Lord of the Rings LCG Angmar Awakened Hero Expansion - Unboxing & Analysis

this is the brand new angmar awakened hero expansion for the lord of the rings the card game i'm going to do an unboxing for you and then i'm also going to do a full card by card analysis so you can see what cards are included how good they are and i'm going to try to kind of relate it to new players who maybe have the core set and the the starter decks to see how these cars might support that kind of a card pool but i will say that this is not new content for the game this is really just a repackaging of existing content you can see on the back of the box it combines all the player cards from these seven previous expansions there was the lost realm deluxe box and then those six adventure packs so it's just taking all the player cards from those old expansions putting them in one box and then all the quest cards are going to be put in a campaign box that's coming out later so let's unwrap it okay here we go one giant stack of player cards oh and just fell out and another giant stack of player cards so this is just packing material in fact this box is extremely flimsy this is not meant to hold anything long-term it's just a giant empty box for packing so the oh and there's a little insert in here it's going to give some flavor text it's going to explain some of the rules for the new cards in here there are side quests which are brand new these are a lot of fun new keywords on the cards valor this made an appearance in the starter decks and that's basically it now on the back though this is something new they have designed two uh deck lists that you can use combining the core set and these player cards you can build a dunadine deck and an elves deck i have not tried these yet one of the main comments people made is that in the elves deck they expect you to use arwin as your primary defender good luck with that it's not going to work very well however if you play these together i'm thinking the dunadine deck is really meant to take all the enemies so if you play them together i think the l's deck is going to be excellent at willpower and so the duna 9 can help compliment that to try to take all the enemies and take the heat from them so i'm excited to try those out but uh let's do the full card by card analysis i'll show you what's here and what i think of them starting with just a high level overview here these are the major archetypes that are supported in this box i've kind of clustered them together here the major support is for the dunadine rangers it's a whole new archetype it's a lot of fun to play then you've got the noldor elves which are very different than the sylvan elves but very fun in their own right then you've got gondor cards you're definitely going to want these if you have the gondor starter deck because that starter deck kind of hinted at some support for the valor mechanic which is if your threat is 40 or higher you get some boosts so these are all the cards that can add into that valor mechanic and give you boosts if you go above that 40 threat threshold then you've got the end cards you've got three allies in an event really a lot of fun some of the best ant allies in the game then you've got the victory display cards the racial cards it's a whole interesting way to play the game a lot of control over the encounter deck with these then you got side quests which is a whole brand new type of player card which i'll go over later then you've got some sylvan allies you're definitely going to want this sylvan ally if you have that sylvan starter deck then you've got some other support for some various archetypes like hobbits and dwarves and rohan and then some general use cards up here which you can kind of use in any deck so let's go through this in detail now one cluster at a time the dunadine archetype is all about engaging enemies and then staying engaged with those enemies as long as you can ideally you want to be engaged with like one or two enemies at all times because then you get lots of boosts and bonuses for doing that um the main weakness of the archetype that you're going to want to prepare for is to deal with all the shadow cards that come your way okay if you can have ways to defend or cancel damage or cancel shadow effects or heal those are all useful things to complement a good dunadine deck starting out though let's talk about the heroes and then we'll get into some of the key cards that are included in the box a marthil is a leadership hero while you're engaged with at least one enemy amarthial gains the tactics resource icons that's great he can help you smooth out your resources while you're engaged with at least two enemies though you add an extra resource to his pool every round so gaining resources and smoothing out resources on a single card is really really strong and amarthial has the best defensive stat defense strength out of all the heroes that are included here so he's kind of going to be your main primary defender but if you can find a way to boost his defense that's going to make him even better so just be mindful of that but he's a lot of he's a lot of fun tactics aragorn is the other amazing hero in this pack you can use him in so many different decks uh but he complements the dunadine because each enemy you're engaged with gets minus one defense so he makes it easier to kill every enemy that's engaged with you so he's a killing machine and already three attack he's sort of effectively a four attack hero which is one of the best in the game and then he has a response that says after aragorn participates in an attack that destroys an enemy choose an enemy not engaged with you and engage that enemy so if you're starting with two enemies engage with you you can kill an enemy and then pull another one to you so that you're still engaged with the same number of enemies that's extremely helpful for then kind of thinning out um the number of enemies on the table while still getting all the boosts for the dunadine uh so really really fun hero to play with that's tactics aragorn then you've got hal barad he's a leadership hero he says while you're engaged with at least one enemy hal brad doesn't exhaust to commit to the quest which is pretty nice that'll add two willpower to the quest and then you can optionally engage one additional enemy normally you can only engage one so this deck really needs to be able to control which enemies you're engaged with and how many so this hero really helps you do that um i haven't played with him often in my doona 9 decks i usually like to play with baravor from the core set she adds a lower resource to the sphere which is really handy but if you play with just leadership tactics getting all three of these heroes together is really really nice so now let's get into some of the allies you'll find a common theme here and that these next allies are going to be boosted based on how many enemies you're engaged with so this is the fornost bowman he's ranged and he gets attack boost based on how many enemies you're engaged with uh guardian of arnor is the same thing for defense he's sentimental and he gets plus defense for every enemy you're engaged with starnford century does the same thing for card draw so when you play her you draw cards based on how many enemies you're engaged with uh it's difficult to set this up but if you do if you've got two three four enemies engaged with you that extra card draw can mean the world of difference so again you can't play the lore allies unless you have a lower hero so that lower bearivore is my favorite hero to splash in to get use out of this card and some others then you've got warden of enumenos which is spirit uh this