I also don't see the flavor of turning conditions into tales. There is not much of a tale behind From the Armory, My Axe Is Notched or Stout and Strong for example. Tales are stories from past adventures which inspire the fellowship to be better.
Ah, yes, but when the sole Dwarf in your party is describing the bounty of mithril in their armories of old, telling how Dwarves bested the Hill Giants by being
Stout and Strong, and more to the point, when he tells the Hobbits about what happened in Helm, these ARE tales. Just saying.
As I said before, fetching any tale is out of flavor for what this Gimli should do, specially since the ones he'll fetch the most will end up being
and
. Perhaps we're going at it the wrong way?
I was thinking about Fellowship block, and about the other blocks as well, and what I noticed, specially outside of FotR and using Reflections, is a lack of ways to build
decks. Or, at least, CREATIVE ways to do it, when you factor in those blocks. Also, Farin and
Fror did very little for you, since you never knew which one to start, and never got them in the right order. First, I though about making
Dwarf of Erebor like Farin and
Fror, but geared toward other Shadows. It wouldn't work, at that point he knew nothing of the other Shadows. Also, I know Rare companions tend to have the more powerful effect, but every instance of them (C, U and R) have very different abilities, catering to different decks, so they all might be played depending on the circunstances. Taking this into account, I do think this Gimli should cater to an unnadressed deckbuilding concern. So, what do Gimlis have to offer in Movie?
-Hand unclogging and cycling;
-Choking;
-Strength (permanent - if conditions are met -, one-shot and one-shot to other companions);
-Crowd control (wounding after skirmish);
-Protecting
conditions;
-Damage (with strength).
So, let's think about deckbuilding concerns, Gimli-wise:
-You play a full
deck, meaning the decks play out the same (huge dwarves, move, ignore everything else), or;
-You splash a Dwarf, in which case he's "cute", but does very little, since most splash versions only care about the skirmish phase, meaning he won't forward strategies a lot, being more of a tag-along strength pump.
The two exceptions to those are the condition-protecting one (does he see any play at all? it doesn't seem likely...), and the original
Dwarf of Erebor as a splash for combo decks that only care about cycling and not much about the Fellowship.
With this in mind, I think
Dwarf of Erebor, flavor aside (for now), should in fact cater to the splash variety, but since I'm still trying to grasp flavor by its fingers before it slips, I think it should cater greatly to
decks, as a splash companion. I'll start my brainstorming from here, so, what I have so far, combining what everyone has said:
-Shouldn't be a "build-around-me" card;
-Signet should change to Gandalf (I assume the REGULAR
Dwarf of Erebor will still be played, so, signet is not actually something we need to keep unchanged);
-Should perhaps do something with tales;
-Shouldn't require a boatload of cards to work, or he sucks as a splash companion;
-Shouldn't be SO specific as he ONLY splashes
decks, neither so universal that he splashes EVERY deck.
Considering this all, I've got:
•Gimli, Dwarf of Erebor (V) Companion • Dwarf
Strength: 6
Vitality: 3
Signet: Gandalf
Damage +1At the start of the regroup phase, you may exert Gimli to play a
tale from your draw deck or take a
card into hand from your discard pile.
I know that there are not a lot of
tales anyway (something that should be adressed in the future), and this Gimli both helps
decks, splashes nicely in decks that might play Gandalf (or loose
cards, like
Let Folly Be Our Cloak,
A Wizard is Never Late and
Gandalf's Cart) but end up discarding him, giving you tools for building new decks, as now you have a more reliable way to get Gandalf into play even with fewer copies, if your deck fuels the discard pile a lot. It also plays well in
tale-oriented decks (or that play singletons as silver bullets), as he can find the needed tale, and since discarding tales is not quite that commonplace for Dwarves, playing from the draw deck gives you a wider range of possibilities to actually START playing silver bullets if you didn't already, not to mention fitting in slightly with the whole
cycling theme, since he effectively thins your draw deck every time you pull something from it.
Last, by keeping it to the regroup phase, you somewhat limit the uses he might have, sacrificing hand space for his versatility, which might be a fair trade.