Vigilant Dunadan

Two defense and three hitpoints is not enough to do anything meaningful defense wise. This ally will fall in battle very quickly against 99% of the quests released to date. Without some sort of boost from say Arwen ally or another strategy such as the side quest Keep Watch to reduce all enemy's attack value by 1 this ally does not seem worth it at all to me. Would have preferred a different ability on a 4 cost tactics Dunedain to be honest. I feel like instead he should have been able to attack without exhausting so long as a side quest is in the victory display.

Two defense and three hitpoints is not enough to do anything meaningful defense wise. This ally will fall in battle very quickly against 99% of the quests released to date. Without some sort of boost from say Arwen ally or another strategy such as the side quest Keep Watch to reduce all enemy's attack value by 1 this ally does not seem worth it at all to me. Would have preferred a different ability on a 4 cost tactics Dunedain to be honest. I feel like instead he should have been able to attack without exhausting so long as a side quest is in the victory display.

I'm confused. Of course he is not standalone, inherent as it's an conditional ability. Taking your example, so Keep Watch as the obvious one to trigger his ability, then he is just great. Pair him with Arwen, as you said, and he will deal with >90% of available enemies (as a sentinel!) without getting into trouble.

There are plenty of quests where one small niggling enemy can get through and thus land damage + undefended shadow on a Hero. Sure, he isn't going to be stopping any hill trolls, but that's not what he's for. Being able to block that 2-3 attack swing from the naff enemy that would else go undefended, and then still hit back for 3 is plenty good.

Additionally, if you're running an Amarthiul/Halbarad/Heir strat, then you want 2+ little enemies to remain engaged with you (and Heir can make him cheap too). This guy can be earmarked to defend multiples weenies, without compromising your questing or attacking output. And finally, you can of course use other cards with him to impact the defence output, at which point he can start tanking multiple medium-sized enemies, which is worth that additional investment imho.

I think he's really solid in the right deck.

He's also an awesome target for Tale of Tinuviel. Send him questing or exhaust him via some other method. Tale of Tinuviel him to allow him to mega-defend everything engaged with you, then take a huge swing back at one of them.

Just wish he had the warrior trait!

Just wish he had the warrior trait!

Are there any ways to give resource icons to allies? Because being able to make him green and thus a valid target for A Burning Brand would also be pretty sweet.

Unfortunately not.  Currently there are only two ways to give an Ally an icon - and neither work here.   Sword-thain on any Unique Ally, or Narya on Ally Gandalf.  

I wanted to like that last comment, but while you included Narya, you completely left out the equally irrelevant Vilya and Nenya.

I wanted to like that last comment, but while you included Narya, you completely left out the equally irrelevant Vilya and Nenya.

Well Narya on Gandalf is irrelevant - in regards to giving a resource icon - since it can't be used unless you also add Sword-thain, so the same could be said for Nenya and Vilya.   I never play the ally versions of Galadriel or Elrond, so I completely forgot about their rings being able to go on them, otherwise I would have considered it.

What's so irrelevant about playing Narya on OH&UH Gandalf? He can stay in play for a while, potentially many turns if you have enough threat reduction.

Vilya and Nenya are truly irrelevant since after you play them on their respective Ally versions, they eventually leave play.

It's irrelevant in the discussed case: they add ressource icons, but not to the Vigilant Dunadan