card gets plus one willpower for each enemy engaged with you this is the hardest one to play i'd say because it starts at zero willpower so you're getting no benefit initially even though his other stats are really good he can be a good defender in a pinch for a weak enemy he's got to attack too but at four cost it's just steep and so if you can find a way to reduce the cost which i will show you in just a second here and get you know three or four enemies engaged with you this guy can be really really strong now this is the key enabler card in this archetype okay so these allies are not cheap um three and four cost for some of these uh for a lot of them actually so this is the cost reducer for the doonadine archetype so you attach to junodine hero and then you exhaust this card in the planning phase to reduce the cost of the next doonadine ally you play this phase by one for each enemy engaged with you so you if you can be engaged with two three four enemies then you get free allies essentially or much cheaper allies this is an essential card to play with now descendants of the kings also an amazing support card to include in a pinch you get to ready uh dunadine characters based on how many enemies you're engaged with engage with three enemies ready three characters really really strong the ranger of cardillon i love this guy he can pull off some really cool uh combos and things which i won't get into here but he's a forecast ally so paying for him outright is not bad it's a well-rounded stat line that you're getting but he sort of has a built-in sneak attack ability so when you engage an enemy you can play him from your hand for one cost not four uh really really handy and then at the end of the round if he's still in play then he goes back into your deck you shuffle it into your deck um you can play this outside of a junodin deck again i think i said that but it's neutral so it's easier to play and it's a lot of fun to kind of jump him in to deal with an enemy you've just engaged oh another note you can play this then during the the the staging step as well if some enemies come out during staging that engage you immediately you can play him at that time that can be really handy as well okay dunadine hunter he's a zero cost ally what well the cost is built into his ability let's read it it says after he enters play search the top five cards of the encounter deck for a non-unique enemy and you put it into play engaged with you if no enemy enters play by this effect though then he whiffs and you have to discard him unfortunately um so again useful if you want to engage another enemy and i think it's worth it because you're getting one willpower on tactics alley that's really good but three attack and three hit points this is a solid stat line for zero cost you are engaging an extra enemy but ideally this whole deck is about planning to engage multiple enemies anyway so if you can play this in planing phase then you can combo it with you know the star and forward century to draw extra cards or the air of land deal to reduce cost for something so there are many useful reasons for engaging an enemy during the planning phase where this guy can be really handy othellos can be used in lots of different decks it is a healing card much like a lembas if you've seen that card that heals all damage from an ally and readies them this heals all damage and you get to discard a condition attachment so there are not many condition removal cards in the game you get like one in the core set this and then i think there's one other uh doomed events in the fourth cycle but yeah these cards are hard to come by that remove condition attachments so it's very useful for that and uh works in the juno 9 deck especially if you're taking a lot of shadow cards or you need to defend a lot you'll probably need some healing so atlas is great for that sword of numenor is a great card it is non-unique which means you can kind of dual-wield so to speak you can put two of these cards on a single hero it is restricted so you can only have two of these on a hero but it gives plus one attack to a dunadine or gondor hero but the effect is pretty cool too if you can kill an enemy with five or more hit points with this then you add a resource to that heroes resource pool um that can be really awesome for fueling anything i guess it's it's a resource uh but um yeah there aren't too many attack boosts in the core set so getting another one like this just as a weapon is really nice to have but this can fit well just in a gondor deck as well so pretty flexible card weatherstain cloak is a situational card it depends on the quest there are some quests that have treacheries or enemies that will deal direct damage to you during the questing phase so this protects you during the questing phase i'm not going to read the whole thing i'll let you read that but it's for ranger characters only so you could use it in trap decks or in dunadine decks because most of them are also ranger traded but it's it's okay it's just situational based on the quest this star brooch is a very situational card there are not many quests that will reduce your willpower so this card is intended to protect you against effects that will reduce your willpower like i think uh redhorn gate is the only one i can think of off the top of my head right now it's just it's very situational so if your quest you're playing does that then this can help protect you ranger summons is an interesting card it is a signal which we'll get back to that in a minute there's another signal here as well which we'll go over later you can only play this if you control a dunadine hero and then you shuffle one copy of this card into the encounter deck okay so these two cards go together when you play this card you include this just you don't actually put this in your deck you put this on the side on the table and it is an encounter card uh so that's kind of a new concept so when you play this you shuffle one of these into the encounter deck and when this gets drawn from the encounter deck it surges so you'll draw an extra card after that but with this guy's ranged sentinel and then you choose a player to put this guy under their control and then you either deal two damage to an enemy or you place two progress on a location that's really cool it's almost like a gandalf you get to choose some different options he's got really good stats you get the ally the only problem is that this is unpredictable okay you summon him to the encounter deck but then you're never sure when he's gonna come up so his effect may whiff i mean it's i guess it's difficult to not have an enemy or a location so it's almost always useful but you're not gonna always find him especially in a solo game these cards are less effective if you're playing a multiplayer game with two three four players you're gonna see this guy come up more often so it's better in a multiplayer game but really cool if you can do it and the reason i wanted to point out the signal trait is for this ally okay this is the weather hills watchman he's a basic unidyne ally the stats are not great but it's only two cost and you get two willpower or sorry two hit points but it says after weatherhill's watchman enters play you search the top five cards of your deck for a signal so he can find this signal card or this other signal card the dunadine message which again i'll talk about later so you can search the top five cards your deck for a signal card and you add it to your hand and you shuffle the other card back in your deck um so it's it's nice to get some extra card draw on the deck um if you don't have a lot of signals though uh he's not worth playing on his own