Elven Spear

Attachment. Cost: 0.

Item. Weapon.

Attach to a Noldor or Silvan hero. Restricted.

Action: Discard a card from your hand to give attached hero +1 until the end of the phase. Limit 3 times per phase.

Their spears and swords shone in the gloom with a gleam of chill flame, so deadly was the wrath of the hands that held them.
The Hobbit
Arden Beckwith

The Treachery of Rhudaur #87. Tactics.

Elven Spear
Reviews

A zero-cost attachment is always nice. However, the benefit of the discounted cost is reliant upon the condition that triggers the attack boost. In this case, the condition is discarding a card from hand for +1 attack per card, with a limit of three times per phase. Additionally, Elven Spear can only be attached to a Silvan or Noldor hero. Based on this, we know that the card is designed primarily for a Noldor deck.

Considering the card in this light, two things immediately stand out to me. The first is that there is a severe lack of Tactics heroes with the Noldor or Silvan trait. In fact, there is just one for each with Elladan and Legolas. Neither hero typically sees play in the traditional Noldor deck that seeks to discard a lot of cards. And to make Elven Spear useful, the deck will need to be designed to do just that. The beauty of the Elven Spear is not that it can get you +1 or +2 attack, it's that it can get you +3 with a single attachment costing no resources, something few other cards can do. This improves the situational usefulness of the card tremendously. The kicker is that you need to be prepared to consistently discard three cards per turn. The fact that the two primary targets do not synergize with the types of decks that can consistently pull this off is a bit problematic.

Luckily, there is a particular card that solves this issue. Namely, Elf-friend. This allows us to get any tactic hero we want with the Noldor and Silvan traits, opening up the deckbuilding options significantly. Unluckily, we are still hard pressed to find a tactics hero which we want to put into a Noldor deck anyway. That being said, I have had great success pairing Elf-friend and Elven Spear with Aragorn in a variety of Noldor decks. Additionally, adding Elf-friend to such a deck will allow your off-trait hero to interact with the rest of the Noldor cards in the deck. In this light, I think that Elven Spear is niche card, but not a bad one. If your deck can handle the steep discard price, and if you can find a desirable target for it, you'll see a pretty significant return on investment.

Swordthatwasbroke 734