 to total 61.

And if he needed to attack in the same round he would be at 58 with 3 copies of GoF in the same round.

Of course it was tough to get to this point, and i would have lost if he could not provide the questing power at that point since my threat was at 48, but I have never seen a single character do this before. Wonder if the developers will need to revisit this to make these cards limit one per character, but I'll let them worry about that.

By no means is this combo going to crush everything, because it takes a lot of set up time.

Anyway, the song of travel is in the deck is so Boromir can do the same thing with his resources pool with Lay of Nimrodel. He was was able to commit 17 to the WP quest to blast through stage 3 of II.

A a few more tweaks that might be made are removing the 3 UC. They are two expensive and pretty much useless on Aragorn at this point. I will either add 3 Dwarven Tomb to recycle Elrond's Counsel, or Drop in 3 Gladhrim's greeting. Since losing to maxing out threat is the main issue right now.

This deck is really taking shape now. Down to just 3 copies of Master of the forge for allies in the deck. Not sure I can drop them out though.

Here is the modified deck. I think it's pretty good now. Test run on Into Ithilien went smooth.

Hero (3)

Boromir (TDM) x1

Aragorn (TWitW) x1

Glorfindel (FoS) x1

Ally (3)

Master of the Forge (SaF) x3

Attachment (29)

Gondorian Fire (AoO) x2

Gondorian Shield (TSF) x3

Keeping Count (TRG) x3 i am playing this as Deep Knowledge event from VoI, can play as is too.

Expert-Treasure Hunter (OTD) x3

Blood of Numenor (HON) x2

Light of Valinor (FoS) x3

A Burning Brand (CatC) x2

Asfaloth (FoS) x1

Protector of Lorien (Core) x1

Song of Wisdom (CatC) x2

Healing Herbs (FoS) x2

Resourceful (TWitW) x3

Song of Travel (THoEM) x2

Event (18)

A Test of Will (Core) x3

Gondorian Discipline (EaAD) x3

Elrond's Counsel (TWitW) x3

Daeron's Runes (FoS) x3

Lay of Nimrodel (TMV) x3

Dwarven Tomb (Core) x3

Edit: removed 1 copy of Blood of Numenor, Gondorian Fire, and Mighty Prowess for Expert Treasure Hunter x3

Rohan Warhorse might be a good replacement for Gondorian Shield. Since you have Blood of the Numenor, Gondorian Shield might be mostly useless later in the game. Also Rohan Warhorse allows Boromir to ready after attacks without raising threat, which could help keep you from threating out. You can hold two of them so you can attack 3 times per turn.

Also, it might be interesting to replace Glorfindel with Sam Gamgee. It would give you access to Sneak Attack so you can use Gandalf for threat reduction again, and it'd give you access to Steward of Gondor for even more resources (maybe just remove Resourceful). He has the the same Willpower, so you're not really losing out there, though he won't be as helpful with attacking/defending while you're still trying to set Boromir up.

Just some interesting ideas to think about.

That may have been my most epic game ever. I did 2 things in this scenario that I was never able to do before. One was defeat Mumak and win the scenario, and the other was lose all Battle ground locations and make it through all 5 quest cards.

I made the perfect deck for this scenario a while ago and I won 10/10 times. Two of the games I got a Mumak and all quest cards and I still won no prob. I was running a Beregond, Thalin, Legolas deck. Mono Tactics can make short work of Cair Andros.

But that is pretty cool that you did it without Defender of Rammas, Beregond, Winged guardian and all that stuff. I have never made a successful deck for defending that island castle that wasn't at least 2/3 tactics heroes.

Nice job man. Sounds like it was a fun one.

That may have been my most epic game ever. I did 2 things in this scenario that I was never able to do before. One was defeat Mumak and win the scenario, and the other was lose all Battle ground locations and make it through all 5 quest cards.

I made the perfect deck for this scenario a while ago and I won 10/10 times. Two of the games I got a Mumak and all quest cards and I still won no prob. I was running a Beregond, Thalin, Legolas deck. Mono Tactics can make short work of Cair Andros.

But that is pretty cool that you did it without Defender of Rammas, Beregond, Winged guardian and all that stuff. I have never made a successful deck for defending that island castle that wasn't at least 2/3 tactics heroes.

Nice job man. Sounds like it was a fun one.

Rohan Warhorse might be a good replacement for Gondorian Shield. Since you have Blood of the Numenor, Gondorian Shield might be mostly useless later in the game. Also Rohan Warhorse allows Boromir to ready after attacks without raising threat, which could help keep you from threating out. You can hold two of them so you can attack 3 times per turn.

Also, it might be interesting to replace Glorfindel with Sam Gamgee. It would give you access to Sneak Attack so you can use Gandalf for threat reduction again, and it'd give you access to Steward of Gondor for even more resources (maybe just remove Resourceful). He has the the same Willpower, so you're not really losing out there, though he won't be as helpful with attacking/defending while you're still trying to set Boromir up.

Just some interesting ideas to think about.

I did consider Sam, but then the Deck's starting threat goes up to 31. Glorfindel continues to be the perfect fit at 5 threat, LoV, a bit of location control with Asfalof, and 3 attack, 3 willpower, and Access to the spirit cards such as Blood of Numenor, which is essential. The Lay of Nimrodel /Song of Travel combo i am really enjoying. The deck would need a major overhall to drop spirit.

Thanks for the ideas

Yeah I am curious to check out the Warhorse. It would cut down on threat a lot. I'd be hard pressed to give up his Gondorian shield though, to have two horses. It really helps in the early game. Readying after attacking is usually not the issue for the threat increase, usually it's after defending. Maybe Behind Strong Walls could help cut down on threat and get a defense buff too.

Yea, I was wondering about the limited capability of Rohan Warhorse because attacking is the last action you take, so you don't need to ready as much afterward. It's more useful in multiplayer games with a strong Ranged character where there will be more enemies to pick off.

I would have mentioned Behind Strong Walls, but when I saw Gondorian Discipline I was thinking it was BSW for some reason.

Yeah I am curious to check out the Warhorse. It would cut down on threat a lot. I'd be hard pressed to give up his Gondorian shield though, to have two horses. It really helps in the early game. Readying after attacking is usually not the issue for the threat increase, usually it's after defending. Maybe Behind Strong Walls could help cut down on threat and get a defense buff too.

Yea, I was wondering about the limited capability of Rohan Warhorse because attacking is the last action you take, so you don't need to ready as much afterward. It's more useful in multiplayer games with a strong Ranged character where there will be more enemies to pick off.I would have mentioned Behind Strong Walls, but when I saw Gondorian Discipline I was thinking it was BSW for some reason.

I tried Behind Strong Walls in the deck, it is decent, but not really needed.

The last major tweak I made was to include Expert Treasure Hunter x3. It was suggested by user Xanlaor and BGG site.

It really helps with some card draw. I like to use it late in the game after I have got a copy of Master of the Forge in Play and a number of my key attachments. Then I will start to call event to thin the deck and get the key events needed for threat reduction and Lay of Nimrodel for questing. I removed 1 of Blood of Numenor, Gondorian Fire, and Might Prowess, which half the time I completely forget is attached to take advantage of the ability. It has only been useful for a scenario where I can not engage an enemy in the staging Area like Goblin Sniper.