Imrahil's Palantir 3.0

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I am quite intrigued (and even a bit impressed!) with your 2-player fellowship. Well done!

You gave me a few things to think about. For example, I hadn't thought about combining Denethor with Heir of Mardil before (which hopefully you'll kindly let me chalk up to something like "it's so obvious, of course you couldn't see it").

I do have a couple thoughts/questions for you...

How often do you really end up using the Palantir? (Hopefully you read my italics in a friendly, non-accusatory way!) Let me immediately follow this up by saying that I really want to like Palantir. Really. I've built a few decks with it and have regularly found it to be far more awkward and cumbersome than not, even with something like Henamarth Riversong to help me. While I do remember a few key instances in which I hit on all three cards and did a little happy dance about it, more often than not I find myself taking 4 threat, drawing one card, and wishing that I had my action back.

What do you think about trying to fit in something with Sentinel into this deck? You do have Feint and Tireless Hunters to help with enemies that engage with your questing deck, yet those are one-use events rather than something more consistent. Would Dúnedain Signal be at all useful here? It costs the same as either of Feint or Tireless Hunters and would allow Denethor or Mablung to have more flexibility with blocking for the other deck. (I do want to acknowledge that Feint and Tireless Hunters do have benefits other than covering for the other deck, so I don't want to imply that Dúnedain Signal is strictly better in every way.)

And last and possibly least, how is Valiant Sacrifice working in this deck? You have a number of intentional opportunities for allies to leave play to trigger Prince Imrahil's ability (such as Squire of the Citadel chump blocking), which leaves me feeling like Valiant Sacrifice is actually a rather good fit in this deck rather than a safety measure along the lines of "I need something to help me if I'm losing allies because losing allies isn't something that I want to be doing, so I'll include Valiant Sacrifice as my 'oh crap' card in that case." Between Mablung and Steward of Gondor you likely have enough resources to use it on a regular basis without it impacting your ramp up. With most decks I regularly wonder if Valiant Sacrifice would be better replaced by We Are Not Idle for the 0-cost single card draw immediately rather than the 1-cost double card draw later, and with this deck I'm not having that feeling. I do wonder if perhaps Campfire Tales might be a better option, but your other fellowship deck has come card draw of its own already, and there are a few cards in this deck that you really want to dig for, so again I understand why Valiant Sacrifice would be valuable here.

Again, well done!

Thank you for taking time to look at my decks and for reviewing them in a thought provoking way. I'm glad you like both decks, as do I.

As for the Palantir, I'm not surprised some people still have reservations about it. A deck using the stone must be built for it, since it does not slot so well into decks on a whim. When I use it, it is often either in mono-spirit decks that compensate for the threat increase, or in and builds that can spare an action and appreciate a little more card draw. An increase of 4 threat and 1 card is typically what I expect, but the scrying effect is the bigger reason to use it actually. Henamarth Riversong is a powerful card in solo play, but he only lets you see 1 card deep into the encounter deck. The Palantir sees even deeper, allowing you to basically see future and know how the round will pan out. Then the questing player can know whether or not to save a resource or two for A Test of Will/Dwarven Tomb or use the mirror to search for one. If there is no awful treachery coming our way, the mirror and the resources can be used for other purposes. Plus, in two player games, that third card on the bottom is usually the first shadow card for the round. With such a preview, we can know ahead of time how to best deal with that shadow card. It's this scrying that can greatly assist solid, wise decision making. I usually use it 3-5 times per game, which often gets me at least 4 cards along with the scrying privileges.

I think Dúnedain Signal would be wonderful in this deck, I'm surprised that I forgot to include it in the sideboard. However, the reason I went without it is because I experienced games where I played it but only used it once if at all. So I decided to try out Tireless Hunters, which wasn't such a poor substitute. I definitely suspect that the signal would be better in the long run though, I just posted the decks as they currently are. I do plan on trying some ally changes as well, switching Knight of Minas Tirith for Marksman of Lórien and maybe finding a way to include Warden of Helm's Deep. Though I know it would be less Gondor-themed.

Of course Valiant Sacrifice is better in decks where allies leaving play is part of the plan. It finds its way in Eagle, Silvan, /-Prince Imrahil, and chump-blocking decks far better than as a mere emergency draw. It's almost like Daeron's Runes without the forced discard. That is much better than any 1 card draw, and a lot of / decks don't get to enjoy that much card draw. In this deck, about half the allies are the sort that may leave play at some point. Valiant Sacrifice has enough opportunities to trigger that I'm not stuck waiting for it to happen all game.

Good morning, and thank you for your thoughtful reply to my comments and questions! You have made me think. Again. :-)

Palantir thought #1: You are quite right that Palantir is a card that one really needs to design around rather than to just splash it into a deck for utility value given that you need Noble, and an action, and (some) threat mitigation, and a way to make use of the information you get. Definitely agree with you here.

Palantir thought #2: In your other deck comment you ask in your reply (I'm moving the question here because it seems to be appropriate given that this is the scrying deck):

"In my experience scrying is worthwhile, and Palantir decks are good at it. Have you given it a thorough try yet?"

This is a very fair question, and my answer is "not really, no." While I have done some scrying, I wouldn't say that I've thoroughly tested it. For example, I built a Secrecy deck that used Risk Some Light, Needful to Know, Henamarth Riversong along with -Denethor, Celduin Traveler, and Ithilien Tracker. Nothing does scrying more consistently than Palantir, to be certain, and there was some amount of scrying here and cards that could be used to manipulate the deck a bit based on the scrying.

