I must admit: I was not particularly impressed with this card upon release. It was kinda overshadowed by the other trap cards in this cycle such as Celador who makes questing easier and provides a consistent means of threat reduction, It Should Be Spared which allows you to move your traps from weak enemies, and finally Spring the Trap which allows to get a ranger ally in for (potentially) cheaper and after encounter cards have been revealed.

For all of these, the use and improvements were fairly easy to understand. With Live Bait however, this was not the case for me. Blanking the text box of an enemy is undeniably useful, of course, but just how useful is not obvious to those who have not used the card yet. Anyone who uses the card Revealed in Wrath or Thrór's Key knows how useful enemy text box blanking is. Seriously, how often are you in a situation where you don't know how to deal with an enemy soley because of the text box? For me, it's not uncommon. (I woud also like to point out that Live Bait blanks the text box until the end of the ROUND while Revealed in Wrath does until the end of the phase. Allthough, I feel that this is justified because Live Bait is more restricted in using it.)

In addition to the text blanking, it also requires that we attach a unattached trap to that enemy which triggers Celador for a -1 or ready and Damrod for a card. Note that this allows this card to function as a way to move unattached traps to engaged enemies which is quite useful for traps like Ambush, Entangling Nets, and Outmatched. This is also great for the Emyn Arnen Ranger as it allows us to give an enemy a trap before questing to get the + if there was no eligible enemies. It can also be used with ally Faramir to give an enemy a trap, play Faramir, engage that enemy, blank its text box, and deal 4 damage to it.

Ok, so the text blanking is great, but what else is there to the card? Well, there is a restriction that you must have an unattached trap in play. This leaves us with a few scenarios when this card would ideally be used.

1. Planning Phase - Because the blanking lasts until the end of the round, we can use it on the enemy before questing. This allows us to play a trap unattached, blank an enemy in the staging area (or engaged with a player), then attach that trap to the enemy! Normally the traps have to wait until the questing phase to attach and you have no control over what it attaches to. This allows both for us to control exactly which enemy gets a trap as well as the benefit of blanking the text box. This is very useful for traps such as Followed, Poisoned Stakes, and especially Ranger Spikes.
2. Encounter or Combat Phases - If no enemies were revealed from the encounter deck this round (admittedly quite rare in multiplayer games), then we can use this to move traps to engaged enemies to make combat easier.

All in all, this card has been the unsung hero in many of my trap-based games. It blanks enemy text boxes and allows for the freedom to choose what a trap will attach to. The restriction of playing is fairly minimal for trap decks, and is justified for this card. And you get all of this for a cost of 0! If you aren't currently using in your trap decks, you should. You won't be dissapointed. It is definately my favourite new trap-based card that ALEP has introduced. Wonderful job, ALEP team!

I recently played this in a 2-player fellowship in a Prince Imrahil deck that had both Fornost Bowman and Marksman of Lórien in it. I noticed that the Bowman and Marksman are both Ranged allies that cost 3. I compared the two and realized, if you're not playing the Dúnedain playstyle of trying to keep enemies engaged with you (which I wasn't), then the Marksman is much better than the Bowman - you don't need to do any work to give it high and it has a useful enters-play ability. But, if you are playing a Dúnedain deck that cares about that playstyle, then the Bowman is much better - not only can you reliably get it to 3 or sometimes even more, but it also has the Dúnedain trait which is much more easily taken advantage of, such as by using Heir of Valandil to bring it out much more easily.

I have a major beef with this card. There is space for flavor text, and yet there is none. Have your read The Battle of the Pelennor Fields chapter recently? From the moment Dernhelm reveals herself:

"But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes."

I imagine this must have been in the art brief. I know there wouldn't be room for the whole quote, but a missed opportunity for including either the first or last sentence.

But it's a great card, I like it particularly on allies. Or, especially thematically, Éowyn with a Golden-Round Shield

Great addition to the ally pool, especially the Rohan ally pool. Having the Devoted keyword, he can be added to pure Rohan (or Warrior) decks even without access. His ability can be very useful in taking down beefier enemies. I have made specially good use of him with Éomer. Even when you have Gúthwinë attached to him, he will still often be unable to take down those enemies in the staging area that you really want dead. But with this guy, he can one-shot most of the enemies in the game; and thanks to Gúthwinë’s effect, you can return Deeping Bowman to your hand after the attack to repeat the trick. Granted, you’ll have to invest some resources to do that every round, but that’s a nice design bonus, I think: If you’re playing a mono- deck, you’ll have plenty of resource acceleration anyway (because Éomer is already eating up one resource every round), but if you’re mixing in other spheres (like Tactics), you’ll prefer other options (and have less resource acceleration). Before this guy, Éomer was hard to make good use of in a deck without Tactics access to cards like Spear of the Mark, but with Deeping Bowman, he has received some much-needed mono- support. Of course, our friendly fellow is also a nice addition to any other deck able to play him. You can always choose to either attack with him (and since he has the Ranged keyword, he will have a target more often than not), or, if you’re down more than 1 , you can discard him so your other attackers can hopefully finish the job. He also has 1 , which is always nice (and being Rohan, he can be boosted by cards like Astonishing Speed). A great addition to the card pool, and bonus points for giving new life to an otherwise difficult-to-use type of deck.

One additional benefit of this card that I've recently discovered is that it allows for strategically playing attachments on locations after the staging step of the quest phase. It can be quite powerful to be able to drop Elf-stone on the active location once you already know that you will be clearing it. Explorer's Almanac is another fun option, as you can choose a second location to clear based on how well you quested. And if you are running an Erestor discard theme (or Dwarf mining discard, etc.), you can store your location attachments in the discard pile until you need them :).