there are a bunch of other signal attachments that came from the first cycle in the game the shadows of murkwood's cycle so if you don't have that cycle this card is less useful but if you do then this guy can help search for those and it's really nice all right this card can be a general use card but it's best in a do nine deck uh you play it in the combat phase before you resolve attacks and you get to choose an enemy not engage with you and you engage the enemy and then discard a shadow card from them so you can pull an enemy to you and deal with one of the worst problems of having enemies is the shadow effects so this could be a great way to uh deal with those shadow cards i personally haven't used this card in my doonadine decks but i can see where it's useful and again you don't really there's no trait restrictions so you don't need a dunady deck to play with this card this is one of the best cards in the box uh distant stars is excellent it's an action you exhaust a ranger or scout character so you don't need a duna eye deck to play this but it works in dunedin of course because they're mostly rangers you do that you exhaust a character to discard a non-unique active location just discard it for good and then you search the encounter deck the entire encounter deck or the discard pile for a non-unique location and make it the active location so you get to swap the active location for any other location you want but what that means is you also get to bypass the travel effect on that location when you swap it so it gets you an enormous amount of control over the encounter deck for zero cost just exhausting one of those ranger respect scout characters so it's an incredibly manageable cost to get a great effect for controlling which locations you're going to you're going to deal with now this is sort of similar to distant stars but it's for enemies okay so it is a one cost you exhaust a dunadine or a ranger hero though that's that's a that that that's a hard cost to pay for one cost and exhausting a hero that's tough but you get to cancel an enemy card canceling means you ignore everything on the card you ignore surge the when revealed effects everything all the keywords on the card are ignored when you cancel it so that's good but you get to you have to reveal another encounter card after that so when could you use this okay i could see this in a doonan deck if you have an enemy turned up that you're not prepared to deal with if it is a really big bad enemy and you can't engage it it would ruin your board state then this can push it back to the encounter deck and then you draw another card that's good but also in a in a trap deck we saw some trap cards in the gondor starter deck so if you have that that trap deck archetype is all about trying to get enemies trapped in specific traps but some enemies don't work well with that so this can let you control a bit which enemies get trapped so i can see its usefulness there as well but it's just it's a heavy cost and a situational card at best so you know take it for what it's worth expert trackers is a better card it's it's location control so after you engage an enemy you exhaust a scouter ranger to put progress on a location based on the printed threat strength of that enemy that's pretty good it's just you really want it to hit with like a three threat strength enemy i mean if you can get a fourth restraint that's amazing that can deal with most locations in the game so pretty cool card that's it for the dunedin all right let's talk about the noldor archetype now the noldor elves are all about the discard pile they can discard cards for benefit they can also pull cards out of the discard pile there are some of their cards that can only be played when they're in the discard pile so it's very interesting and really to make this deck work you do need a lot of card draw so that's where error store comes in he says he draws three additional cards at the beginning of the resource phase so turn one you're getting a 10 card hand that's incredible but at the end of the round you discard all cards in your hand so essentially he's gonna be forever around after the first one he's gonna be drawing four cards every single round and then discarding the rest that you don't play he changes how you play the game honestly like it it's game changing and he doesn't need to be played in an old or deck he just solves card draw for any deck you don't need any other card draw effects to make a deck work if he's in it uh the major problem with aerostore is that you're going to be seeing your entire deck you know multiple times if you have a way to shuffle your discord pile back in he can cycle through your entire deck it's just you're not going to be able to have enough resources to pay for all the cards usually so that's where our win comes in if you pair them together with arwyn you get to discard a card from your hand and add a resource to a noldor heroes resource pool or to aragorn's resource pool that's kind of cool so she can even support the dunadine archetype if you're playing with our aragorn on the table she can pass resources to him so with error store though you got a four card hand typically so you're usually not able to play all four of those cards so getting to discard one of them to add a resource will let you play even more of those cards that he draws so together they make an excellent combo but arwen is one of the strongest heroes in the game for solving that major problem of resource generation uh with the three willpower as well she is just an excellent hero overall now getting to some of the other naldor cards here this is the elven jeweler you discard two cards from your hand to put elven jeweler into play from your hand under your control so essentially you don't have to pay this to resource cost to play her you could just discard two cards and put her in um extremely handy for getting allies on the table for this deck that's all about discarding cards so most useful in an error store deck again two cards is a high cost in any other kind of deck but if you're playing error store and you're drawing all those cards she's really really good next is lindier he is unique uh you can well it says after linder enters play if you have less than three cards in your hand you draw until you have three cards in your hand this is really really cool and really fun in an old door deck because you're trying at least with an aristore deck to empty your hand so if you have zero cards and he's the only card left if you play him then you draw three cards right away um that's awesome uh so you just have to time it right but he's got a solid stat line as well so uh you know three cost is it's not nothing but it it definitely is a great card for this deck galdore of the havens is a great unique ally he costs four but he's got a really good stat line four hit points so after one or more cards are discarded from your hand draw a card now i said you don't really need card draw effects in an aristore deck but this is just really good in an older deck period because you're going to be discarding lots of cards so to get an extra card from it once per round uh extremely useful in this deck now elven spear is one of the cards that gives you benefits for discarding cards it boosts your attack strength on a hero up to three times for discarding one card okay so if you discard three cards you get plus three attack the only problem with this is that you you don't often play tactics with noldor so if you can find a way to get this into play maybe if you're playing a two-player game and one player has tactics you can put this in their deck to put it on one of your knulled or sylvan heroes it's