Specific to Palantir, one deck I remember building with it was a / deck that used Palantir with -Denethor and Henamarth Riversong so that I could guarantee at least one hit and cycle the top card of the encounter deck if needed. I used cards to help address the threat.

I hope this answers your question. :-)

Palantir thought #3: Something I like about your deck design that you really made me think about is how you put Palantir in a combat deck, which is something that I have not at all tried out before. In general, I've tried Palantir (and scrying generally) with questing/utility decks rather than combat decks, which makes the threat more of a concern. You don't want your questing deck to get the enemies. Your combat deck? It's supposed to be the one that soaks up the enemies by design.

Palantir thought #4: One of the things you mention in your reply is how Palantir interacts with a two-player fellowship, and I think that this may be part of where my experience is lacking. In general, I've mostly played LotR with 4-player fellowships with three friends. 2-player vs. 4-player dynamics are quite different. In a 2-player game, the question of "is there an awful treachery card coming at us this turn?" in many scenarios has a good chance of being 'no' and Palantir will answer that question for you. However, in a 4-player game, the answer is usually that you're going to get some bad treachery is usually 'yes' because you're drawing lots of encounter cards, and even so Palantir can't give you 100% knowledge about that. (It does give you 75% knowledge if you ignore Surge, which is still a lot of knowledge! And yet, it's not 100%, which can be a significant difference for planning purposes.) In my experience with 4-player fellowships, it's usually better to just assume that you need A Test of Will for a nasty treachery than spend actions, resources, cards, etc. trying to figure out the answer to that question. (And in a 4-player fellowship it's easier to have someone sit on a resource for A Test of Will.)

So I probably don't have enough experience with 2-player LotR to have good intuitions of how valuable Palantir is for 2-player fellowships. And that's on me, not on you. :-)

Dúnedain Signal thought: Thanks for your thoughts here. It seems like from your testing that cross-blocking isn't a big deal, in which case your events are definitely going to be better than Dúnedain Signal because they give you the effect of cross-blocking with an added benefit.

Something that I struggle with when I design decks that is that I regularly end up with more blocking than I need to and not enough attack. In general, it seems like many combat-focused decks need to be able to block 1-2 "big hits" (5 or more) and 2-3 "small hits" per round for enemy-heavy scenarios. And while it's really important to get these blocks going, there's little value to "over-blocking." Also, you only need one blocker per block because the rules don't let you multi-block (except for that one event card...?). In contrast, with attacking you often want 2 attackers per attack, and sometimes you'll even want 3 attackers. (There are other ways, of course, such as Blood of Númenor as you have here or something like Éomer & Firefoot being a great one-person attacker.)

When I design a deck I regularly try to balance blocking-attacking close to 1-to-1, which often gets me into trouble where I can block great yet not kill quickly enough for some quests. This is where I was coming from with my Dúnedain Signal suggestion, and as you said, that extra blocking isn't really needed.

Valiant Sacrifice thought: Thanks for your thoughts here. This is another place that I struggle with as I find it hard to design decks where allies leave play. If I'm paying for a card, I want to keep it around! :-) And again, that's on me and my design bias.

Thanks again for your reply!

Hi, it's been a while. Holidays, work, school, and my deck-building projects have kept me busy, but I didn't forget about you.

I agree with you on the Palantir, it is necessary to build a deck or fellowship with a readiness to use it if you want to include it at all. Generally, I think Combat/Valor decks will have the easier time dealing with the threat gain, even using it to their advantage by drawing in the enemies during engagement or reaching 40 threat for Valor actions. With all the threat control offered by the other deck, my Palantir deck can even handle a little doomed in addition, such as Greyflood Wanderer, since I usually only have to use that effect once per game when I do use it. I also think the Palantir seems more suited for less than 4 players where it actually shows pretty much everything that will happen that round. I might rather Scout Ahead with 4 players, it can let you set up the shadow cards and the next quest phase potentially.

About Dúnedain Signal, I'm keeping it in the sideboard but I generally don't think I'll be using it much. My problem was closer to the opposite, sometimes I don't include quite enough ways to block for others in my combat decks. For this deck, I didn't have to make any major adjustments, recently I just switched out Defender of Rammas for Winged Guardian, and that solves the sentinel issue while granting another ally that could leave play. The tax to keep it from leaving play after defending isn't hard to deal with, Mablung would often have excess resources anyway. I also dropped Knight of Minas Tirith and added Marksman of Lórien. These changes greatly benefit its ability to keep the questing deck safe.

Valiant Sacrifice and other similar cards have stood as a challenge to the idea that allies must be kept permanently in play as much as possible. Some combat decks in particular don't rely on allies to do much of the heavy lifting (so they are more expendable) and others regularly bounce them in and out of play. It is understandable why a deck that does any measure of questing would want to keep allies in play, but combat decks have room to behave quite differently from questing decks. or Imrahil decks might be a good starting point if you want to get out of your comfort zone :)

So I updated this deck with the changes I mentioned previously and published it not long ago. A friend of mine also built and published a 3rd deck to go with this fellowship and it doesn't require either of the decks to change a thing and also interacts with the Palantir. It is really great when I let him know which trap is best to play or when to play Interrogation for maximum effect. You can see for yourself here ringsdb.com