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bobtheorc

Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 4:25 pm

Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 1218 Location: Wow, its hot in Iowa

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This is an article that gives an overview of all eight alternate Ring-bearers. It also gives a brief interpretation of what each Ring-bearer’s strengths and weaknesses are.
--- end description ---

AN OVERVIEW OF ALTERNATE RING-BEARERS

Since the release of the Reflections set, alternate ring-bearers have become very popular and with good reason. It used to be that you would have to include in your deck Hobbit Swords and Hobbit support events to keep your rather weak Frodo from being killed or overwhelmed. These
Shire

cards took up space that could have been devoted to the main Free Peoples culture. But with alternate ring-bearers you no longer have to make room for those pesky Hobbit cards. If, for example, you want to make a Gondor deck you can use Isildur, Bearer of Heirlooms or Boromir, Bearer of Council as your ring-bearer and not have to have any Shire

cards taking up space in you deck. All of the Gondor

weapons and events in the deck can be used with Boromir or Isildur, which makes it a lot easier to have weapons and skirmish events for the ring-bearer during the crucial site nine turn.

In this article I will cover all eight alternate ring-bearers that have been made. Next I will list the ring-bearers title followed by strength, vitality and resistance. I will then have that ring-bearers text and special abilities. After this I will give a my interpretation of what that ring bearers strengths and weaknesses are, and, for some of them, what ring will generally work best for that ring bearer.

Isildur, Bearer of Heirlooms
Strength 7
Vitality 3
Resistance 6
While Isildur is the ring-bearer, at the start of each skirmish involving him, add 2 burdens or exert 3 companions. While Isildur bears the One Ring or an artifact, each Gondor

knight is strength +1
Isildur is perhaps one of the best alternate ring-bearers. He is strong, not easily overwhelmed and he gives a +1 strength bonus to all knights which can be very useful.
Also, his assignment text allows you to place the exertions on other Gondor companions instead of Isildur. I would recommend using the +2 resistance ring, The One Ring, The Ring of Rings . Isildur generally should not need a strength plus ring like the One Ring, Such a Weight to Carry since knight and Gondor decks tend to have lots of fortifications and skirmish pumps, so the extra resistance of that ring can be helpful especially if you cannot exert 3 other companions to assign him.

Boromir, Bearer of Council
Strength 7
Vitality 3
Resistance 6
While Boromir is the ring-bearer, at the start of each skirmish involving him, add 3 burdens or wound him twice. Each time Boromir wins a skirmish discard each minion he is skirmishing.
Boromir is another strong ring-bearer especially with a Noble Leaders deck. If you use him you can have a very strong starting fellowship with Aragorn, Strider, Faramir, Captain of Gondor or Faramir, Prince of Ithilien , and Denethor, Steward of the City. For Boromir, Bearer of Council use the One Ring, Answer to all Riddles. The +2 vitality is very useful since to assign Boromir you need to wound him twice or add three burdens.

Gimli, Bearer of Grudges
Strength 6
Vitality 3
Resistance 4
While Gimli is the ring-bearer, at the start of each skirmish involving him, add 2 burdens or 2 threats. While Gimli is damage +X, he is resistence +X.
Gimli, Bearer of Grudges is definitely one of the best alternate ring-bearers. Starting him with Durin III, Dwarven Lord, and Linnar is the foundation of Dwarven decks these days. Although he only has 4 resistence to start out, he is resistance +X while he is damage +X. Thus if you give him the Ring of Fury which gives a damage +2 bonus that will combine with his starting damage +1 bonus to make him resistance +3. It is very easy to boost his resistance because of this. When it comes to a ring, I think the One Ring, Such a Weight to Carry is what I would probably use but it really doesn’t matter all that much since he should have plenty of strength and resistance .

Smeagol, Bearer of Great Secrets
Strength 3
Vitality 4
Resistance 7
Ring-Bound To play, add a burden. Each time the fellowship moves, place an unbound companion in the dead pile. REGROUP If Smeagol is the ring-bearer add 2 burdens to discard each minion.
At first glance Smeagol, Bearer of Great Secrets is one of the worst ring-bearers. After all each time you move with him you have to place an unbound companion in the dead pile. But either solo or with ring-bound companions like Sam, Frodo, and Bilbo, he can be used to great effect. With cards like Don’t Look at Them and Where Shall We Go wounding minions skirmishing Smeagol and great pathfinding cards he can be a very useful ring-bearer. When it comes to a ring for him I don’t know if any of them really help him more than any other.

Galadriel, Bearer of Wisdom
Strength 3
Vitality 3
Resistance 3
While Galadriel bears an Artifact or The One Ring, She Is resistance +1 for each Elven

companion you can spot
Galadriel, Bearer of Wisdom disadvantage is that she has low strength and the lowest starting resistence of any alternate ring bearer. However, since she is resistence +1 for each elf you can spot, it is easy to boost her resistance. She makes it a lot easier to spot elves to play cards like Gil-Galad, Elven High King, Cirdan, The Shipwright or Naith Warband. And she also gives you another elf that can exert to make toil[elven] cards like Elven Marksmanship cheaper. Since she has low strength, I recommend using The One Ring, Such a Weight to Carry to give her some much needed strength.