nice the only problem is that if you have other effects that can discard cards for benefit this one tends to get lost you may not use this as often as some of the other effects but if you need that attack boost it's great in an older deck steed of email address is you attach it to a spirit hero or or an old or hero so this is a good general use card if you're just playing spirit uh it's restricted but then after the attached hero commits to a quest discard a card from your hand to place two progress on the active location for one cost this is a great card you can do a lot of other cool things to help support this card for instance it's a mount so this works well in a rohan deck that supports mounts but it's just good location control it can help you quest through a difficult location that's the active one it's a good card for one cost especially the silver harp is a two cost attachment you attach to a spirit hero again don't need to play an older deck to play this card but after a card is discarded from your hand you exhaust silver harp to return that card to your hand and in any noldor deck this is going to be extremely handy if you're keeping your hand size up as you discard cards now elven light is one of the best cards in the game period it is an extremely strong card draw effect and it plays perfectly with irwin's ability so let me pull her back here so you can see him side by side it's a little bit tough to wrap your head around at first but basically you can only play elven light when it's in your discard pile so the first requirement to play elven light is that you need to get it in your discard pile somehow so one of the best ways to do it is with arwyn who can discard a card to gain a resource so discard this card so you can get it in your discard pile you can also get a card in your discard from aoin from the corset but once it's in there you pay one cost to return elven light to your hand from the discard pile and then you draw one card okay so essentially when you do that you're drawing two cards into your hand you're drawing elven light into your hand and an extra card so this fuels the noldor archetype for sure because you're needing to discard lots of cards so you need to draw them but this is just one of the best car draw effects in the game because it's repeatable if you can get this in your in your discard pile then you can regularly pay a resource to draw an extra card the fact that it's repeatable is incredible and it makes an excellent combo with arwen taylor to nuviel is sort of a linking card between the noldor and dunadine archetypes but it can also just be a good card to use if you have arwin and aragorn on the table essentially you exhaust a noldor to ready a dunadine character or vice versa so i can exhaust arwin to ready aragorn or exhaust aragorn to ready arwen and then you until the end of the phase add the exhausted characters printed willpower to the other characters will power attack and defense okay this is really cool so if you have again i'm gonna pull arwen back here she's got three will power so if you exhaust irwin to ready aragorn in the combat phase you can give plus three to aragorn's attack and defense in that phase that's incredible so if you have other readying effects you can utilize his defense and attack multiple times and get plus three with that is so good um yeah this is an excellent card and it only cost one so love that card fair and perilous you choose a noldor or sylvan character and then until the end of the phase you add that character's willpower to its attack all right this is most useful for noldor characters that have a high willpower value of course because you're adding three willpower to the attack in this case this can be used to great effect with glorfendell there's a couple versions of glorfendell actually there's like three versions of glorefindelbut he has three willpower and three attack so you would get a six attack essentially with this card it's only one cost to do that so it this is a great card if you can find the right character to use it on all right last card in this cluster here this is the lords of the eldar it's a three-cost event this is specifically for noldor characters this makes their archetype sing at the end so it can only be played from your discard pile much like elven light so you have to get it in your discard pile somehow which is not hard to do in an old door deck but then you place lords of the eldar on the bottom of your deck from your discard pile then until the end of the round all noldor characters get plus one to all their stats it's awesome when you get a bunch of characters on the table this is sort of like a mid to late game card to really push in the end of the quest to win uh this is very strong in an old door deck you can repeat this effect if you get near the end of the game and your deck is very small you're putting this card from your discard pile to the bottom of your deck so if you get to the bottom of your deck then you can repeat this over and over again very strong very fun effect you got to build around it though much like most of the noldor cards but that's it for this cluster all right let's talk about the gondor cards that come in this pack the first is an ally called ingold he gets plus one willpower for each hero you control with at least one resource in its resource pool this kind of plays into one of the ideas that was developed in the gondor archetype where you want resources on the heroes to get some benefit so like boromir leadership boromir you'll find him in the in the gondor starter deck uh he gets plus one attack to every ever gondor ally if he has a resource in his pool so there's a couple other card effects that that require a resource on a hero so this ally kind of plays into that and he gets a really nice willpower boost for that so i mean if you think about it it's kind of really costly if you pay three and then you have to have three on your heroes to get the most use out of him but it does allow you to be flexible and that you can spend those resources if you need them but if you don't need them right away getting three extra willpower is really good now the rest of these cards are going to play into the valor mechanic which is if your threat is 40 or higher you get boosts so again the gondor starter deck had some hints of this and some support some actually some very important key support cards for that idea the valor mechanic but this pack really fleshes it out so if you have the gondor starter deck you're gonna want this pack for all these cards that you're about to see the first is the veteran of us gilliath so he gets plus one to his stats when your threat is 40 or higher for three cost that is going to be an excellent stat line to benefit from this ally is one of the best defensive allies in the entire game this is honor guard so the honor guard has got a response he says exhaust honor guard to cancel one point of damage just dealt to a character i can't stress how useful and how important damage cancellation is in this game damage cancellation can save your characters healing is sort of the aftermath if you can survive an attack healing can take away the damage that was already done but it healing can't save a character from dying the honor guard can though so if you just say get a nasty shadow effect that deals that extra damage that kills a hero this can save you um and it can cancel a damage dealt to any character anywhere on the board so having three of these will cancel three damage every round that can help you with attacks but it can also help you with archery it can help you with direct damage done from the encounter duck like from treachery cards this