Lord of the Rings LCG - the spheres

So, last week, I talked about Lord of the Rings LCG - the new card game that I'm currently addicted to.  This week, I'm going to talk a little bit about how the spheres (ie deck types) in the game differ from each other.

I'll also be honest and say that, primarily, this is for my benefit so that I have a record of what each sphere is good at in case I ever forget.  :)

One last caveat - I'm still learning the game so the notes below only represent my understanding at this moment in time.  Don't take anything you see below as gospel!

Spirit
The rulebook says that the Spirit sphere is about the strength of a hero's will.  And this is very clearly reflected in the deck makeup itself.

This deck is, by far, the best at questing, which uses willpower.  Eowyn, one of the heroes, has a willpower of 4 - the highest of the heroes in the core set.  Furthermore, her special ability allows you to discard 1 card in order to temporarily boost that willpower even higher when questing.  When it comes to making actual quest progress - this sphere is hands down the best.

Other strengths of the deck include its ability to manage threat and treachery.

Threat is a measure of how dangerous you are perceived to be.  If you have a low threat, you aren't considered dangerous and enemies will tend to leave you be in favour of attacking higher threat targets.  Also, some event cards only trigger if your threat is high enough.  Lastly, if your threat ever reaches 50, you are eliminated from the game.

From this, you can see that threat management is an important part of the game.  By managing your threat, you can control when, and whether, you engage enemies.  The Spirit deck has various cards which can be used to lower your threat and give you more time and options for how to deal with encounter cards.

Lastly, the Spirit deck includes options to let you cancel the effects of a treachery or shadow card when dealt from the encounter deck.  Both of these cards have negative effects and the ability to cancel them can mean the difference between having your hero take damage versus having your hero die.

Lore
Lore is billed in the rulebook as the power of the mind and intellect.

From a mechanics point of view, Lore is really good at card draw.  Thematically, this simulates intelligence by giving you more options.  As with all card games, your options are heavily impacted by the cards you have in your hand.  Card draw abilities give you a better chance of drawing the card you need to deal with the threat that is facing you.

Other strengths of this deck are healing.  There are a lot of cards which can heal damage on your characters.  Particularly critical as the death of a hero means that you will be getting 1 less resource per turn which in turn, impacts your ability to play any cards that you do draw.  Alternatively, the healing ability an help keep your allies alive.  Like all good fantasy stories, allies are critical - particularly as your 3 starting heroes will not be able to defeat the quest on their own.

Tactics
Tactics basically boils down to combat prowess and the ability of your team to hit enemies with swords, axes, bows etc.

From a mechanics point of view, this deck is probably the simplest to understand.  Most of the cards are combat related - either allowing you to do a preemptive strike on enemies, increasing your damage/defence value or pumping up your hit points so that you can take more punishment.

Unfortunately, the nature of the deck also means that its a very poor choice if you are building a mono-sphere deck (at least in the core set).  The problem is that it is very hard to quest using this deck.  As a mono-sphere deck, your questing is almost wholly tied into Legolas ability to kill enemies (which grants quest progress).  If you don't draw enemies or aren't able to kill the enemies you do draw quickly enough - events can quickly spiral out of control with defeat following soon after.

On the other hand, the nature of the deck also means that its a great complement to other decks if you are building a dual-sphere deck.  For example, pairing Tactics with Spirit gives you the questing ability of Spirit together with the martial prowess of Tactics.  Theoretically, this covers all your key bases while playing the game.

Leadership
Leadership is basically what it says on the tin - the ability of your heroes to lead and inspire others.

As you can expect, mechanically, there are a lot of cards which can be used to help other players.  This can be in the form of defending for another player, attacking another players enemies or just helping other players with questing or resource generation.

That last point about resource generation is actually fairly critical.  One of the decks key strengths is the ability to speed up resource generation (for either yourself or another player).  Normally, each hero only gets 1 resource per round.  With 3 heroes, this means that you often need to wait a round or two before you can use any of your high cost cards (which can cost 5 or 6 resources to play).  As you can imagine, speeding up resource generation lets you put your more powerful cards into play quickly which can be critical.  One of the missions in the core set in particular starts you off with a major threat and getting cards into play quickly to deal with that threat can be the difference between success or failure in that quest.

The last key ability of this deck is readying.  There are various cards which let you ready your characters so that they can effectively act twice in each round.  Normally, each character can only act once and that extra action - if used correctly - can make a huge difference by allowing you to continue clearing enemies from the board while still making quest progress or defending from attacks.

In the core set, this is actually one of the most powerful spheres.  You would think that it would only really shine when playing with 2 players (given the number of cards which benefit other players) but in practice, even a mono-sphere Leadership deck did extremely well in the game.