Personally I choose to house rule that the useless Archer trait on this guy and Silverlode Archer is replaced by the much more useful Warrior trait that at least allows him to be dragged in via Imrahil among (few) other things. Doesn't fix the fact that he's overcosted and outclassed, but it's fun! Maybe ALeP will do something with the Archer trait someday and save this suffering soldier and his silver friend from suffocating amidst the sea of binder pages.
Noldor decks are well known for their constant discarding, and their cost reduction is no different. The cost of discarding a single card is pretty comparable to spending a single resource, which on the surface makes it look like you have done a one-for-one trade, but there are plenty of ways to swing this trade in your favor.
Want to power up Sailor of Lune? Discard an event as you play him (or any ally) for one less resource. Want to make ally Glorfindel cheaper? Discard him from your hand and then play him from the discard for cheaper. Elven-light wants to be in the discard pile anyways so may as well throw that in too. Anchor Watch, Elwing's Flight, The Evening Star, Skyward Volley, and Veteran Sword-elf all get more powerful when there are copies of themselves in the discard. To close I would like to point out that in an Erestor deck this card is especially helpful since you will be discarding any cards you don't use at the end of the turn anyways, so you may as well chuck 'em now for some juicy cost reduction.
I don't play Noldor decks often but when I do this card is in my decklist. 10/10 would yeet Glorfindel for money again.
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.
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.