guy is amazing and then if you're in valor then you exhaust and discard honor guard to cancel up to five points of damage just dealt to a character that's incredible um i haven't used that effect very often but if you need to defend a really nasty attack this guy can do it now we've got a bunch of events that have a basic effect and a valor effect i'm not going to read the text on all of these i'll just kind of give you the overview but essentially this card lets you ready sentinel characters the valor effect lets you ready all sentimental characters on the table the rallying cry the artwork kind of gives away where this is useful this is useful in a rohan deck i have never used this card because it's expensive and i usually have other ways to do something similar but this lets you return allies that leave play to your hand instead of the discard pile so rohan cards do that all the time they leave play and go to the discard so this can let you fetch them back which can be nice but there's lots of other ways to do that and leadership is not the best sphere for rohan for most of those effects especially not in the starter deck so i haven't used this very often horns cry is really good it reduces the attack value on all enemies okay the valor effect boosts it to minus three attack on all enemies that's incredible especially in a dunadine deck where you're dealing with lots of attacks hour of wrath is one of my favorite cards in this entire box it's so fun it costs four but it's so worth it you choose a hero and until the end of the phase the chosen hero doesn't exhaust to attack or defend so if you've got a mega hero like aragorn who's good at defending and attacking you don't exhaust him to do all the attacks and all the defenses it's so so good and in valor you choose all of the heroes for one player they don't exhaust to defend or attack so fun i love this card so much doom hangs still it's a planning action until the end of the round players don't raise their threat from questing unsuccessfully that's interesting so you can kind of focus on enemies for a round where you don't have to worry about failing questing you're still drawing counter cards but you can just focus all your attention on combat for one phase that's pretty cool they're for one round but the valor one is interesting you raise each player's threat by two but you skip the quest phase so you don't even add in counter cards so it kind of puts a halt on the game when you play this that's five cost but i can see this being very useful uh in especially certain quests or as a hail mary card i've never used it personally though all right this is hope rekindled this this lets you find event card that have valor triggers and this is cool so you actually get to reduce the cost of that event by two when you play this card that's one of the major problems with these valor events is that they're pretty expensive so this card essentially acts as two resources for when you play those cards that's really good but when you're in valor mode then you get to search the top 10 cards of your deck for an event that has the valor trigger and add it to your hand so that's the other problem i guess is finding these events when you need them and finding the right event for the right time so this card can help you do that this hope rekindled is just an enabler for this archetype and the last card in the stack is favor of the valar the three cost this is what a valor deck needs okay because you're playing with fire when you get up to 40 threat you may threat out and lose the game so this says you attach this card to the player's threat dial and you only have one of these per player but when you would be eliminated by reaching your threat elimination level instead discard favor of the valor and reduce your threat to five less than your threat elimination level and you're not eliminated so it saves you from losing the game but what's interesting about this is that it doesn't matter how far i guess how far you would have lost by so like if you're a 49 threat and you just raise your threat by i don't know seven this reduces your threat then by 11 because you go then down to 45 which is five below your threat elimination level so for three costs you could potentially be reducing your threat by a crazy amount so really good in a valor deck it's also one of the key cards that you can use to beat one of the hardest quests in the cycle karn doom uh because there's one well i won't spoil it but it's a good card for the karndoom quest if you are looking for a way to beat it so that's it for the valor cards these are five cards that support sort of a mini archetype that all has to do with the victory display uh really the first two key cornerstone pieces are these events it says limit three copies of leave no trace in the victory display okay but then in response after a non-unique location is explored add leave no trace to the victory display to add that location to the victory display so after you travel somewhere or explore something then you kind of get rid of this card with that location and both are added to the victory display which is to the side of the table this does the same thing for enemies after you destroy an enemy you add this and that enemy to the victory display and the reason you want to do that is for these next few cards okay so raciel is a hero uh she has a you know okay stat line to start with but if the active location shares a trait with a location in the victory display racial gets plus two will power so she becomes a four willpower hero in in most quests all or most of the locations will share a trait together if you're underground in moria for instance almost all the locations have underground traits on them or if you're in merkwood almost all of them have the forest trait on them as an example so getting one location in the victory display is usually all you need to get this boost the same thing would apply to enemies most quests have a single kind of an enemy you know in merkwood you've got orcs and spiders but you know in these other quests in this cycle you'll have lots of undead enemies or lots of orcs only so getting one enemy in the victory display is usually enough to get this plus two defense boost which gets her up to four defense that's that's what baragon is from you know from the gondor starter deck that's an excellent defensive willpower boost for it so she's not essential to this archetype but she can get some really cool boosts if you if you play this and set it up properly the other reason you're going to want cards in the victory display is that this card lets you cancel that's right cancel that means you ignore the entire card all surge effects all keywords everything on it you ignore if you uh well let me just read it so it says after a card is revealed from the encounter deck cancel its effects and discard it if there is a card of the same title in the victory display so you'll want to use these cards up here to find the cards that you're having the most trouble with or the ones that you know are just the worst effects of the game especially ones that have surge on them and then you can use this card to cancel every future copy of it and what's awesome is that you don't replace the card after cancelling it you just cancel it and you don't draw another card of it so this is one of the main reasons to play this deck is that you get ultimate control over the encounter deck all right lastly is keen as lance's oh i'm sorry i haven't been saying the titles of these cards it's the door is closed racial then none return and leave no trace that's the titles okay this last one akita's lance's it says you reduce the cost to play keenan's