As a Living Card Game grows, the best cards become apparent. The cream, as they say, rises to the top. While this game is technically in some kind of torpor, the same principles apply. A quick perusal of the most popular cards yields predictable results. Cards like Steward of Gondor, A Test of Will, Feint, and Daeron’s Runes are featured in hundreds of decks.
It would be easy to make a list of the best cards in the game, and including these would indeed help you to make powerful decks. That would make for a boring article, and I have little interest in boosting the popularity of the tier 1 cards. Bears are notorious scavengers, and while a gourmet meal is nice, nothing is more satisfying than cobbling together a feast from unexpected ingredients. In the spirit of offering less obvious suggestions, I’ve constrained myself to player cards with a popularity of 6 or less on the search engine. Think of this as a set of recipe ideas using whatever odds and ends you happen to have in your pantry.
Leadership
Hero: Gildor Inglorion
The tricky thing about popularity is that cards released earlier in the life of the game are always going to have an advantage; they’ve been available to include in decks for longer than cards which were released recently. A case in point, I strongly suspect that Gildor Inglorion would be more popular if he had been released earlier in the life of the game. Technically he was released twice, once in the Two Player Limited Edition and again in the Under the Ash Mountains adventure pack. Even so, the limited edition is not widely available, and Under the Ash Mountains has only been sporadically available for a number of months.
His ally version is excellent, so hero Gildor Inglorion has some big elven shoes to fill. At 9 threat with an ideal stat distribution and an excellent ability, Gildor delivers. I’m a fan of “glue” heroes, especially in Leadership. Anyone who follows my decks over the years will notice how often I’ve included Sam Gamgee. He is one of the best “glue” heroes: one powerful stat, a useful ability, low threat, and access to a critical sphere. Gildor is another great “glue” hero, and will likely take Sam’s place in some of my future decks. He gives you strong early game willpower, his trait allows him to attach many useful items and mounts, and he gives you access to resource acceleration and the ally mustering effects of Leadership. Best of all, his ability gives you card draw out of the gate, so you can setup your deck quickly.
Ally: Knight of the White Tower
As a fan of the Gondor archetype, it was frustrating to see a series of lackluster allies added to its ranks over the years. Even with effects like Leadership Boromir and Visionary Leadership, an ally with 1 (or even 0) for its base stats is just not going to engender much excitement. For this reason, Gondor was always a swarm archetype. However, few of the generic Gondor allies had interesting abilities, so the archetype languished as a swarm of mediocre chumps. When Leadership Faramir hero was introduced, the lack of effective Gondor targets for his ability were all the more galling. For a captain of Gondor to be more effective when paired with Ents than with his own men was almost too much to bear.
The resurgence of Gondor as an archetype has been long in coming, but it is a breath of fresh Spring air after leaving a long, dark tunnel. Knight of the White Tower is exactly what the archetype needed. Even his downside is laughably easy to overcome, given the overabundance of resource acceleration in the archetype. With help from any of numerous events, the Leadership version of Denethor can actually pay for a Knight on the first turn. His stats are hero-like, and once you boost it with the aforementioned effects, as well as events like For Gondor!, the Knight of the White tower can handle all but the most troublesome tasks.
Attachment: Ancestral Armor
Citadel Plate features in many powerful decks in the early game, typically paired with Gimli. Expensive attachments are beguiling with their power, but waiting multiple rounds to save the resources for them is a risk. Many a deck was overrun because they held back resources waiting for a power attachment. This risk can be most keenly felt in the early game, when those resources are needed for many other purposes. The sphere of a player card has an outsized affect on its cost. If this were a Lore attachment, it would be considerably more difficult to play – and not feature in so many of my recent decks. Ancestral Armor as a Leadership attachment is much less daunting to equip. It is likely to see play sooner, giving your dedicated defender the support he needs to weather the toughest onslaughts.
Many Weapon and Armor attachments target Warrior and Tactics heroes, so Ancestral Armor differs in more than just sphere. Early in the life of the game, the limitations of Noble or Leadership hero would be more constraining, but the full card pool offers many viable targets, and it’s not even limited to heroes. For maximum comedic effect, try attaching it to Squire of the Citadel. Joking aside, with the armor attached a good defender becomes nigh invincible. The extra hit points are great for taking smaller enemies undefended or soaking archery and other direct damage. As for the bonus defense: your dedicated defender will welcome it, when facing stronger enemies.
