Peace, and Thought

Event. Cost: 1.

Refresh Action: Exhaust 2 heroes to draw 5 cards.

"Here you will hear many songs and tales-if you can keep awake. But except on high days it usually stands empty and quiet. and people come here who wish for peace, and thought. There is always a fire here, all the year round, but there is little other light."
Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring
Magali Villeneuve

Shadow and Flame #135. Lore.

Peace, and Thought
Reviews

When I first read Peace and Thought, I was nothing but peaceful. Two heroes' actions used up for the round? That's insane! But I quickly came to realize the power of drawing a whopping five cards in one go. Here are its costs listed with some counterarguments:

The card slot - Seriously? Is that a concern when you draw five cards in replacement out of the deal?

A Lore resource - Okay, so you might have the tiniest smidge of trouble playing your piano hand. Either way, are you honestly complaining over five cards for just a resource. One for just two cards is a bargain.

Exhaust two heroes - Yeah, this is the big one, and the only thing keeping PaT from all Lore decks. This is a big price to pay, especially since you can only play it after your cards are ready for the round; no cheating it in after combat.

There are still a plethora of ways to mitigate the cost. Any sort of readying for your heroes rocket's the playability. In a multiplayer game where your buddies can cover for you or in a deck with low threat that can avoid early enemies, doubling your hand size is incredibly strong. The title is almost false-advertising. Just wait for the following planning phase, you'll know it when you hit it.

I initially underrated this card. The heroes are the core of any deck, so I never thought it would be worth it for me to exhaust two of my heroes for the entire next round, no matter what I was getting in return. Especially because I play true solo a lot of the time, and I'd be losing the stats of 2/3 of my heroes for the entire next round. But one day, just to force myself to use it, I decided to put it in a hero Gandalf deck to be my only source of card draw (besides Gandalf's Staff of course). My other two heroes were hobbits ( Pippin and Merry) to keep my starting threat low.

Well, boy did this card overperform. Every time this card came up, I realized I didn't mind at all exhausting my hobbits to draw 5 new cards. I kicked some serious butt when I tested the deck against The Oath and The Caves of Nibin-dûm and regularly ended up drawing my entire deck by the time the game was over. And then it hit me - you don't put Peace and Thought in a deck where you have heroes whose stats you need, you put it in a deck where you have heroes whose stats you DON'T need! Because the reason you need a hero to be ready is so that you can exhaust it to use its stats, and often in true solo you're left with ready characters at the end of rounds anyway, so if you don't need a hero's stats then exhausting it to do something else (like drawing a bunch of cards) is super strong.