lances by one for each card worth no victory points in the victory display okay so none of these cards that i showed you before have victory points on them so every time you put a nun return or a leave no trace in the victory display you're reducing the cost of this card so if you can get this down to zero that's i guess the ultimate goal but even if you don't get it all the way down the effect on this is just so good because when you play this it says you add kita's lances to the victory display then choose one add two resources to a hero's resource pool draw three cards wow or reduce your threat by four so kind of similar to gandalf from the core side where you get to choose one of three options based on what you need at the time having options on a card is always good but what's cool is that even playing one keynes lance's will reduce the cost of all future keynes lances so all three of these cards add themselves to the victory display in addition to maybe the enemies or locations you're adding this can quickly reduce to zero and then you're getting some awesome effects for it and the fact that this is neutral makes it even better so on its own not really that useful too expensive but if you combine this with other cards and if you can even get this in multiple decks and a multiplayer game one of these will reduce the cost for all of the other players at the table so it can be really really cool with that sadly i haven't had to set that up yet because none of my friends have this card yet but hey if you could get that in a multiplayer game that's super fun so that's the victory display cards next let's talk about the ends all right so if you want to build a full ant deck these are really important but the essential pieces are going to be in some of the saga boxes i think it's the treason of saramon and lane of shadow i think both of those have end cards maybe just treason of saramon but the other pack is the uh the antlered crown which has tree beard ally and uh the booming end okay those kind of complete the archetype here but these cards don't need to be used in a specific end deck they're just awesome cards period starting with the darren dingle warrior it's two cost for some really good stats he's sentinel it's not easy to find sentinel allies so that's awesome already he can't have restricted attachments which is also a common thing across all these and all of the end cards enter play exhausted i think this is just super fun and thematic even though it's not a you know it's a negative cost here but you kind of have to rouse the ends because they're slow right that's their whole feed so when you play it you can't use it that round unless you find a way to ready it or unless you just wait until the next round so they're delayed when they come out but they're cheap and he has an amazing ability he says while darren dingle warrior is defending it gains action deal one damage to this card to give it plus three defense for this attack limit once per per attack uh having a five defense sentinel character with three hit points is bonkers good uh the only thing is you're gonna need a way to heal this guy because to use that ability you have to deal at a damage but that's where this welling hall preserver comes in okay he has the same two costs after he readies you heal one damage from an end character so having this guy in play can you let you reuse the daredevil warrior's ability over and over and over again because he could heal him so excellent allies the two of these guys and at a three will power that is really good okay beach bone is a unique and he has the same two costs and he has a response after beach bone is declared as an attacker deal one damage to him to deal x damage to the defending enemy x is the amount of damage on beach bone all right this is really cool so there are some other end cards uh one of them shoot uh what is it called end draft is the name of the card it lets you boost hit points on any character for controlling an end so if you can get maybe six hit points on beach bone then if he has four damage on him and you add an extra damage you're dealing five direct damage to the defending enemy that's insane so if you again can get the healing effect to repeat beach bones ability you can start just mowing down enemies doing direct damage to them that's a lot of fun to do and he's got great stats overall as well lastly we have an event so after an end character takes any amount of damage which you can see two of them have abilities built in that can damage themselves you ready that character ready the end then that character gets plus three attack till the end of the phase that is really good for one cost not only do you get the attack boost but you also ready the character to attack multiple times so great card for the ends all right next let's talk about the side quests okay these are player cards even though they look like quest cards so they go in your deck uh all of these side quests are a limit one per deck so you can only have one copy in your deck at a time but you play the cost pay the cost from your hand it's one in this case to put this next to the other quest deck and then the idea is here that when you are in the quest phase and you're deciding which characters commit you also are going to choose which quest you're going to go for on that round so you can go for this side quest or the normal quest deck from the encounter and you can choose that each and every round uh from the available side quests uh so there are encounter side quests coming up in this next egg mars cycle uh the only to choose from but these are the player side quests so it's a high cost where you're paying one and you have to get six progress tokens on this card but the effects are almost always incredible if you can finish these side quests this one will let you search we'll let each player search the top 10 cards of their deck for an ally and put it into play that means you don't pay the cost so you get a free ally from the top 10 cards of your deck every player gets to do that if you complete the side quest that's incredible this sadly is probably the worst side quest in the box by far it's zero cost but you need eight quest points and it turns the quest into a battle quest which means characters use their attack instead of their willpower when you are questing them with them so that's interesting this this is a theme from the uh heirs of numenor cycle um but the effect is just not as good it's very situational it says when the stage is defeated each player may choose and discard one non-unique enemy engaged with them you don't often have one enemy engaged with every player at the table and even if you do getting eight quest points on this you're using your attackers to do that so if you fall short of this eight quest point value with all of your attackers that you're using then you're totally vulnerable after that so if you're trying to kill all the enemies you know you might as well just attack the enemies normally unless they're just really difficult enemies they have to be non-unique though so some of the strongest enemies are unique it's just this is a very situational card i i don't think i can ever find a good use for this if you can great and i'm sure there are some niche uses for it and maybe some quests but it's just not a good general use card all right double back is a great card zero cost for four quest points to finish it and then every player reduces their threat by five when it's finished that's a great effect this is a side quest that also helps the victory display archetype that i just showed you okay when you defeat the stage the first player searches the top x cards of the