Event: Pillars of the Kings
For each of the previous Leadership cards, the resource acceleration available to the sphere has played a role in their relative power level. As any aficionado of Beorn’s Path will recall, resource acceleration with card draw is a fool’s errand. All of the gold in the world isn’t much use if you have no cards in your hand to play. Leadership decks got by with Sneak Attack + Gandalf, and to some extent Valiant Sacrifice. Even Rod of the Steward helped a little bit, when Flight of the Stormcaller was released. Still, these all lacked the first turn punch provided by Lore cards like Daeron’s Runes, Deep Knowledge, and especially Heed the Dream. Most decks are looking for one or two critical pieces – the sooner you find them, the greater your chances of victory.
Pillars of the Kings is truly inspired design. Not only does it work mechanically, but it fits the existing Valour theme perfectly. As long as your deck starts under 31 threat, you can play this event first turn for no cost and draw 4 cards. The timid or those who prefer Secrecy archetypes, may scoff at this cost, dismissing it as too steep. However, for a deck designed to take advantage of Valour effects, the cost of immediately raising your threat is a boon, not a hindrance. What’s more, the card pool now offers myriad forms of threat reduction, some of it repeatable. This makes it possible in many scenarios to hover your threat around 40 for the entire game. Do not underestimate just how much more consistent your deck will become after drawing 4 additional cards on top of your starting hand and first turn’s draw. This event is incredibly powerful, especially in the early rounds when card draw is essential.
Tactics
Hero: Hirgon
For the first couple of cycles, Tactics was a fairly one-dimensional sphere. Aside from a few cards (Thalin and Hands Upon the Bow come to mind), the only phase in which Tactics participated was the combat phase. This makes sense, as it is the martial sphere. However this meant that heavy Tactics didn’t have many tricks or interesting decisions to make. Even cards like Feint and Quick Strike just play into the existing strengths of the sphere. Without a doubt, combat is important, but building decks around simple defense and attack can become tiresome.
This is where heroes like Hirgon and Prince Imrahil give the sphere a much-needed capacity for trickery. The best designs add nuance and texture to an existing sphere or tribe while staying true to the theme or narrative elements of Tolkien’s world. Hirgon is one such design – he does an excellent job of portraying Gondor’s call for help from Rohan, while dramatically increasing the importance of the quest phase for Tactics. Just off the top of my head, allies which can work well with Hirgon: Knight of Gondor (maximum theme), Descendant of Thorondor and Meneldor (he’s great in an Eagle deck), and Marksman of Lórien. Even if you’re not running allies with “enters play” triggers, Hirgon grants cost reductions so you can more easily play allies which will help you later in the round (Defender of Rammas, Boromir, Vassal of the Windlord). Last but not least, the option of raising your threat to give the ally a boost plays perfectly into the Valour archetype, if you choose to take that approach.
Ally: Meneldor
It is no coincidence that this ally with synergy in my hero choice. I prefer decks with flexibility, so-called “toolbox” decks which offer solutions that can be combined in different ways to address the problems presented by a scenario. Easier quests may accommodate a rigid strategy. Also, a powerful enough deck can brute-force its way to victory, even against more difficult scenarios. While these approaches are effective, they lack nuance and can grow stale over time. For those who like to tinker, it’s often more fulfilling to tailor your strategy mid-game, solving the puzzle one piece at a time as the game unfolds.
This is where cards like Meneldor are essential. Because his ability triggers on him entering and leaving play, there is ample room for interesting strategies. Best is cheating him into play with Hirgon, Sneak Attack, or Gwaihir’s Debt, because you can choose the precise timing. Even if you’re playing him the boring way during the planning phase, locations tend to stay in play longer than enemies, typically with a Tactics deck. The idea is to time when he enters and leaves to maximize his benefit. With Eagles of the Misty Mountain in play, you can even benefit if he falls to an attack or direct damage. Also, cards like Flight of the Eagles give you another means for controlling this timing. However you use him, Meneldor gives Tactics an effective form of targeted location control, all with a reasonable cost, excellent stats, and a valuable trait.
Attachment: Firefoot
Clearly the primary intent of Firefoot is as an attachment for Éomer. While it remains an excellent choice for either version of the son of Éomund, there are several other heroes which can make effective use of this mount. Seastan’s recent deck: Strength and Courage ft. Grimbeorn gives a perfect example of just how powerful Firefoot when unleashed. The key is to see the “trample” effect as a form of action advantage, especially when the hero with Firefoot has other attack boosting effects.
