Elusive Ceorl

Personally, I would be interested in another video. I dont really have a preference for which scenario.

Hmm. I like hard quests... Carn Dum? Nurn? Nightmare Cair Andros?

Just kidding. Maybe Danger in Dorwinion. That's actually my favorite quest.

@Truck Ha! Carn dum and cair andros can totally be done. Not telling you how, i wouldn't want to spoil it :)

i've never played nurn, i tried once and got discouraged by the busy setup. I'll give it a try.

Danger in Dorwinion is amazing! Maybe it's not the best one to test this fellowship however, since the quest stages have little or no amout of progress needed so Legolas and rosie will not do much. I'll keep it in mind for the next one maybe?

I like the idea a lot! What are your thoughts on teching in Hunting Party? For those emergency situations.

@Uruk-guy thanks!

i don't see how Hunting Party helps us exactly. Most out of engagment attacks will either be from boss enemies which are either unique or immune or from "when revealed" effects.

@GreenWizard @Truck:Video vs nightmare caird andros here: www.youtube.com

@Truck I promise next video is against Danger in Dorwinion

i've made changes to the decks as follow:

Ceorl:

• Removed Dúnedain Mark, Song of Travel, Song of Wisdom, Steward of Gondor, and Deep Knowledge
• added Black Arrow, Cram, Expert Treasure-hunter, Love of Tales, Common Cause, and Wealth of Gondor

This helps increase the chances of setting up the combo faster, and make better use or Erestor's card draw

Legolas:

• removed 1 Rivendell Bow, 1 War Axe, added 2 Golden Belt

This lets us find a Golden Belt after Ceorl and Boromir are gone

Rosie Cotton:

• replaced 2 Love of Tales with 2 Steward of Gondor

With 3 Love of Tales in the erestor deck we don't need 3 copies, and this deck is better suited to play Steward of Gondor

would say this is a very effective, well rounded fellwoship with many tricks in the sleeve. i could imagine it has some problems with engaged enemys from the start. try out 3. of grey haven box. everything else except nurn or where your party is captured should be doable for this folks. (in my opinion nurn does not count really for improved deckbuilding, because with maximum of 3 cards in the deck from the start, it is not very plannable and because of that, there are only few strategys to make that with good winrates, take heroes that need not much setup and go.)

shadow and flame will also be difficult, i would say.

in that grey haven, the enemys are in the staging, not engaged, then, try dunland trap nm and/or 3 trials nightmare for a real challenge

@doomguard this is defenitely a scenario dependant fellowship. While looking for an interesting scenario to try this on i realised there are quite a lot of scenarios that just break the fellowship, even easy ones. Enemies that start engaged can be dealt with with The Hammer-stroke (playing it first round is doable with Erestor and Heed the Dream in tutor mode: you just need The Hammer-stroke+Wealth of Gondor or Captain's Wisdom), but anything that involves the first (or last with Na'asiyah) player getting attacked or controlling an objective ally or hero is very tough. So many boss battles (thaurdir and so on) and most saga quests are out.

Also as aparent in the video, even small amounts of threat increase can throw a wrench in the strategy by making engagment checks more perilous. Location control is also a bit lax so location heavy quests will need to be rushed.

as for shadow and flame, with Frodo Baggins and Galadriel we can actually keep legolas and rosie's team at 0 threat as long as no threat increase occurs

it needs sentinel. that can easy included by sings. with sentinel and a increased rosie, he can defend any enemy.

so, include Arwen Undómiel and 3 Dúnedain Signal and that should no longer be a problem. mostly you do not need to defend the bosses from the start. and within the first 3 rounds create a sentinel should be possible.

