Want so desperately to love this card that I play with it despite knowing it is a dud. Played the entire Angmar campaign and played it religiously. Note, I had 3 copies in my deck every scenario; I believe only it was only revealed the one time. Like warlock said: it should have a shadow trigger. Something like "Ready the defending character. Ranger of the North is considered to be the defending character for this attack instead. Discard Ranger of the North at the end of the phase". Cool ninja ranger guy pops in from the trees to save you and then poof. Yea, that's a house rule now.

This guy is pretty good, especially if you are in multiplayer with multiple copies of Gather Information around the table. The first Gather Information fetches all others and suddenly you have an extra hero. Legacy of Númenor would benefit from this and if you're running a pipe deck then this gives you another Dúnedain Pipe target. I usually end up playing Sword-thain instead (you could run both), but Thalion has been the last card cut on several of my deck builds.

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Mostly I'm just glad this card exists because it's frustrating to me that Sting, Glamdring, and Orcrist all got non-campaign releases but the Flame of the West (which is really a far more significant sword in the legendarium) never did.

As for its implementation, the trait requirement is obviously designed to go with the colorless Aragorn from the same set. I'm really not sure there is a use case for this card outside of a deck with that colorless Aragorn and a generous surplus of resources. So it's very limited, but given the sword's role in the story that does make sense. Theoretically, a lot of other people could have wielded Glamdring, Orcrist, Sting, etc. but Anduril was always tied to Isildur's heir alone.

My best success with it was in a leadership/tactics Gondor deck with Aragorn's starting title being Elessar (which makes Gondor even more amazing at defense than they already are). With Elessar, he is qualified from the get-go and you don't have to fish for more traits before he can wield Anduril, though the leadership resource icon is made redundant. Also, it's very convenient in a deck like that to give SoG and Chieftan of the North to Aragorn, and then with his multiple resource icons he can easily afford expensive cards. If anyone can come up with a better use case than that for Anduril I'd love to hear about it, but so far it seems far and away the best place for it to me.

Lobelia is also a surprisingly good user of the Flame of the West :D —

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is not that strong of a hero but has quite strong for a hobbit.

Her ability is very thematic if you know the books. Bilbo is quite afraid of her and her attitudes.

The fact that she can use all atachments might be of some use.

I'm a little surprised that Hobbit Cloak doesn't have any reviews, because I think it's incredible. Even if you have just the Core and Fellowship boxes, this card can be invaluable, allowing even a thematic Hobbit deck to defend against the Black Riders without instantly losing a hero if it has to. The in-box Fatty Bolger and, of course, the Fellowship Frodo Bagginses have 2 printed , which then becomes 4 if you're managing your threat properly and are forced to engage with a Black Rider, netting you 1 damage on a hero instead of a whole dead hobbit. With a larger card pool, it becomes even more awesome. The Return of the King box(es) gives you the in-sphere Halbarad and the 3 Tom Cotton. Merry reduces your threat and Pippin gives further enemy engagement cost boosts, and there are, of course, myriad other options to lower your threat to make sure you're getting the full value out of the single resource you spent on this card. And, as an added bonus, it is not even restricted!

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