The goal is to kill two enemies with your first attack, saving the need to defend the other enemy later. Once our hero is capable of killing two enemies, we can use various means to allow your hero to attack out of the normal framework step. It’s not to say that Firefoot is bed when used for normal attacks, but the best action advantage is unlocked when you use it before enemies attack. Grimbeorn’s response is probably the ideal match, in that the first time he defends, he can immediately counter-attack. Any time you are killing an enemy before it attacks you are not only saving defense but avoiding potentially game-ending shadow effects. Even without Grimbeorn, effects like Quick Strike, Battle-fury, and even Roheryn can be used to facilitate a more aggressive strategy.
Event: Oath of Eorl
Carrying on with the theme of working around the constraints of framework effects, this is an event which fundamentally changes the order of the combat phase. Shadow Effects a very real threat for Tactics decks. With the exception of Sterner than Steel, Tactics doesn’t have a way to directly cancel shadow effects. Tactics has traditionally worked around this by having characters with more defense and hit points than other spheres, and this is often an adequate answer. However, so quests feature shadow effects which are far more insidious than a simple stat boost. In that case, the only recourse is cancelation or using some trickery to avoid the enemy entirely.
Lesser enemies can have their attack canceled by cards like Feint, but many of the most troublesome enemies in the game are immune to player card effects. As discussed above in the strategic value of Firefoot, one effective way to circumvent shadow effects is aggressively, but destroying the enemy before it attacks. This event takes that aggressive strategy to a whole new level. By allowing all of your characters to declare attacks first, it is even more powerful than a card like Quick Strike. Because it does not target a specific enemy but instead changes the order of framework steps, Oath of Eorl can be used to kill enemies which are immune to player card effects.
This means that multiple characters can gang up to attack a larger enemy, just as you would in your normal attack step. It is worth noting that every other declared attack effect is limited to a single character, attacking alone. Lastly, your ranged characters can even declare ranged attacks against enemies engaged with other players, all before those enemies attack. The potential power of this event cannot be understated, the key is building a deck to take full advantage of it, especially with high attack characters like Beorn and Tactics Éowyn.
Spirit
Hero: Merry
Threat reduction effects have proliferated as the game expanded, which has had wide ranging impact on the metagame. Not only has this made Secrecy decks more consistent, but it has allowed for more aggressive Valour decks to keep themselves in the game, riding the line between triumphant power and ignominious defeat. Spirit has always been the primary sphere for threat control effects. With cards like Secret Vigil, Woodman’s Clearing, and Leadership Frodo, these effects have bled some into other spheres, but Spirit is the source of the best repeated threat reduction effects in the game. Among this, Merry is one of my favorites.
So many quests feature enemies with three or four threat, that his ability often has ample worthwhile targets. If you’re forced to use his response on an enemy with 1 threat, you’re still getting the equivalent threat reduction offered by hero Galadriel. Repeatable threat control is tremendously valuable, especially in a Hobbit deck which does not want to engage enemies in all but the most favorable circumstances. In solo, the risk of a round where no enemy is revealed is worth holding Merry back, as those are the rounds that a Hobbit deck often prefers anyway. If you want to ensure that Merry has maximum utility, use Hobbit Pony to guarantee he is committed whenever his ability it not needed. Alternatively, Lore gives scrying effects like Henamarth Riversong and Far-sighted which can serve a similar role.
Ally: Elfhelm
Continuing the theme, we have the best ally option for repeatable threat control. Elfhelm has been available almost since the beginning of the game, and somehow still manages to be underrated. As mentioned above, threat control effects have proliferated, which has lead to a corresponding shift in the meta game of scenario design. It is much more common to see scenarios which feature repeated threat raising effects. These may be based on the number of enemies in play each round, enemy engagement, or some other core mechanic of the game. No matter what the trigger, this single most effective answer is often Elfhelm.
With a different mix of stats, having to leave Elfhelm ready in order to trigger his response might seem more onerous. As it is, you will want to hold him back for combat and use other allies with more willpower to contribute to questing. Earlier in the life of the game, a four cost Spirit ally was more difficult to play. At this point, there are many ways to get him into play without paying his full cost. Caldara can put him into play for free, but there are other less sacrificial options. Spirit Théoden can reduce Elfhelm’s cost by 1, and Arwen Undómiel allows a mono-Spirit deck to play Elfhelm on the first turn. However you muster him, Elfhelm is an critical piece in any deck which wants to consistently control its threat.
