Favor of the Valar

Attachment. Cost: 3.

Condition.

Attach to a player's threat dial. Limit 1 per player.

Forced: When you would be eliminated by reaching your threat elimination level, instead discard Favor of the Valar and reduce your threat to 5 less than your threat elimination level. You are not eliminated.

"...their hearts were lifted up in such a hope as they had not known since the darkness came out of the East..."
The Return of the King
Matthew Cowdery

The Battle of Carn Dûm #124. Neutral.

Favor of the Valar
Reviews

Not a full review since the usage of this card is rather obvious. If you are running Valor and want some protection against losing the game because of threat then this card is worthwhile inclusion.

An interesting aspect that isn’t immediately obvious is that the reduction is against your threat elimination level (usually 50) instead of the amount of threat gain. This means that if (for example) your threat is 49 before questing, you can choose to not quest with ANYONE and regardless of the threat gain for questing unsuccessfully, still end up at 45 threat. That opens up some interesting options that other cards don’t provide. Which makes sense as this card is a unicorn for uniqueness, it is the only attachment for a player’s threat dial.

Nystrum 42
The other important use-case for Favor is in non-spirit, high-threat The Last Alliance and Forth, Three Hunters! decks, neither of which can use Gandalf. Keen as Lances is another popular option, but more expensive and risky (can be discarded from your hand) than Favor. — kjeld 663

I almost exclusively play decks, and all of my decks have a heavy threat-reduction element to them. So I've tried most of the threat control options that the game has to offer. FotV has become my favorite of the bunch for many reasons. If you are threat goalie, this should be one of the tools in your toolbox.

The ability to recycle FotV is one of the main advantages it has over the Event threat reducers. Using Sneak Attack with Gandalf already? Add 1 FotV and 3 Erebor Hammersmith and you now have nearly unlimited uses of FotV. There are other recursion options as well. Not to mention, it's , and is a great complement to core Gandalf for non- decks.

Efficiency is not obvious at first blush. Most threat-reduction comes at some fixed amount. The value on FotV is always at least 6. But, if you're at 49 and take 11 threat increase? Its value is significantly more than before. If you're planning on using FotV around skipping questing, Wandering Took, Heirs of Earendil, Frodo Baggins, and more, this becomes much more than simple threat control, it becomes a threat editing tool. If you're running threat-goalie with Song of Eärendil, you only need to cast this on yourself as well, and it becomes incredibly easy to hover at 49 to maximize the benefit from this card as well.

Lastly, crazy threat reduction decks can prevent players from using Valour effects. I've always felt that situation falls into the 'happy problem' spectrum, but it's worth mentioning that FotV lets your allies use Valour actions without having to worry about threating-out. It's an easy to use card. You don't need to cast it at any specific time. It's easy to cast cost-wise. And by the time you need it, you're usually at the stage where you have extra resources. The peace of mind it offers is hard to explain until you've used it.

Unfortunately, it is not a great threat reduction tool if your goal is to stay below engagement costs. Or if you're aiming for secrecy or something like that. It's not for every deck. But, when putting your threat-editing suite together, I strongly suggest you give this a playtest or two.