Vigilant Palantir

solid fellowship. i would make some changes within the allies (max pathfinder, put in rhovaion outrider,...)

do the dunedain pipe work with the silver harp? the harp says "discard" (means card have to land in the discardpile) and the pipe says "put"

i think about the modifikation to put the palantir to galadriel, not to arwen. o.k. there is only 1 increase of the defence to the vigilant, put with 3 cloak and 3 courages and 3 miruvor there will soon be an additional use. 2 buffs of arwen should be enough, remembering stallion, narya, sidequest,....

what do you think?

@doomguard

there is supposed to be 3 Dunedain Pathfinder in the arwen deck, i don't know why ringsdb didnt show them (probably because i added them last, cutting 1 dunedain pipe, 1 honour guard and 1 feint)

Rhovanion Outrider is interesting, it combines well with a Northern Tracker but when you are guaranteed to have 2 from the hobbit deck it might be overkill. In 4 player a third northern tracker might be a better choice.

i'm pretty sure Silver Harp doesn't work with Dúnedain Pipe.

palantir on Galadriel would even the threat increase, but that is not a big deal because at some point the hobbit deck will use Song of Eärendil selectively anyway, so we would end up not using it on arwen's deck but on galadriel instead to help her maintain secrecy, and Aragorn's ability loses most of it's value.

The 1 extra really do makes a difference. when you are relying solely on Vigilant Dúnadan for defense, if there is a single enemy in the encounter deck that has enough attack to deal 1 damage to Vigilant Dúnadan, suddenly without Warden of Healing or Honour Guard you are in big trouble because within a few rounds the vigilant will no longer be able to defend that ennemy. Even with warden and honour guard, every damage over the top means you are now in danger of being overwhelmed. I cannot stress it enough, once the vigilant can defend any ennemy in the encounter deck without taking damage you practically have won.

Also remember that not every source of defense for the vigilant will be online immediatly. We are counting on the dunadan to defend from round 2, at which point we might not have 2 Spare Hood and Cloak, Narya or Wild Stallion yet. Redudancy is friends with consistency.

and for additionnal uses of Arwen Undómiel's ability the problem is not readying, it is exhausting. You can have 3 Unexpected Courage and 3 Miruvor on her, she can still only exhaust once a round by questing (since she doesn't have the stats to defend and attacking occurs after defending). Spare Hood and Cloak does give her an excuse to exhaust, and that is why it does count as an extra defense for the vigialnt (once you have 2)

is all understandable. the hobbitdeck has much carddraw, and the cloaks, so it should soon be one there. if you got unlucky you have to increase your thread by 6 from palantir.

lets say you have 1 song of earendil out, then its still +5, you cannot use one song more then once per use of palantir. in that case, the thread does matter.

@if vigilant can defend all u have won, i dont think so. there are many nasty shadoweffects (remove attachements, make wounds,....) out there, and a fellowship constructed so well together, should be able to have a good shot at highest difficulties e.g. carn dum or assault on dol guldur or belegost. thats why i think, a little more healing does not hurt. until you can def att of 7 there will be some rounds and then more healing is nice. would give it to the aragorndeck. why 3 pipes? if you dont want to proxy more warden give it the imladris-healers. then you have 9 healers, getting at least 1 of them until round 2 should not be very risky.

a different thinking: @exhausting arwen, perhaps a few captains wisdom or common cause could help in the early game or to catch peacks, but then the arwendeck needs leadership.

@doomguard Thanks for the comment, i enjoy this conversation.

on using Palantir:

I guess you have a point, but i really like palantir on arwen tying the two themes together, without it it's just a palantir fellowship combined with a vigilant dunadan fellowship and maybe there is something better than palantir to combine with the dunandan, that's an idea to explore. while being good in a fellowship that can support it, Palantir is not the most powerful use of all the cards that are built around it (all the guarded stuff, the 0 cost dunandans, palatinr itself and one readying).

For fun, I challenge you to build a 4 man fellowship that optimizes vigilant dunadan as much as this one while playing another tech of your choosing instead of palantir.

why i think Palantir on Arwen is fine:

usually the hobbits have 2 Song of Eärendil out by round 2, and 3 by round 4. With total failures of palantir (+6 threat) happening 29% of the time in a perfectly balanced encounter deck this means the palantir using deck gets on average +2 threat per use after taking songs into account.

i would argue that because of :

-Galadriel needing to maintain secrecy for a while

-galadriel "absorbing" 1 threat per round from another deck through her ability+The Grey Wanderer

-Arwen's deck having Elrond's Counsel

-Arwen's deck having Aragorn

-selective usage of 2 or 3 Song of Eärendil on 1 threat triggers like refresh and magic rings actually reducing threat

Arwen is about as well equipped to use the palantir as galadriel. I can confirm that during testing thanks to Galadriel's ability and Song of Eärendil being used selectively, as well as The Galadhrim's Greeting and Double Back reducing threat globally, threat management was more about the total threat of the fellowship and the hobbits's ability to reduce threat in raw amount, rather than the threat of one of the decks shooting higher than the others.

so that's why giving palantir to Arwen instead of a "more optimal" galadriel is not an issue in my view and in my testing.

on shadows:

This fellowship can handle a lot of shadows. Having Vigilant Dúnadan on as high a as possible does negate the effect of increasing shadows which serves my point. Plus, the Fellowship deck is designed to not use Balin's resources for playing cards and to generate extra resource as needed (Magic Rings, Necklace of Girion, Halfast Gamgee, We Are Not Idle, Legacy of Númenor and against a really shadow heavy quest even Steward of Gondor). So Balin will stockpile resource and even then we have Round Shield and Hasty Stroke to help.

