This card is a bit self-evident, but worthy of a review to highlight the merits. Angmar Awakened introduced player side quests, and another set of them were added with The Haradrim, all of them with appreciable benefits. This event means that, if you have access to , you can find any side quests you may feel like including, no matter what sphere, to tailor to what you may need at any given time. If you are running Thurindir or Thalion, Dúnedain Message is an easy way to power them up faster, as well as Iârion for Angmar Awakened's campaign mode.

At 1 resource in the richest sphere, it's not much of a burden to include, aside from just the deck space. Additionally, with the Signal trait, it can be fetched with Weather Hills Watchman. I wouldn't say this card should convince a deck to run side quests, but if your deck has a couple of side quests and has access to , this card is worth considering.

I like this guy. Aside from the three extras you can get with Messenger of the King or Sword-thain, there are only four Dwarf heroes in Tactics, and two of those belong to the Core Set. If you are building an all-Dwarf deck, for example, and want for all those sweet, sweet Dwarf attachments, your options are limited.

Now, it's all well and good to use Gimli, but if you're trying to keep your threat on the lower side (especially with, say, a Bond of Friendship deck), then you're going to be looking at Thalin or Thorin, who share a starting threat cost of 9. Stat-wise, the only difference is that Thalin's second point of was put into Thorin's instead. This means that Thorin is not so good as at pinch-hitter defending, which you may feel in a standard deck, but is less of a problem with Bond of Friendship. 9-cost for 1 , 3 , 1, & 4 is a nice, focused stat-line, and 4 health can absorb some archery or undefended attacks if necessary.

Thorin's extra is essentially cancelled by Thalin's free damage when you can use it (often enough, as a Dwarf deck concerned with threat is likely running Nori as well, so Unexpected Courage is not an unreasonable ask. Also, both are equally neutralised by "immune to player card effects"). However, even with Thalin's ability, the number of times I've wanted just One more is significantly large, and that's where Thorin shines.

Do you need to kill--or even just slowly chip down!--an enemy but can't quite muster the power? Thorin has you covered! For the low, low cost of discarding one (1) card from your deck, you, too, can sweep the legs out from under that enemy who barely survived your onslaught. And, because that damage can be on any enemy engaged with you, you can deal with 2 (or more, with Rohan Warhorse) you can clear out stacks of engaged enemies with relative ease.

While I had some great times with my boy Thalin, Thorin resolved most of the frustrations that I have when using him, and Thorin does so without raising the threat cost of my deck. With the same set of attachments as I used for Thalin, Thorin has proven to be exactly what I needed him to be. Sure, he's not exactly Gimli, but he is reliable and fits in well with most everything a dwarf deck might want to be doing.

Finally, a single card that makes hero treebeard really good. Attack for 7 and quest for 6 in a single action. It can be hard to find a spirit resource when playing an Ent deck, however.

This card transforms the game. "Is this game solo-able with a single hand?" is a question you often see asked about LCGs. It seems that people want a streamlined, solo CCG-style card game experience that doesn't require playing as multiple players, doesn't require 2 hours per session, and doesn't have an unappealing theme. With Bond of Friendship, you can now more easily take on scenarios with a single deck, finish up in less than an hour, and best of all, it is the Lord of the Rings LCG.

This was one of those cards that I never thought I'd actually put into a deck, but I've found that it can be quite strong in conjunction with a Woodman/location attachment deck in a multiplayer game. Specifically, in quests that spit out multiple locations over and over (i.e. Lost in Mirkwood) it may not be feasible to travel to and clear all those locations before you need to make progress on the main quest (and this is only exacerbated in quests that include objective-locations that are immune to player card effects). As the game goes on, the staging area fills up, making it increasingly difficult to quest over when you need that big push at the end. However, if you have spent the game spreading out location attachments (Explorer's Almanac, Guarded Ceaselessly, Guarded cards, Thrór's Key, Power in the Earth, etc.), you can effectively neutralize an entire staging area's worth of locations for 1 resource (I've negated up to 10 in a two-handed game before).

Is it niche? Absolutely! Is it lots of fun to pull off? Absolutely!