@doomguard sentinel would help. I'm adding Dúnedain Signal in the sideboards (Galadriel can't afford Arwen Undómiel), and 3 more Fast Hitch in the sidebaord of the ceorl deck.

i would add arwen in the galadrieldeck, soon not only she will have spirit, and then it is doable. (or if she gets the steward from eorl, then it is completely doable evven without song of travel)

@doomguard yes with Steward of Gondor Arwen Undómiel is playable, but without i can tell you from playing the deck quite a lot that we are strained for resource most of the time even with Song of Travel. The deck defenitely has enough , and as soon as we find a Fast Hitch, Frodo Baggins's resource can safely be used for Dúnedain Signal. Given how we don't use much resource and we need Fast Hitch to make use of sentinel anyway the cost of Dúnedain Signal is practically irrelevant.

typically on the round we find the first Fast Hitch we will play it on Rosie Cotton, save Frodo Baggins's resource that round for playing Dúnedain Signal, use Fast Hitch to ready Rosie Cotton instead of Frodo Baggins's ability. Then until we find the second Fast Hitch we save Frodo Baggins's resource for playing songs, and once we find the second Fast Hitch we play it on Frodo Baggins, and from that point we use his ability on rosie again so that we can use double Fast Hitch to defend an attack each round, 2 once we find a third Fast Hitch for frodo.

seems quite doable

combined with Follow Me! we have a sideboard that stands a decent chance even against first player relative problems. Against enemies like Thaurdir that attack all players we can play the first 2 Fast Hitch on Frodo Baggins and use his ability to keep rosie ready. However we lose a lot of willpower until we find a third Fast Hitch.

this really bad boys like thaudir do not come from the start, well timed he only makes 1 attack-all round. more of a problem could be the dragon in fire in the night, who attack from the start but you can take it undefended and harm the city, perhaps it have to be done with this fellowship)

true. Against thaurdir we can also use Hands Upon the Bow to pre-damage thaurdir, then use the Legolas combo to get the 15 progress on stage 2 and finish off thaurdir in a single attack phase with enough enemies in "storage". With Hands Upon the Bow and Feint as well in our toolkit most of those problematic scenarios are actually doable, just extra tricky.

as i said "well rounded with many tricks in the sleeve" ;)

This is a cool fellowship! I have experimented just a little bit with the solo-Ceorl archetype with a single deck that was designed fit in any fellowship and simply quest and engage 1 enemy a round. It did not run The Hammer-stroke, so I found it difficult to engage more than that. The addition of The Hammer-stroke evidently makes this a lot more potent. Nice work!

@Seastan Thank you! The idea of using Ceorl and The Hammer-stroke comes from @doomguard however.

@doomguard On flexibility, i've also noticed while playing that since we are waiting for a big round to use Unseen Strike on Legolas anyway, Boromir's sacrifice ability didn't have much impact, which made me think we could replace him with another hero. We would lose the use of Captain's Wisdom and Wealth of Gondor but for a more ealry-game efficient hero like Beorn that might be worth the sacrifice: no more The Hammer-stroke first round without Song of Battle but we get an excellent first round defender to compensate, and with sentinel he can help against "out of engagment" attacks as well. He will also punch someone really hard every round that he survives.

I believe we already had a debate on the Vigilant Dúnadan and Palantir fellowship about which of the two is the best first round defender, how about a rematch? ^^

other candidates include Éowyn(noble, quests well, can use her ability first round, can defend early on with Golden Shield), Mablung (gondor and extra resource, well rounded stats) and Quickbeam (good readying for the first round, we don't care about the damage)

a point for boromir is, as mantioned, the Captain's Wisdom, eowyn can also do that, but boromir can do that twice (because he can ready once a phase and Captain's Wisdom must be played in the planningphase)

i thought you have that in mind, as you choose him.

2 wisdom 1. round is not sooo unlikely with 10 cards + deep knowledge + runes+drinkingsong+ head the dream. and 5 tacticressource is a difference.

playing carn dum, i would say eowyns +9 is better for a save 1. round, on many others i would prefer the possible to double-wisdom boromir.

Beorn would be my choice if going against a 1. round swarm of many little enemys, or perhaps dunlandtrap to defend the 3 engaged enemys (chosen the right ones, they start with low attack)

if we do not want to sacrifice the heroes soon, then i would take Grimbeorn the Old. he defends well and can soften an enemy for legolas.

this fellowship compare to the vigilant dunedain has the benefit, it quests very well from the start, the vigilant dunedain, not this good by default (if i remember correctly).