On Healing:

I agree with you on that part that this fellowship could use some more healing. But given that we will be defending against a lot of ennemies (because 4 players and we take some time to ramp up ) so the extra defense from palantir on Arwen is much more valuable than a Honour Guard or Warden of Healing (as far as defending attacks goes).

Captain's Wisdom and Common Cause are interesting but i don't like them much because they are one shot (might as well play Feint or The Wizards's Voice) and like you said require which doesn't really work in my line up.

after some thinking, my version would not be sooo diffrent. i come to the conclusion, that palantir on arwen is best choice with the vigilant and galadriel needs her secrecy longer because of timely aid traveller and recourcefull.

at allies i would keep minor choices to increase questingpower/locationhandling (there is never to much of them ;) ) i miss the galadriels maiden www.ringsdb.com .

would make some changes to the herosetup, so i can include more one-exhausting. drop aragorn and beorn. put in eowyn(t) instead of beorn, balin instead of aragorn, and denthor instead of balin in the cirdandeck.

this way the green cards go away in the arwendeck and made place for captains wisdom, commen cause and tinuviels song. 9 more cards to exhaust her.

this way, i keep all your benefits and improve 1. round questing (eowyn) that increase the probability to make gather information 1. round and i have more exhasuting for arwen. i loss the threadreset from aragorn,but therfore i start at very much lower thread and lateron, the sidequests and the hobbitdeck together with galadrims greeting will be enough.

furthermore i would redesigh the cirdandeck. i think fellowshipcontract is not so important and without, there is more freedom, specially in my version that use denethor. add miruvor and lembas... (but that deck is not the core of this fellowship.....)

yeah i though of Galadriel's Handmaiden at some point, but it's such a small drop in the ocean of the rest of threat reduction that i though West Road Traveller and Escort from Edoras had better upsides.

on the hero changes: losing Aragorn would make us weaker to threat intensive quests but i can see that work with Éowyn and Balin being lower.

Losing Beorn would hurt, he really helps a lot with defending the first round (and his attack capabilities rival those of Éowyn, in a different manner).

-aragorn-beorn+eowyn+denethor gives us 3 more , which is appreciated but not a big difference.

dropping seems the most problematic to me, as that would put a lot of pressure on the Thurindir deck to play all of the good attachments, because the hobbit deck doesn't have room and Galadriel needs to remain ally-dense.

having Denethor instead of Balin in the Círdan the Shipwright deck gives us more resource to play with, changing the distribution of unique allies to include more (round 1 or 2 Faramir sounds amazing!) so that's defenitely an upside.

i defenitely don't think the exhausting event are worth it, because in order for them to be useful we also need extra readying, which requires either having additionnal Unexpected Courage on Arwen Undómiel which turns useless afterwards, or using single readying like Cram,Lembas or Miruvor which requires a 2 cards combo for a single Arwen Undómiel trigger...

i agree that Fellowship is not so important and you could do without, however since we are counting anyway on Power of Command with Galion/Ioreth/Henamarth Riversong/Wilyador for round 1 questing, the opportunity cost of playing it is not that much, the deck doesn't really need any non-unique ally. by giving +9 in the late game, Fellowship adds "high " to the list of situations it can handle.

short version:

West Road Traveller>Galadriel's Handmaiden

removing Beorn drastically improves the risk of "losing" round 1, bad idea.

moving Balin to replace him with Denethor sounds great refurbishing all the attachments would be tricky, doable.

dropping Aragorn is doable.

Captain's Wisdom Common Cause Tale of Tinúviel meh for me.

Fellowship is not that important but why not if we can? what would you change if Fellowship was removed?

on second thought, i think the simplest and best answer to your "moving Balin and removing Fellowship" would be Messenger of the King Faramir, who does the same as Fellowship right from the start!

moving Balin and the attachments would take some work, but i think it's doable by basically swapping all those events and attachments in the Thurindir deck (i count 14 but reallistically 11 because i want Steward of Gondor in the Cirdan+ deck rather than in the Balin deck) with the attachments (+ Master of the Forge since we are no longer using Fellowship) which is about 15 cards (but we can shrink it down a bit), and use the specific ally count to balance the cost distribution in the Thurindir deck.

when i have the time i'll do the swap see how it looks and perhaps publish it, see which version looks best

3 of the stuff can also go into Galadriel's deck, since she will be transfering Envoy of Pelargir to the (MotK) Faramir deck. 31 allies is enough to keep her running smooth.

done, didn't take that long.

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