encounter deck for a non-objective card worth no victory points and you add it to the victory display you put the remaining cards back into the order x is the number of players in the game plus four so if you're playing a four player game you're searching eight cards and you're picking one of them to add to the victory display this really enables that victory display deck because you can find the car that you want in there the most the car that you really want to cancel later with the doors closed or even if you don't use a victory display deck it's still really good to get those nastiest cards out of the deck gather information is the neutral side quest and it's probably the best one that comes in the pack it says when the stage is defeated each player may search their deck for one card and add it to their hand you search the entire deck this is i think one of the only universal searching your entire deck abilities i can think of one other and it comes with the dream chaser cycle but this ability to search your whole deck for one key card is so good so if you could get this out early this can enable everyone's deck to run smoothly because every player gets to do that i love this card so much the only sad thing is that you can only put limit one per deck like all these side quests so it's hard to find these but that's where this card comes into play okay this is an event card you get it's a signal so you can fetch it with that weather hills watchman it costs one but you search your entire deck for a side quest and you add it to your hand so this will let you basically essentially think of it as adding extra copies of these side quests to your deck yes it does cost one but the nice thing is that you get to pick the side quest that you want at the time you need it so that's pretty cool and lastly is an ally that kind of supports this archetype it's a dunadine scout three costs which is pretty high but uh east road ranger gets plus two willpower when committed to side quests so that's a three will power for three cost if you're doing side quests that's pretty darn good uh this will be best in quests that also have additional side quests for them like in the eggmar awaken cycle there are encounter side quests so this ally can really help for those as well but that's it for the side quests if you've made it this far in the video and you find this kind of thing helpful please consider liking it so that more people can find it and i do have more videos planned so definitely consider subscribing too here we've got a few cards that are going to support some specific archetypes that you've already maybe seen developed so these are two new sylvan allies which are going to help out if you have the the sylvan starter deck product uh this card especially is the key card that i would say in any sylvan deck this makes the engine keep going sylvan decks really rely on their events to be able to bounce allies in and out of play this card when you play it first of all interesting it can't attack or defend it can only quest that's kind of funny but after gallatin weaver enters play shuffle the top card of your discard pile into your deck so after you play one of those key events especially like the host of the galadriel then you can return it into your deck so it can be found again with like your galaga minstrels and things like that so this keeps your deck filled with the cards that you need it to in order to keep the silver engine running so really really important this sadly is probably one of the least useful sylvan allies although again in certain decks can be really useful if you're going to support a really combat heavy deck maybe where you're or maybe if you're going to be having a lot of archery in a certain quest when you play this galadriel healer then you choose a player to heal one damage from each hero controlled by that player so i've never used this card but i could see it being useful in certain silver decks all right eothane is a rohan character it's forecast it's unique but after a rohan allies discarded from play by a card effect readyouthane so clearly this is specifically meant for the rohan archetype the only problem is that there's not a lot of leadership rohan stuff in the starter deck for sure and then you know it's sort of developed later there are a few good leadership rohan heroes so if you are playing with leadership rohan then this is a good one because there's lots of times that you're going to discard allies by a card effect but there it is so you can use the stats multiple times now the next two cards go together this is hero mary and the hobbit pony uh mary is a spirit hero this is one of my favorite hero cards in the game i love this card mary lets you control your threat he can reduce your threat by a lot so so much so that you may even end up with a lower threat than you started with um so he's a two will of power sixth threat cost hero already that's good but then after an enemy is revealed from the top of the encounter deck you exhaust mary to reduce your threat by that enemy's threat strength so you hope that most enemies are two or three threat strength that's reducing your threat by that amount that's incredible the only problem is that if you are planning to use this threat reducing ability you're not going to get use out of his willpower so that's where the hobbit pony comes in this is sort of his trusty steed it's a zero cost uh attachment you attach to a hobbit hero so this really goes well on mary but it's a quest action it says if the attached hero is not committed to the quest yet then you exhaust the hero and the hobbit pony to commit the attached hero to the quest so what this lets you do if you have hobbit pony on mary you are able to wait until you see which enemies are revealed from staging before deciding whether you want to reduce your threat or if you let's say you didn't reveal any enemies or maybe you just revealed like a one thread cost enemy you don't think that's worth it then you can after you've seen everything commit mary to the quest after all that's done that's really really cool so i love hero mary for controlling your threat here's another hobbit card this isn't specifically geared towards hobbits i don't think like it's good to have hobbit allies in a hobbit deck but you can use this in lots of different decks um it's i don't know i'm a little iffy on this card it's two cost two willpower which is good but it says forced when the active location is explored place curious brandy buck on the bottom of its owner's deck well that's terrible but that makes sense when you look at the response it says after you travel to a location put curious brady buck into play from your hand that means he's free after you travel to a location okay so you got a zero cost alley that adds two will power for a single location because after you explore it that he goes away that could be okay i could even see this better with like some shenanigans where if you're playing decks that draw through your entire deck regularly like an aristore deck for instance then you may be able to repeat this ability over and over again if you can draw this guy from the top of your deck play him he goes away but then you drive immediately again that could be pretty cool but those are really you know few and far between you're you're not going to be playing decks a lot where you're drawing through that much so i don't know i'm kind of lukewarm on him it costs a card slot is the biggest cost here because even if you get him into play for free he goes away so you're spending a whole card to do that temporarily so anyway there he is the longbeard sentry uh this is a great ally general use you don't need