Attachment: Windfola
My initial reaction to Windfola was mild disappointment. When you look at character-specific Mount attachments available to other Rohan heroes, Windfola can seem underwhelming. It doesn’t offer readying like Snowmane, or combat-based action advantage like Firefoot. From a theme perspective, it is fitting that Éowyn’s horse is a bit more subtle in its effect. Given her stats, the Willpower boost is welcome, as either of her two versions are dedicated questers.
While paying one resource for a minor stat boost is nice, the real power of Windfola became apparent more recently. On its release, the restricted keyword seemed like minor but unfortunate downside. Like transmuting lead into gold, contracts transformed the value of the restricted keyword. In a Three Hunters deck, Windfola becomes free, as long as it is the first restricted attachment you play on its recipient in the planning phase. Better still, the B-side of the contract doubles the willpower bonus on Windfola from 1 to 2. Not bad, for a free attachment which can keep your dedicated quester committed.
Event: Light the Beacons
According to the popularity stats, this event doesn’t see much use. At a cost of five in a sphere without much resource acceleration, such a snub might seem warranted. However, seeing this effect in action, especially in a multiplayer game, should convince you of its immense power. Global action advantage is valuable, but there is not other effect in the game which pairs that kind of economy with a stat boost. Assuming the best defender on the table has Sentinel (which they often will), they can block ever single attack during an entire round.
That round distinction might at first seem odd. After all, defense usually only takes place during the combat phase. However, this is another aspect of the game which has evolved over the years. Many enemy attacks now take place during the quest phase, as part of a travel cost, or upon enemy engagement. Because of this, the duration of Light the Beacons is a critical aspect of its strength. Many games come down to one critical round, often the final stage. The theme is familiar: a swarm of underlings rally to defend the boss enemy. Surviving this final desperate push is often the difference between victory and defeat. Even if it involves saving resources for a round, playing this event on a critical round will make all subsequent combat significantly less dangerous.
Lore
Hero: Bifur
Another of my favorite “glue” heroes, Bifur helps offset the lack of resource acceleration available in Lore. A convention followed by most heroes is that their threat cost is the sum of their stats. Some infamous heroes like Bilbo Baggins and Théoden even have a threat cost greater than this sum. Bifur is one of the rare heroes with a lower starting threat than his stats warrant. This makes Bifur an excellent choice to fit into many multi-sphere, even as the only Lore hero.
Contracts have had a curious impact on the resource economy of the middle-game. A Fellowship deck has far less need of resources after it has 9 unique characters in play. Once a Three Hunters deck flips to the B-side it may still play a few attachments, but the need is far less urgent as most of the critical cards are often already in play. Even a Grey Wanderer deck will often reach a point where resources pile up unused; between the 2 bonus resources afforded by the contract and the inevitable copies of Resourceful, those decks have ample forms of specie.
This is where friendly Bifur becomes even more useful than he was when Khazad-dûm was released. He gives your deck a built-in means in multiplayer for acquire excess resources from contract-based decks sitting across the table. The cost reduction and resource acceleration of these contracts will make those resources less valuable to the decks that share them. As many of Lore’s best cards are expensive, these resources can be invaluable to the deck with Bifur, all the better that he makes them readily available.
Ally: Silvan Tracker
The first few cycles of a living card game are bound to be a bit hit or mess. The designers not only have to figure out what the game is going to be in the immediate term, but how to lay the foundation for future expansion and archetypes. There can be no greater commendation for an expandable game than for it to survive indeed to thrive for as long as this game. Another way to look at this, think about how many other expandable games came and went while the game was only improving.
One can see the rough sketches of archetypes in the Shadows of Mirkwood cycle, but it wasn’t until Heirs of Numenor that cycles felt like a narrative and thematic whole. To be sure, individual player cards and scenarios from the first two cycles stand out, but there isn’t as much cohesion as we would see in later cycles. By the time we got the Angmar Awakened and Dream-chaser cycles, the narrative and thematic elements were highlighted in a way that made this game one of the best blending of theme and mechanics players are like to see. That last sentence was not hyperbole, we could easily wait another decade or two before we see a game on the level of Lord of the Rings.
Silvan wasn’t much of an archetype until Celeborn and Galadriel were released in the Ring-maker cycle. Tactics Legolas (hero) was joined by a smattering of somewhat haphazard allies and attachments. Rivendell Blade is an excellent weapon, although it’s shine has diminished somewhat with the proliferation of immune enemies. Light of Valinor and Asfaloth are both incredibly powerful, but more often they find Noldor targets. Other than Legolas, Silvan Tracker was one of the few bright spots for Silvans in the early card pool.
