I recently put this card in a deck for the first time. I usually don't like temporary stat-boosting cards, and I recognized that while Scouting Party can make a big impact, you really have to build around it, which is why I never used it at first. But it so happened that one day I noticed that I had two Scout heroes in my collection that I hadn't used yet (Idraen and Lanwyn), so I decided to make a Scout deck and give it a go. (Edit: You can find the deck here.)

While building this deck and looking through my collection, I kept getting reminded of how restrictive Scouting Party is to play! It turns out that out of a lot of the questing allies that I usually like to use, such as West Road Traveller, aren't actually Scouts. But I took this as an opportunity to dig even further into my collection and pull out things like Sailor of Lune and Mirkwood Explorer that I also rarely use or have never used before.

The first quests I played with this deck were The Caves of Nibin-dûm and the first two Dream-chaser quests in a 2-player fellowship. And Scouting Party made a HUGE impact - it boosted my by 10 or more every time I played it! It was really satisfying every time I pulled it off. Importantly, though, there were also a lot of times where my stats were good enough that I simply didn't feel like I needed to play it; though that was more due to the nature of stat-boosting events and not specifically because of Scouting Party itself. (And the other deck in the fellowship was playing Prince Imrahil with A Very Good Tale and Captain's Wisdom and was spewing out allies left and right, so that might have also had something to do with it, lol.)

Also one thing to note: Because Scouting Party is best when you go as all-in as possible with your questing, this factor alone makes it much better in multiplayer than in solo, because then the other players can handle the combat. One of the reasons that made me not use this card for a while was the fact that at the time I played true solo a lot of the time.

TL;DR: This is 100% a "build-around" card, but if you do build around it, it can be incredible.