Eleanor

A so and so hero. Can be a life saver in many occasions and a dead card in some others. I usually play some Strength of Will (Core) whenever I run her. Common Cause (Core) can also increase her usefulness.

those cards sirprim mentioned are a must if you are using her, since it can happen many times that no when revealed effects come up and she is just useless since her attack and defensive capabilities are poor. She is more usable in multiplayer

Can be a life saver in some scenarios at certain times, but the fact you have to replace the encounter card puts a big crimp in her style. If you're running Spirit it's almost always better to go with copies of A Test of Will.

I must say we never use her. Even having only the core Spirit heroes, Frodo and Dwalin. May be because I rather often play with 3 and there you have to be careful with getting to much encounter in many scenarios, else you'll face an unmanagable amount of locations.

Been experimenting recently with combining her with cards which require you to exhaust a hero to use (spare hood and cloak, peace and though etc). Alot of the times when she isn´t used for treachery cancellation, we do manage to find other uses for her that way

The text on the card says "with the next card", however the transcript on this web page erroneously says "with the new card". I think this should be corrected. Note the errata does not change the text of the card to "the new card", it just clarifies that the player has to apply the "When revealed" effect from the new revealed card.

I think she is underrated. As far as defense goes, she has the best defense of the spirit cards in core, so for beginning players on a budget, she isn't a bad choice. In the core leadership and Spirit, only Aragorn can match her on defense, and when she is in play, she frees him up to attack until you can get some good defense allies going. That said, she would be very easy to outgrow quickly once you began collecting more cards.

Totally underrated - at first i thought it is lame that card is replaced, but when played with her effect feels more like "discard treachery from top of the deck to discard pile", not to mention next card may be something like Athelas from Rhosgobel.

And she is Gondor, so great target for Gondorian Shield or Blood of Numenor, so you can use her as defender if did not triggered ability this round.

yep.  she is awesome and pretty much a staple in any 3-4 person fellowship for our play group.   

I think she is more of a 4/5. I have been playing a Gimli/Eleanor/Glorfindel deck and she has saved my butt a few times. I did an experiment and swapped her out with Frodo. When I did this and played Journey Down the Anduin, the treacheries I would have cancelled, instead killed all my questing allies! I was laughing about it because I got to see first hand what a difference she made. I even had A Test of Will in my deck, but I didn't have much card draw so no Test of Wills came out and there were several treacheries anyway and 1 or 2 Test of Wills would not have helped entirely.

I'll have to add here that she's an excellent bearer of the Palantir.

I saw her played with Gondorian shield on her, so if her ability wasn't used, she becomes a good defender. That may be a way to use her in a solo deck.

@Serazu - I've never actually used that attachment before.  Do you normally have some form of encounter scrying or just gamble with it each time?

 

@Lecitadin - yea, she is an excellent choice for that.  If you don't have the tactics sphere readily available, she's good with Blood of Numenor as well.  Or both!

Palantir is one of the strongest cards in the game, as long as your deck sports cards to mitigate its inherent drawback. No, I do not use other scrying techniques. I almost always pick "enemy" and that usually nets me two cards and a threat raise by 2. Of course, most depends on the quest at hand, i.e. if you play "Hills", opting for "location" is a safer bet, if you play "Shadow and Flame", "treachery" might be preferable etc. And, in the rare case, when you pick "enemy" and no enemy is revealed, hey, at least you're guaranteed some respite while you build your position. I usually used Palantir in a mono-blue deck which is a questing powerhouse and cancels things like crazy, but it's more tailored for "melee". Last night however I used it in a solo Outlands deck on Eleanor accompanied by Hirluin and Strider to reset threat when it got high. In solo, there is no need to use it every turn, unless of course you're engaged fully with enemies. I played Siege of Cair Andros and demolished it. And Palantir was excellent, netting 2 cards at least every time I used it. Do not fool yourself though: the draw is just the icing on the cake. It's its scrying effect that truly delivers. Work around its drawback and go to town.

@Serazu : you know what? I never thought of using Palentir this way... you convinced me to try it!

 

And with Lore, if you already know the first encounter card, can be powerful.

@slothgodfather 100% agree on Gondorian Shield. If you’re running Eleanor with a Tactics hero it’s almost a must-have.

 

Don’t know about Blood of Numenor though. I get that it’s in-sphere but it’s always felt a little fiddly to me. I mean, it has the POTENTIAL to be super powerful. But that recurring payment and the need to keep resources in hand just kills it for me. Maybe I would feel differently if I ran more mono-sphere Spirit decks or used less expensive spirit cards but as is—meh.

 

For my money, the real star of any deck featuring Eleanor is Arwen. She’s just plain great in her own right and the addition of the extra defense gives Eleanor great blocking ability. Plus even if she doesn’t need her ability and no enemies engage you this turn, Sentinel still allows her to block across the table. 

Eleanor is a great defender for mono spirit decks if you add Blood of Numenor and Resourceful to her. She generates more than enough resources to still pay for both card deployment and her card blocking ability. Blood of Numenor lets her spend 1 resource, but if you budget well she'll get +2, +3, +4 defense or more. Throw an Unexpected Courage on her and she can still defend after blocking a card too.

Eleanor is a great defender for mono spirit decks if you add Blood of Numenor and Resourceful to her. She generates more than enough resources to still pay for both card deployment and her card blocking ability. Blood of Numenor lets her spend 1 resource, but if you budget well she'll get +2, +3, +4 defense or more. Throw an Unexpected Courage on her and she can still defend after blocking a card too.

 

Resourceful is a champ but you have to be playing secrecy to make it cost-effective. And if you're playing secrecy you are probably not running other Gondor Heroes that can benefit from some of her Gondor synergy. Plus, while a little buff to her defense is nice you don't want to spent too much buffing her up since she may not be able to defend in a given round because she had to use her ability. 

 

Personally I think I would rather throw a Steward of Gondor and Blood of Numenor on Frodo in a Hobbit Secrecy deck and leave Resourceful to someone else. 

 

She is a great card though. 

The main disadvantage for me is, that Eleanor can't cancel other keywords, just When Revealed effects. And pretty often you got some surge or doom etc in addition.

The main disadvantage for me is, that Eleanor can't cancel other keywords, just When Revealed effects. And pretty often you got some surge or doom etc in addition.

 

She would be fantastic if she could straight-up cancel any treachery but at 7-threat that may be approaching a bit OP.

 

Now if she was, say, a 2/1/3/3 for 9-threat then I think you could buff her power a little bit and still keep her in line with other Heroes in that range but a big benefit for playing her right now is just how little she costs.