to use him in a dwarf deck but he does fuel the mining dwarf deck where you're trying to discard cars from the top of your deck so long beard century he discards two cards from the top of your deck as an action to give longbeard century sentinel and plus one defense until the end of the phase limit once per phase so having a three cost three defense three hit point sentinel ally is really good so typically you're not going to be drawing through your entire deck in a game unless you're playing like a crazy dwarf mining deck where you got lots of discard abilities if you put this kind of generic deck though those two discarded cards you can kind of just pretend that they were on the bottom of your deck and you wouldn't see them anyway so this cost is really in most cases not even a cost and in some cases if you are playing a dwarf mining deck it could be a benefit uh to do that so but again the cost for the defense that you get as a sentinel ally that's really good love that guy dory hero he's a tactic hero sentinel this is considered by many players one of the worst heroes in the game his ability doesn't quite make sense to use regularly it says response after another hero's declared as a defender exhaust dory to add his defense to the defending heroes defense for this attack you're exhausting two heroes for a single defense that's a really heavy cost to pay yes you're able to you know you're able to do this after you see a shadow card's effect oh no i'm sorry you're not you're not even able to do that it's a response so after you declare the defender so you're not even sure if you're going to need this extra defense when you do this if it were a combat action i could see that as being you know a little more useful but as a response it's super situational and it's really hard to build around this is not a general use hero uh yeah that's about all i gotta say about that so getting to this long defeat card this is one of my favorite cards in the pack the long defeat says you attach to a quest in play this could be a side quest or one of the main quest cards and after you defeat that quest each player can either draw two cards or heal up to five damage from among characters they control this is so good uh especially for quest with archery damage you can start to pick off all those damages from among all of your characters it doesn't heal it from a single character but from any characters you want and every player gets to do that so this gets even better in multiplayer but you can certainly play this in a solo deck as well provisions is a resource boost which is cool you attach it to a location when you explore the location the first player adds one resource to each of their heroes resource pools so you spend one to give three resources to a player the only problem is in multiplayer with these kinds of cards it's hard to choose who gets the resources it's hard to control that sometimes it goes to a player who doesn't really need it but it's a decent card secret vigil is a very good card you attach it to an enemy and then that enemy gets minus one threat strength so you could put this on an enemy in the staging area and then you it's it's essentially adding one willpower to your questing for one cost that's pretty good as it is but then the response is just awesome it says when the attached enemy is destroyed you reduce each player's threat by the attached enemy's printed threat so if you attach this to a three threat strength enemy every player is reducing their threat by three just for a cost of one that's really good this is one of the few threat reduction options in tactics tactics usually doesn't have threat reduction as a normal option so that's really cool to add it especially like trap decks trap decks need a low threat so this card really helps in those raven winged helm is a really good card but you got to attach it to a sentinel hero so you might as well say attached to baragon this card was made for baragon from the gondor starter deck because baragon will reduce the cost of all weapon and armor attachments by two so this is free on hero baragon but you could put it on other sentinel heroes it's fine the response is exhaust ravenwing helm to cancel one point of damage just dealt to the attached character i already talked about previously how damage cancellation is so good so i'm not going to repeat that here it's just being able to do that once per round again on a sentinel hero is really really good so this is an interesting card this is called reinforcements you have to use resources from three different heroes pools so generally speaking that means you have to play a mono leadership deck but there are ways to add leadership sphere to other heroes so it doesn't need to be three leadership heroes that's normally how it's going to be played and then essentially this is like a group sneak attack okay so sneak attack puts in one ally from your own hand this says the players as a group can put up to two allies into play from their hands so choose two alleys from any player's hands and they enter play under any player's control so that's kind of cool you can also choose who controls them but at the end of the phase each of those allies go back into their hands if they're still in play so group sneak attack that's kind of cool i haven't ever used the card but i could see it being really useful especially if you got like a gandalf and another cool ally that you want to play works well with sylvans too all right elf friend uh this is an interesting card it gives the noldor and sylvan trait to a character uh i'm not going to go over all the different uses for this it's just uh it's interesting it's an enabler a lot of people use this on the prince ember hill hero tactics prince zimmer hill from the dream chaser cycle because he can put allies into play that share traits with him so if you give him the older silver traits then he can play silver allies from his deck which could be pretty cool there's some other really good uses for it it lets you put an older and solid attachments on other characters but anyway it is what it is uh sword thane is a unique attachment it's four cost very expensive but it turns an ally into a hero that's really cool there's only one other card in the game that can do this that is the messenger of the king contract but it turns a starting hero it turns an ally into a starting hero so this lets you add an additional hero to the table meaning you've got four heroes then with this sword thing on the table there are again lots of complicated uses for sword thing but essentially most attachments in the game can only go on heroes so if you want to put attachments on a certain ally um it has to be a unique ally uh you want to put like an unexpected courage on someone like faramir then you can do that with sword thing so there's lots of cool uses for it it's just you got to really think ahead to which unique allies you'd want to kind of trick out with some attachments or do some special things with heroes uh that card would also gain resources every round so after four rounds this pays for itself but that that is a steep cost to swallow up front uh so very interesting card it's a great way to round out this box i've got a bunch of other lord of the rings videos that i'll link here on the screen be sure to check those out hit subscribe like the video if you thought this was useful thanks everyone for watching godspeed you

Channel: TheGameLocker

Views: 33,175

Keywords: Lord of the rings, the card game, living card game, fantasy flight games, asmodee, middle earth, tutorial, how to play

Id: GoA1nuMeQ-k

Length: 64min 17sec (3857 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022