Requesting Assistance Pruning My Wishlist 1.0

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I would suggest you go straight for the expensive Harad allies. Jubayr and Firyal are two of the best allies in the game imo. And even Yazan to a lesser degree. There are a lot of decks that can cheat allies into play, and/or ways to get a ton of resources flowing to pay the high costs for them. A Vilya deck is the best candidate. But even secrecy stuff with tricks like Timely Aid and Elf-stone. If you go that route, you may as well go in for Kahliel and Kahliel's Headdress.

As far as the other heroes, they tend to go into specific deck archetypes so it depends what you already like or think you might like. I find Idraen hard to use personally but others seem to think she's really good, sometimes in mono spirit decks. The twins (Elladan and Elrohir) are fun so worth trying.

You have a few themes going in your ally list so I'd suggest going all in on a couple of them based on traits. One of my favorite archetypes is the Rohan Discard shenanigans, with hero lineups of Lothíriel, Éomer and Thengel. You need to be willing to print some ALEP cards to get Thengel involved but it's high quality stuff and totally worth it. The Thengel deck is really strong so you can take it through most quests, but is not overpowered compared to Vilya decks or some other tier 1 archetypes.

I personally wouldn't go for any of the guarded attachments. They are shiny but really hard to make work and your deck loses its identity when you build around tricks to try to get them. Fun in theory but not practice.

If you have certain traits or deck styles you tend to like, I think folks here could be really helpful with specifics to support those.

Thanks, @joeklipfel! (It's JOE KLIPFEL! The guy who made the two player mode for SpaceShipped! And the tiny Gloomhaven game! And the Jarl game, which I've heard was fun, but I haven't had an opportunity to play it yet!)

I've printed one each of the Harad allies (that's why it says 2x on these, since I already have one each), but I'll add the other copies to my next printing.

I tend to like deck styles that are pretty straight-forward, like Secrecy decks, Swarm Decks, Ent Decks, and Outlands Decks, but I also enjoy learning new techniques that might not have been so obvious until I see someone else do it. I'm basically a noob, even though I've played 50+ times over the past several years.

I haven't delved into the ALEP stuff yet, because some of it looked pretty overpowered, and I thought it would make me feel like I was cheating if I won with it.

(I've added all the remaining Harad cards over to my "to make" list :-) )

@SuperLucas fun to run into someone in the wild who likes those games!

As far as LOTR...I've played over 250 times at this point and still feel like I'm a newbie sometimes so I understand haha.

Good to know the deck styles you like. Those are all fun decks. Eagles with Radagast might be another fun one to try that has some swarm elements. And Gondor swarm with Boromir might be right up your alley. The Gondor starter deck is good if you can find it, though I'd also recommend printing the ALEP hero Ingold so you don't have to bring in Erestor for card draw and take away from the deck's theme.

In my opinion ALEP has been releasing stuff on par with the official run of the game. Some stuff feels OP, but like 90% of it is right on the curve...again in my opinion. The Thengel Rohan Discard deck is powerful and is like A- or even S-tier, but it's not as strong as Outlands or Vilya or even Dwarf swarm. The Rohan Discard archetype never quite made it to the level i think it deserved for how prominent Rohan is in the books, and ALEP got them there with a few cards imo.

I should mention my favorite deck to play is a Rohan deck that focuses on attacking into the staging area. So that could be something to look into if it sounds fun. Dúnhere, Spear of the Mark, Herubrand and Deeping Defender being the most important cards for that. It can't handle some things but I'd put it squarely in B-tier or even lower A-tier in terms of power level. But regardless it'ss just fun to nuke stuff in staging.

@SuperLucas, you wouldn't be Lucas Gentry of SpaceShipped fame?

@joeklipfel The same. Probably the one person who would primarily know you from that two player mode, instead of one of the games you've designed :-)

Thanks so much! I'll have to try some of those decks you mentioned. There are only about ten (x3) cards in the Gondor Starter set that I don't have yet (only 6 from the Rohan starter set, and only 4 from the Dwarf starter set), so that does sound like a good idea to go ahead and add them, if the designers picked the starter deck cards to be solid introductions to a playstyle. Good idea!