At first glance, one might think: “What?! ALeP gave Tactics its own Unexpected Courage? And at exactly the same cost? OP!” At a second glance, however, comes the realization that this is an encounter action, which makes it much more tricky to use. So, what is this card good for? Well, firstly, it is reliable action advantage for Tactics, and having a Warrior hero in that sphere is not that unlikely. So, you could use it on a questing hero with good combat stats, enabling them to contribute to both, but finding a suitable questing hero with the Warrior trait isn’t as easy as you might think (especially in a tactics deck, which this card seems to be made for); and Théoden already has his own action advantage in Snowmane, although that is off-sphere, so this can be a good alternative if you don’t play spirit. Glorfindel comes to my mind as a good option if you’re running a Tactics-Lore deck so that his bloated stats are not wasted, and of course the new Glorfindel released in the same pack with Onward into Battle (he just loves tailor-made attachments, doesn't he?). Then, there are the Siege and Battle quests, where this card can be extremely useful. The problem with those keywords is that your heroes (and allies) have to do double duty with their combat stats, so the characters you send for questing are also the ones you want to manage combat with, resulting in those unfortunate moments where you have to decide whether to lose because Beregond has to defend and thus cannot quest, or because he was questing and thus couldn’t defend. Onward into Battle helps with these quests, so that’s nice; but outside the Against the Shadow cycle and some rarer occurences of the keywords, situations where you want to quest with your Warriors are few and far between. So, what else is this card good for? Well, this card makes sure that combat heroes will be available for combat. That may sound a bit strange, since there are no obvious reasons why they shouldn’t be seeing as they did not quest (and there are no Warrior heroes with self-exhausting abilities that I remember). But very often, one can find themselves in a situation where their combat hero had to be exhausted prior to the combat phase. To give a few examples:

• An enemy made an attack outside of the combat phase (a classic!). This can often throw your most careful plans out of the window, as those enemies are often already nasty ones you want to defend with your big hero defender; but then, this defender will usually be unavailable to defend a regular attack. Think about the many enemies making an immediate attack after they have engaged you. With Onward into Battle, your defender will be able to defend both their attacks.
• You made an attack outside of the combat phase. Arguably less common, but still a grat use case for this card. Quick Strike and Hands Upon the Bow are classic examples of cards allowing you to make an attack outside of the normal framework. Since both these cards require a single character to attack, that means it will often be a beefed up attacker like Legolas. Now, killing an enemy without having to defend it first is great in and of itself, but it’s even greater if you can ready your big attack guy and deal with another enemy the normal way.
• Shadow insurance. There’s one shadow effect that has been popping up more and more in the later cycles. “Shadow: Defending character cannot ready until the end of the round.” This can be really problematic, because that means your defender won’t ready in the refresh phase, so you won’t be able to use him in the next round. That often means having to chump or take an attack undefended, which can be harmful to your board state. But with Onward into Battle, your defender will be up and running again once the encounter phase comes.
• Various sporadic uses. Action advantage is always useful for travel effects requiring you to exhaust a hero, and Onward into Battle is no exception. It is also great for the racing tests in Challenge of the Wainriders, so that the hero with the big numbers in the of or department can do the test and will still be able to fight. Also good for sailing tests, because when sailing, ever body is needed.

All these cases are helped by Onward into Battle, which makes it a very versatile addition to the card pool, and it’s also a very fun card to find various uses for. It is not an Unexpected Courage clad in red, but that’s a good thing in my book. Nevertheless, it can often make your life that crucial bit easier. Give it a try in your tactics deck, and you most likely won’t be disappointed to draw it!