@doomguard The thing about Captain's Wisdom is that while getting 2 resource on round 1 is a big advantage, resource beyond that is almost useless: axcept for the occasionnal Blade of Gondolin or Feint, our hero will usually play The Hammer-stroke and die during the following combat phase. That means resource generation beyond the first Captain's Wisdom or second Wealth of Gondor is practically irrelevant, as those resource will end up discarded with the hero. So Boromir's ability only factors for Common Cause, questing after a Captain's Wisdom, and defending if we are not willing to sacrifice our heroes yet on the first round. Common Cause is not even that good and Boromir's 1 won't make a lot of difference, so in the end it really comes down to early defense.

Given how the fellowship works, i would say Éowyn's ability doesn't matter that much: she does not have ranged, so she will only be able to attack an enemy engaged with the Ceorl player, and those enemies will be put in storage within a couple rounds anway. So her ability should only be viewed as defensive: kill the enemy now so that he doesn't need to be defended next round. That would imply we are not playing The Hammer-stroke until the third round or later. Given her poor defending abilities, a Beregond or whatever hero defends well would do the same thing combat wise. Her main advantage is questing for 4 , but because of the rosie deck questing for 19 right away it is not necessary and better early game combat is more likely to improving the odds of victory. You will also notice that we are already quite capable of questing in battle (frodo quests using his ability on legolas, galadriel buffs rosie, rosie buffs frodo, legolas, erestor and boromir quest makes a total of 16, 18 if beorn replaces boromir) so i don't think eowyn's ability will be a big factor.

I think sentinel makes a big difference so Boromir should be replaced by Beorn, Beregond or Grimbeorn the Old.

We will almost never use Grimbeorn the Old's ability for 2 reasons: Without Captain's Wisdom and Wealth of Gondor, we will need Grimbeorn the Old to keep his resources, and because of how we deal with enemies with The Hammer-stroke, killing enemies early on is not necessary at all most of the time.

so the choice essentially boils down to 3 5 HP sentinel vs 4 4 HP sentinel vs 1 10 HP sentinel with unlimited defense.

If x is the number of attacks defended by our hero, then Grimbeorn the Old can absorb up to 4+3x damage then take an undefended attack that kill him, Beregond can absorb up to 4x+3, and Beorn can absorb up to 9+x .

• Beregond vs Grimbeorn the Old: If we say 4x+3=3x+4 then x=1, so for the first attack they are equivalent and beyond the first Beregond is better. Plus Beregond can use Wealth of Gondor, so Grimbeorn the Old is out.

• Beregond vs Beorn: If we say 4x+3=9+x then x=2, so on the first attack Beorn is better, for 2 attacks they are equivalent and beyond 2 attacks Beregond is better.

  Since Beregond has no readying it will take 3 rounds for Beregond to defend 3 attacks. Since once we have played The Hammer-stroke we will no longer need defenders (and engaging all enemies in play probably means we cannot defend all of them anyway), that means Beregond is only better than Beorn if we play The Hammer-stroke on round 4 or later, which rarely happens (in 3 rounds Erestor draws us 18 cards, and we have Heed the Dream, Drinking Song etc).

So Beregond will almost never have the opportunity to show his value compared to Beorn. His only remaining advantage is Wealth of Gondor, but A Good Harvest and 3 more copies of Song of Battle can compensate for that, and Beorn ability to defend multiple attacks on the first round into The Hammer-stroke on the second round is highly valuable.

@ tacticressourses, i disagree, many songs to play, rosie (or if song of travel, frodo) likes that :) (9 songs that cost, there are some in the first 10 cards + the carddraw/drinkingsongs)

your other explains/calculations about defenses are true

There are plenty of 0-cost cards that we want to play as well, i think the extra resource are not needed: with mostly 0-cost cards we can dump our hand right away before Ceorl abandons ship.

The version i'm currently running has in the whole deck a total of 12 , 3 and 3 resource to spend, and 9 resource generated on Boromir through Captain's Wisdom and Wealth of Gondor, which means we need 3 , and resource or 9 resource total in a 37 card deck (because of draw). resource just represents Heed the Dream, represents Song of Battle which enables us with even more from Ceorl. Taking cost and resource generation on <Boromir into account, each card we draw costs us on average 0.08 resource to play. Even on round 1 with 10 cards we are below 1 resource on average, and after that at 4 cards per round the average is 0.32 per round. We don't need that much resource generation.

