Estel

Attachment. Cost: 1.

Title.

Attach to a Dúnedain hero or Aragorn. Attached character gains the Noldor trait.

Action: Exhaust Estel and discard 1 card from your hand to search the top X cards of your deck for 1 card and add it to your hand. Shuffle your deck. X is the number of Traits on the attached character.

e-laureanar

ALeP - Blood in the Isen #188. Spirit.

Estel
Reviews

This card is insanely good. I keep having to double check that I am not reading it wrong. But turning dead cards into fresh cards every turn is nuts. And with the new Neutral Aragorn digging twice a turn from turn one for key cards is crazy good. Best filter/search card in the game ? Maybe.

I know this card is basically supposed to be played on Aragorn, who can search it turn 1, use the effect twice and utilize the filtering to further fuel his title obsession.

But even ignoring Aragorn, this card is very much busted.
Let's compare it to Erestor: 4 resources for 2 willpower and a once per turn discard-one/draw-one effect.
Estel even surpasses that effect in letting us search the top few cards of the deck, all for just 1 resource.

If you happen to run any Dunedain hero and have access to the blue sphere its very much an auto-include.
I kinda wish AleP would have toned it down a bit with this one.

Some ideas to 'fix' it:

  • "... X is is the number of Traits on the attached character minus 3".
    Now it would only work if the hero is already in Andúril range, having 4 traits. It would still immediately work on Dunedain heros who have 3 traits out of the get go like most Aragorns, Amarthiúl and Idraen but even then its just the normal Erestor effect.
    Main problem with this solution is that it makes it a useless starting attachment for Aragorn. But maybe this is fine? Its way to easy to just use Aragorn as a (MotK) Erestor without having to include any other title cards in your deck.

  • "... search the top X cards of your deck for a Title attachment or an ally who shares a trait with the attached hero, then either add it to your hand or return the discarded card to your hand. X is the number of Traits on the attached character."
    Estel kinda breaks the theme of the new title cards who only work on allies who share a trait. And that's exactly the problem, Estel is way too generic. Honing down the eligible targets would also go a long way to make it much more flavourful.

Glauhur 12
I haven't played anything from AleP yet, so I can't speak from experience, but if you think this is busted, maybe try to increase the cost to 2 discards, instead of 1? — TheNameWasTaken 8
"Let's compare it to Erestor: 4 resources for 2 willpower and a once per turn discard-one/draw-one effect." — blueluke 173
Woops... Anyway: Comparing it to ally Erestor seems a bit unfair. He's an ally from the K-D cycle - Back when ally cost balance was still all over the place. He's simply a bit overcosted (and you're also paying for his 3 health and 1 defense). — blueluke 173
Dunedain Pipe seems like a better comparison - Both require you to pay one card to draw a new one. Estel is clearly better as you get to choose between 2-4 cards, but it's also unique. And you have to shuffle your deck each turn which is a bit of a pain :P — blueluke 173