This can be a very powerful card in the right situations. Sure it's pretty expensive but it can be easily saved up for if you know when you want to use it. It mentions "all characters" which makes it more lucrative to play in multiplayer games. It combos great with any dedicated defender with sentinel like Beregond or other good defenders like Frodo Baggins (granted you've been keeping your threat low). It would also work great against siege quests with boost of 2. And something else I'd like to point out is it's not limited to the combat phase. It's best played during the planning phase so you can deal with those surprise enemy attacks during staging, not to mention all those shadow effects that grant extra attacks. Seriously, being able to defend without exhausting is bonkers! This card can be a game changer for that last push to the finish line when the encounter deck tries to swarm you.

So I recently discovered an absolutely ridiculous combo with this card. You do need to be running a Gandalf+Elrond deck with Vilya, Wizard Pipe and Dwarven Tomb however. You simply put it on top of your deck with the pipe and play it for free with Vilya. Dwarven Tomb allows you to recur and play it for a single resource each time. You can potentially play it for free 3 times and for one spirit resource 3 times if you include 3 copies of it and Dwarven Tomb in a deck. You don't have to use hero Gandalf and can simply pull off the same thing with Stargazer and Elrond+Vilya but Gandalf with his pipe allows you to still play it free with Vilya even when it's in your hand as well. He also allows Dwarven Tomb and even Light The Beacons itself to be played off the top of your deck sans Vilya if need be.

I've been running this combo in a deck I play alongside a Three Hunters Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli deck that runs both Captains of the West and Hour of Wrath. On turns that either or even both of these events are played alongside Light The Beacons; a simply ridiculous amount of questing, defending and/or attacking is all done without exhausting and with boosted willpower and defense. I've defended 10+ attacks with a boosted Gimli alone at around 8 defence in one turn to then easily strike back and destroy most if not all enemies with boosted Legolas and Aragorn and various allies. The counter-attack is due to Hour of Wrath but the combination of the two events is ridiculously strong. Even without Hour of Wrath, Light The Beacons allows a boosted Gimli to defend literally every attack across the board resulting in other characters who may have otherwise been needed to defend attacks and Gimli himself (plus a hero he readies with his ability too potentially) ready to attack instead providing not only a huge boost to defence but also offence as well.

This card is an absolute mvp in these decks basically trivialising combat across several key turns. It can be played only when needed or even as a safety net on turns you know you'll progress to the next quest stage and likely face additional enemies or attacks because of this. Because it lasts for the whole round and not a phase you can play it at the start of a turn or at a later point in the combat phase when you're sure you actually do need its effect. This also allows protection from surprise or additional attacks outside of the combat phase, in some quests this may provide protection against multiple special boss attacks as well as all regular attacks during the combat phase. It's defense boost is honestly Icing on the cake in any deck/s that have a dedicated defender and at least a handful of defense boosting attachments already as the extra boost from Light The Beacons is often unnecessary and instead makes your strongest defender/s into absolute walls instead that nothing except perhaps a dragon or extremely strong boss attack has any chance of getting through and dealing any damage.

Light The Beacons, when used in strong combinations or cheated into play is hands down one of the strongest and best cards in the game.