With Beorn i would replace Captain's Wisdom and Wealth of Gondor with A Good Harvest and Deep Knowledge (so that Rosie Cotton can cut Deep Knowledge for 3 Song of Battle). Withall the draw and drinking song taken into account the odds of finding both The Hammer-stroke and either Song of Battle or A Good Harvest are still excellent. We are playing the key 0-cost cards instead of key 1-cost cards which means the rosie deck will have to spend an extra resource later on but we have better consistency, play more cards on the first round (which is more critical) and have a better defender.

i do not understand you calculations. and 0.08 res per card seems nonsense to me....

there are 9 songs, that can be played with tacticressources (and if we need other res, there is the chance to play that song on boromir first) i cannot see why that should not be a big benefit. each song on rosie increase quest by 2 or makes it more flexible with resourssemanagement. without doublewisdom you will not be able to play that much songs you have in the deck.

or:

you currently version has not this much songs, but then we are talking about different things. i talk about this version here with 9 songs that each cost 1neutral ressoursse if you want to talk about a heavyly modified deck, link it, else i cannot anything constructive

From a comment higher up:

i've made changes to the decks as follow:

Ceorl:

Removed Dúnedain Mark, Song of Travel, Song of Wisdom, Steward of Gondor, and Deep Knowledge
added Black Arrow, Cram, Expert Treasure-hunter, Love of Tales, Common Cause, and Wealth of Gondor

This helps increase the chances of setting up the combo faster, and make better use or Erestor's card draw

Legolas:

removed 1 Rivendell Bow, 1 War Axe, added 2 Golden Belt

This lets us find a Golden Belt after Ceorl and Boromir are gone

Rosie Cotton:

replaced 2 Love of Tales with 2 Steward of Gondor

With 3 Love of Tales in the erestor deck we don't need 3 copies, and this deck is better suited to play Steward of Gondor

Link to the updated version: ringsdb.com

The 0.08 tactics resource per card calculation was with that version.

So that argument would not hold for the "high cost" first version that's true, but i think the low-cost version is better because:

• With a 10 cards hand, we will play more cards if most cost 0 than if a significant fraction costs 1 and we have occasionnal resource generation, because the the resource generating cards reduce our hand and we have better consistency by sticking to the average. There are enough 0 cost cards we want to play (Expert Treasure-hunter, Love of Tales, Song of Hope, Song of Healing, Golden Belt, Gather Information...) that playing 0-cost cards doesn't come at the cost of card quality.

• Cards drawn after Ceorl jumps ship will not be playable, they are just discard fodder for Song of Healing. That means the erestor deck should be optimized for playing the cards that we want to play early on because that's the only time that deck will play cards. We need Expert Treasure-hunter and Love of Tales ASAP, while the songs are only useful after Fireside Song has been played.

• We have plenty enough of songs to ramp up rosie's , with the song heavy version we spend more early game resource than necessary playing songs on rosie, who will end up drawing a bunch of them anyway. Without Fireside Song to activate them, playing the songs earlier generates no advantage.

i cannot remember all the changes, i am an old man ;) thx for the link i need to see the whole thing to make worthfull thoughts ^^ that i will do now and later on i will respond. 0.08 seems a digit to much/less for me (0.8 reasonable) but after i checked out the modified version i can tell more.

o.k. now i am up to date.

i would not take your linked deck. i would keep the songs of travel and wisdom. the cram is good, makes a little bit time until the fast hitches comes out. IF you take your last version, then i agree, you do not need boromir and beorn is the best choice.

for the 6 songs i would discard the 1 Song of Healing and 3 Common Cause and 2 Expert Treasure-hunter i would perhaps (with boromir and good chances of 2 #captains wisdom) cut some Wealth of Gondor and keep some of the other cards.

@your 0.08 tactisres, yes, the calculation seems right, but does not help anything, because there are cards for 1 or for 2 cost. so, u need at least 3 tacticres. with only 3 songs of battle, there is no more tacticres needed, but would recommand the version with more songs and then it is useful.