Bilbo, Bearer of Things Burgled
Strength 3
Vitality 4
Resistance 8
Each time the Fellowship moves, if the twilight pool has 2 or fewer twilight tokens add 2 burdens or 3 twilight. REGROUP: add a burden to play a Shire

tale.
Bilbo, Bearer of Things Burgled is likely the worst alternate ring-bearer. He has the same strength of Frodo and Sam and his resistance is less than Frodo’s, and Sam’s resistance can be higher quite easily. His ability to play a Shire

tale is okay, but it is not much better than the majority of Frodo’s abilities, and is worse than Sam’s or even Smeagol’s regroup ability.
I don’t think it matters much what ring you use with him.

Sam, Bearer of Great Need
Strength 3
Vitality 4
Resistance 5
Sam is resistance +1 for each Hobbit you can spot. REGROUP: Exert Sam and Transfer a follower he is bearing to your support area to discard a minion from play.
Sam is a very good replacement for Frodo in any hobbit deck.
Because he is resistance +1 for each hobbit, you can spot Shire

companions and Shire

allies to boost Sam’s resistance quite high. If you start Sam with Merry, Pippin,
Farmer Maggot, Hobbit of Marshish, and Rosie Cotton, Barmaid, He will have 10 resistance, and because of Rosie Cotton text’s Sam will not be overwhelmed unless his strength is tripled. His Regroup ability is also pretty decent. Hobbits have a hard time gaining Damage, but they do have a lot of followers so Sam’s ability to discard a minion by exerting himself and transferring a follower he is bearing to your support area can be pretty potent. Since Sam should have plenty of resistance, you should probably use The One Ring, Such a Weight to Carry to give Sam a strength boost.

Gandalf, Bearer of Obligation
Strength 7
Vitality 4
Resistance 5
While Gandalf is the ring-bearer each time the fellowship moves, add 3 burdens unless you spot 2 other companions and discard 2 Gandalf

cards from hand.
Gandalf strength and vitality wise is one of the best alternate ring-bearers. Also with him as your ring-bearer you do not need to worry about having to spot Gandalf or a Gandalf

wizard to play a event or condition. However, he also has some of the most destructive text of the alternate ring-bearers. He could feasibly be corrupted by site 3 if you could not spot 2 other companions and discard 2 Gandalf

cards from hand. So Gandalf will generally only work in a ent deck that has a lot of Gandalf

cards because of this text. He can still be used to good advantage, but you should use cards like Watch and Wait, and Glamdring, Foe Hammer to consistently remove burdens from Gandalf, Bearer of Obligation. Gandalf should definitely have The One Ring, The Ring of Rings . He needs all the resistance he can get to avoid getting corrupted.

Thank you for reading my rather long article. I hope it has given you a better understanding of alternate ring-bearers and how they can be used. Please reply about what you thought of my article, and if you voted lower than 4 what could have made this article better.
Thanks again.

Last edited by bobtheorc on Wed Mar 22, 2006 7:07 pm; edited 1 time in total

ingold55

Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:56 pm

Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 1199 Location: Out on the front line

GRRR!

now that is not right! i had about four or five of the ring bearers covered, and i was working on the rest. oh well you covered them better than me. ok, a few things to point out is durin the 111 = III three capital i’s. smeagol is good in galdalf decks, so you can use sent back, with gandalf and radagast. but i love the article! Very Happy

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bobtheorc

Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 7:06 pm

Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 1218 Location: Wow, its hot in Iowa

Thanks,
Sorry I stole your idea. How would smeagol with Sent Back work?
Thanks for the morale boost.fixed the Durin the III thing.
bobtheorc

AdultLink

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 1:05 am

Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 253 Location: Hyrule

Hey! Nice article. Really. It was good. A few notes of mine:
Since you can click on the card to see it, you could have omitted writing down each r-bearer’s stats and text in order to save space (you could have used the space too to write more about each card). Just a thought for more articles in the future. I would have liked it a little better had you expanded a bit more into the strategy for each r-bearer, but you did say it was an ’overview’ so I am pacified! It would have been great had you been able to but I’d say that was the only weakness to the article. I think that is all the comments I have, I did like the article to let you know. Ummm. Since you are a competitor for top article of the month I’m not gonna vote for your article, to try and be professional, because whether I like it or not, I would have a little bit of bias in the back of my mind, lol. So nice, and may the best article win.

Haves/Wants

Guest

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 1:12 am

Joined: Posts: Location:

I like the article. Will go in more depth when I have more time.

bobtheorc

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 1:16 pm

Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 1218 Location: Wow, its hot in Iowa

AdultLink wrote:

It is true that one can view the ring-bearers stats by clicking on the title, but for some people(myself included) who have dial up internet loading a picture can take some time. Also it is a bit easier to keep track of what the author is saying if the text the author is referring to is right in front of you.
Thanks for the advice and for not voting Laughing

bobtheorc

ingold55

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:18 pm

Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 1199 Location: Out on the front line

bobtheorc wrote:

Thanks,
Sorry I stole your idea. How would smeagol with Sent Back work?
Thanks for the morale boost.fixed the Durin the III thing.
bobtheorc

the way it works is you can have several copies of gandalf, and keep playing them until they are all in the dead pile, then you go to radagast, and do the same thing, so you don’t have to worry about placing so many companions in your dead pile. get it? Smile