This has to be my least favorite fan card. While overpowered additions like Thengel are broken, they can be a ton of fun to play with. He has a plethora of unique uses in Rohan, Beorning, and The Last Alliance decks. Even Deeping Defender fits in with staging area attack or direct damage decks. However, Seasoned Forager just fits into every Lore deck. Its "restriction" is so simple to avoid, calling it a restriction is harsh. All you have to do is not include Leadership, Mablung, or Arwen Undómiel in your deck. Then, you have a turn-one playable Steward of Gondor that multiple players can use because it isn't unique. Even worse, it is even more overpowered with the new contract: At the End of All Things. Because most resource acceleration is banned, Seasoned Forager is the auto-include option. The final nail in the coffin is Wealth of Adventure. At least if you couldn't find Steward of Gondor in your mulligan, you would have to have a second plan. However, Wealth of Adventure automatically searches your deck for a Skill, virtually guaranteeing Seasoned Forager. Thankfully, Wealth of Adventure is a Leadership card. If it was Lore, I would be seriously disappointed. I still appreciate fan cards and will never stop loving The Last Alliance. However, cards like these inspire no creativity, introduce little deck-building challenge, and break the game's balance. I know another Master of Lore wasn't the right answer, but I would rather have underpowered spice than this bland powerhouse.
I think you overestimate the power of this card. First of all, it's not Steward of Gondor -- cost reduction of 1 is nowhere near the power of just add 2 resources. It's certainly useful, but the restriction of not being able to gain resources from ANY OTHER player card is quite limiting. You also can't use popular options like Resourceful, Magic Ring, Hidden Cache, Keen as Lances, Keys of Orthanc, Love of Tales, Proud Hunters, Beorning Hospitality, and several others. While you can stack with other cost reduction cards, few of the most useful ones (O Lorien, To the Sea) are actually in Lore. Also, the utility of this card drops sharply with multisphere, as it is restricted to matching the sphere of the attached hero. And certainly there's no point playing Wealth of Adventure with this card, as you've already got better resource acceleration options if you're running leadership. While it is powerful with At the End of All Things, I'm fine with that, as that Contract is difficult to operate in any case.
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kjeld
614
Outside of Steward, this card is the best resource acceleration in the game. At least Steward was the selling point of Leadership. If you wanted resources, you basically had to run leadership. Lore already has a monopoly on healing and card draw. I don't think it needed top tier resource acceleration. Every single card you compared Seasoned Forager to (except for Magic Ring, which is a limit one per deck card) forces you to build a deck around it. Also, I would hardly consider Keen as Lances or Love of Tales to be popular resource acceleration options. Stating that this card is worse in multi-sphere decks is also true of Steward of Gondor. While it is a downside, it is hardly a deal breaker. Finally, the strongest cost reduction card (in my opinion) is Grima, who happens to be in Lore. However, I suppose you could be using Keys of Orthanc in that situation.
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NERD
808
Personally I think Arwen or Mablung are better resource accelerator than this card.
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Alonewolf87
1921
I also think you're missing the point of this card. This card is meant to enable more fluid deckbuilding options than currently available. If I want resource generation in my deck, I usually have to run a theme deck such as traps, Rohan, pipes, ect. This card is similar to Contract of the Wise in that it allows you to make decks that aren't so focused around a theme, but still have access to resource generation outside of something obvious like Steward of Gondor, but we don't always want to include Leadership in a deck. So using Seasoned Forager, I can just make a Lore deck and include all the cards I want and have resource generation covered, without having to stick to a specific theme.
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FolcoBoffin
304
If you view that as a benefit, I suppose you are right. However, I personally want to have a challenge when building decks. There is a reason why I rarely use Steward of Gondor. I find that this game is more fun when you have to use more creative solutions, such as Grima or Damrod. I think that generic solutions should be less effective, so that you are rewarded for solving the deckbuilding puzzle. For example, I think that Master of Lore was perfect. While he could have been stronger, he emphasized the weakness of Lore. Fan cards seems to erode the downsides of the spheres. While this opens new possibilities, I think it makes the game less interesting. With that said, this card can enable fun ideas and cool decks. I can see how this card would certainly help some players. I just feels a bit like training wheels to me.
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NERD
808
Personally I don't see the difference between this and Grima or Damrod, all of those basically grants you one extra resource each round with some kind of limitations. Grima costs threat but applies to all types of cards, Damrod applies only to Traps, Seasoned Forager requires you to draw and play it (unlike Grima and Damrod that are accessible from round 1), to forfeit all other forms of resource generation (while nothing prevents you to use Steward of Gondor in a deck with Grima or Damrod) and is also limited to the sphere of the hero you attach Forager to (ammitedly not a huge downside). Personally I would compare it favorably to Leaf Brooch (limited to events, being in Secrecy and the same-sphere-as-attached hero), which is definitely not a super popular card
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Alonewolf87
1921
I tend to value my hero slots highly. Neither Grima or Damrod have impressive stats, although I suppose they make up for it with low threat. I would not compare this card to Leaf Brooch. Secrecy is hard to achieve and only discounting events makes in narrower. The only real restriction on this card is not playing other resource acceleration. I would say that many (probably even the majority) of Lore decks would benefit from playing this card.
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NERD
808
I just searched the number of Lore decks on RingsDB and there was 594 pages. Then, I added every resource generation card (excluding versatile cards like Gandalf's staff) to the Cards Not Included section. There were 218 Lore decks which had no way to generate resources. While this is not a majority, it is still a large percentage. In addition, this includes decks that have access to Leadership and Steward of Gondor. If you consider only non-Leadership decks, the percentage that would benefit from this card would be higher. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how many decks run Leaf Brooch. While I know its not a totally valid way of testing card strength, only 9 pages of decks use Leaf Brooch.
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NERD
808
Sorry, I meant 218 pages of Lore decks that should run Seasoned Forager.
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NERD
808
Follow up to that research would be how many of those lore decks with no resource generation qualify as OP, and how many would become so with that card added in. I have to say, I find that AleP has not made anything that is more broken than pre existing FFG cards, this card included.
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Ipswatch
423
That is fair. My point isn't even that this fan card is worse than Steward of Gondor. I still can dislike Thengel's power level even though Elrond with Vilya is better. My biggest issue with this card is that is a general and simple solution to Lore's biggest drawback. At least Vilya requires Gandalf, Imlaldris Stargazer, or some careful deck building. You are correct that many of the Lore decks would not have become overpowered. However, I do not think any of them would have been worse. I think this card is one of the best examples of power creep and straying from the game's core. Lore is supposed to have terrible resource acceleration. However, I do still appreciate all the new life AleP cards add to the game. I am thankful for their existence. However, I would prefer if they had a few more creative restrictions.
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NERD
808
What happens if you play multiplayer LotR Saga and: 1) you are the first player. You attach this to Fellowship Frodo that you control on round one. 2) Control over Frodo changes with the first player. 3) You play another copy of this card on one of your 3 heroes. 4) Frodo goes back to you, but the limit is 1 per player. Do you have to discard it now? Which one?
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warlock000
3365
following the rules if something does not fit it has to be discarded. (e.g. if you attach a 3rd restricted to a char 1 has to be discarded) but you can choose if its frodos or the other.
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doomguard
1963