@doomguard ok i think we are agreeing on the staples (Song of Battle, Heed the Dream, The Hammer-stroke, Feint and Blade of Gondolin, rest mostly 0-cost), and disagreeing on two kinda related choices:

• first choice is the choice of hero, Boromir with the advantage of Captain's Wisdom (and maybe Wealth of Gondor) and Beorn with the advantage of sentinel and a bit better stats.
• second choice is about the inclusion of Song of Travel and Song of Wisdom in the ceorl deck, which is kind of dependant on the first one because of Captain's Wisdom and Wealth of Gondor.

Is that correct?

I'd like to point out some more things we should agree upon:

• We would probably both agree as well on A Good Harvest being practically equivalent to Wealth of Gondor or Song of Battle: it can replace the song of battle we put on Ceorl since we can use all of his resource on the big turn, and with only songs and 3 Heed the Dream there is as well a good chance for 1 of Erestor's resource to go unused. It solves our resource problem almost as well.

• We would probably agree that at least 1 copy of Song of Hope belongs in the deck: it's a free song and Rosie Cotton will get her first sphere songs on her own anyway.

• Love of Tales should be 3 of in both decks that can play it, because it unlocks potential play early on, and a copy can go on erestor if it is going to wais, generating a resource we might use for a song or with A Good Harvest.

• I agree Common Cause can completely be cut, it's just a self-replacement using Galadriel with Boromir.

I want to be clear on your version (especially if you agree or not on A Good Harvest), that way i can know the numbers for both our versions, do some math, and predict what we should expect from each. That way we can know what we are actually getting from each version and weigh them up.

we agree on more. if taking your last version , we agree totally.

but i would go for that version with morel songs. o.k. you say for questing it is not needed, but both song of travel and song of wisdom is of strong use if played first round from the eorl-deck. travel, because the galadrieldec has early acces to 2 spiritres, travel, because then the love of tales can be played on rosie, that accelerate and with this 6 songs more from what it is valuable to play at least 1 travel and 1 wisdom, the 2 needed ressoursses have to come from a 2. wisdom. right?

2. travel is wisdom (love of tales---->song of wisdom)

@doomguard i hear your arguments. I'm ok with putting Song of Travel and Song of Wisdom back in the deck, even if we are playing Beorn instead of Boromir (worst case scenario we are short on resource and we skip the song).

My proposal: from the version i linked:

• -Boromir + Beorn
• -3 Wealth of Gondor -3 Captain's Wisdom -3 Common Cause
• +3 A Good Harvest +3 Song of Travel +3 Song of Wisdom

I'm gonna do the math on that version to see how reliable it is

so we skipped the godor-ressourcegeneration to love-of-tale ressourse generation. why not. and you are convinced, that is save enough because of the much carddraw/change in the erestordeck.

another idea, can legolas make good use of captains wisdom? if he has Open the Armory in hand i would say yes, is that worth it?

did we discuss giving eorl the ring and Power of Command? can the freed up resource on rosie do anything?

@doomguard Legolas could defenitely use Captain's Wisdom. Every time i play the fellowship legolas is swimming in cards and he needs to reach 4 resource eventually for Hour of Wrath, and with The Grey Wanderer he can still attack or quest that round. Captain's Wisdom is a great idea for him. I would swap it for Daeron's Runes so that sphere managment doesn't become a problem.

Power of Command is absolutely key to the rosie deck, it contributes 5 for 1 . Giving it to Ceorl instead means we lose 2 until he goes to rosie's side (and that's assuming Ceorl Erestor and Boromir all commit to the quest), and that also means he cannot go to the Legolas player (which in the video was mandatory at some point). Also it means we won't use Ceorl's resource, so if we have a Song of Battle or A Good Harvest hand it might be critical. If we decide to skip playing Power of Command for that round not only do we lose 5 we also risk discarding Power of Command to erestor if he lives or having to send Ceorl over and have it stuck in a hand that cannot play it. Rosie's deck doesn't use resource anyway except for songs which are not that useful round 1, so saving rosie's first resource gives only a delayed benefit. That's too many problems for too little benefit.

yea am not aware that ceorl is of some use in the legolasdeck, furthermore if he gets some Captain's Wisdom. the 1 freed ressource in the hobbitsdeck is not worth the flaws it bring.

it's not about legolas having use of ceorl, it's about intereacting with encounter cards (like with hallofbeorn.com.)