What a bright spot, indeed. To see the power of this card, simply bring a Silvan deck to any quest which features heavy direct damage. Most healing requires some additional cost, exhausting the character, spending a resource, discarding a card. Silvan Tracker heals all Silvans (with more than 1 hit point) passively, at the end of every round. This can be thought of as an indirect form of action advantage, but the more obvious benefit is that it keeps your heroes and sturdier allies alive. Granted, Silvan decks feature many allies with only 1 hit point, but those are the allies you want to be bouncing with Elven-king at the various 0-cost events. Even after all these years, Silvan Tracker is still somehow underrated as form of healing, even across the table in multiplayer.
Attachment: Woodmen’s Clearing
As mentioned in the suctions about Merry and Elfhelm, threat reduction has proliferated to the point where more scenarios now feature repeated or at least more potent threat raise effects. Other than Aragorn, Lore hasn’t had much in the way of the way of threat control for most of the game. Folco Boffin came along more recently, but he is best suited to a Hobbit tribal deck. Quality, low-cost, threat control that can easily give to other players is just not something that the sphere could do, until the Woodmen archetype introduced Woodmen’s Clearing.
Elrond’s Counsel is one of the most popular events in the game. An attachment which is discarded after use is closer to an event mechanically than you might first think. Sure, it can only be played during the planning phase, but there will almost always be a location in play to target. A critical detail is that the location does not need to be active, either when this card is attached or when the response is triggered. This allows for the same sort of location control shenanigans that work with cards like Ancient Mathom and Ranger Provisions.
Like those attachments, there is a bit of a timing issue in multiplayer. Often, one particular player is desperately in need of threat reduction (I’m looking at you, Tactics Boromir player). This means that you will need to wait until they are the first player before clearing the attached location. Fortunately, the Woodmen archetype includes all sorts of fun tricks for controlling where locations are and when they will be explored. It’s not always practical to include Spirit in your deck for threat reduction. Between quality Doomed player cards and an increase in threat raising effects in scenarios, a 0-cost solution like Woodmen’s Clearing is perfect for a resource-starved sphere like Lore.
Event: The Hidden Way
Yet again, one suggestion segues cleanly into the next. We were just discussing above how Lore-based location control decks have myriad ways to manipulate where locations are and when they are explored. Among my favorites are Distant Stars (another criminally underrated card) and The Hidden Way. When you consider how much control this card gives you over a quest phase it is somewhat remarkable that more players don’t make use of it.
When Wait No Longer was released many players suspected that their would be a Location-centric equivalent in the same cycle. It turns out, The Hidden Way was not available until the Ered Mithrin cycle. Beyond the delay, the more surprising aspect of this event is that it is considerably more forgiving than its Tactics equivalent.
Wait No Longer is a simple card with a simple premise. Search the top 5 cards of the encounter deck for an enemy and put it into play engaged with you. Your reward is that you reveal 1 less encounter card that round. In solo, this basically gives you a free pass on the quest phase. The downsides of this card are real. In the rare case there are no enemies in the top 5 cards you just spent 2 resources for no effect. Other times, there might only be a single enemy among the top 5 cards and you’re now stuck engaged with a Mûmak or a Troll. Suffice it to say, that is an unpleasant experience.
Outside of Nightmare scenarios, locations tend to be less overtly dangerous than enemies. Additionally, many locations are more troublesome in the staging area than while active, which this event specifically circumvents. The Hidden Way thus involves less risk than its Tactics twin. Moreover, it is much less likely to whiff in location-heavy quests. More likely is that you have choices for which location to put into pay. That is the crux of why this card is underrated: you aren’t simply adding the chosen location to the staging area.
By allowing you to choose a location to immediately become active, you are circumventing the travel cost on that location. Many scenarios feature notoriously brutal travel cost, so The Hidden Way gives you another effect (along side cards like Thror’s Map and West Road Traveller) to bypass these costs. As if all this wasn’t enough, the event even gives you one more potential benefit. By returning the existing active location to the staging area, The Hidden Way can be used in the same way as effects like South Away to queue up location-laden attachments for the next travel phase. The versatility and power of this card make it an excellent choice for many Lore decks.
What are you favorite tier 2 cards? Which cards do you consider criminally underrated? Let me know in the comments below. I hope that 2021 finds you all safe and healthy and I wish you all many happy adventures in Middle-earth!
