Quickbeam (Ally)

An Ent for all decks.

Background

Merry and Pippin stayed with Quickbeam while the other Ents discussed going to war against Saruman at the Entmoot. He decided early to attack Saruman as he was a hasty Ent and his trees suffered much at the axes of the Uruk-hai.

Card Theme

The game has a great mechanism to represent how the Ents are not hasty in the game. They enter play exhausted.

They all have good stats, often hero level stats representing how powerful these ancient tree herders are. Entering play exhausted keeps a player from utilizing their stats right away without another card effect to ready them. This results in a tempo hit. Tempo is a game concept I originally learned in Magic the Gathering. Basically it describes the pace a player is on to victory. If you are quickly playing cards that each get you closer to winning then your tempo is fast. Another player can disrupt this tempo by getting rid of or canceling those cards. Ents can help contribute to that pace of the game, but players have to delay getting that benefit for a turn since they’re not immediately available. The encounter deck then might be a card ahead in tempo since the player forgoes using a card to deal with the new treachery, location, or enemy revealed that turn. Then it becomes a question of, if the power of the Ents overtake the encounter deck’s tempo advantage,

Card Synergies and Interactions

Ent Tribal

Ally Action Advantage / Readying

Quickbeam has a good willpower of 2 to quest and an strong attack of 3 for an ally. It can be difficult to decide which to utilize especially if his 2 willpower is always needed to quest then a player is forgoing the use of his best stat. There are fortunately many ways to ready him. As seen earlier, there are a couple Ent speicific options with ally Treebeard if he has 2 resources although often it is better to just ready Treebeard himself. Boom and Trumpted can be an incredible play especially since it will boost his attack to 6. It will be difficult to manage outside quests with Archery considering Quickbeam’s weakest stat is defense.

While he can’t have restricted attachments, there is Valiant Determination, Spare Hood and Cloak, and Cram that can let him both quest and attack. Valiant Determination is the best of these as it will ensure he can do both every turn. Leadership Faramir hero is another way to potentially get the most use of him although it will be dependent on engaging an enemy every turn. Leadership introducted ally readying with Every Vigilant and Grim Resolve in the Core set. Ever Vigliant is a reasonably efficient to get 3 attack on an enemy. Grim Resolve with the global readying is more aimed at turning the tide of a game to make a big quest push and then try to clear the board in combat. The Free Peoples offers a bit more synergy considering Quickbeam is such a strong efficient character that can easily fit into a deck with variety of traits. Even better it will boost his willpower to 3 for that big quest push.

Fellowship

Messenger of the King

Ring Rating

Card Talk uses the highly scientific yet arbitrary scale of 1 ring for the card to rule them all to 10 to be cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came.

I rate Quickbeam at 1 ring. His cost to stats ratio is insane. Then his ability to ready once he comes into play completely offsets the Ent drawback of entering play exhausted to compensate for the higher stats. He has to take a damage, but that’s not a big deal and can even be a synergy. That can help immediately boost a Booming Ent. Otherwise, it only takes one Wellinghall Preserver to offset that cost. Even if he isn’t healed, he still has a 2 respectable hit points. There are a few quests that have effects that scale by damaged characters, but there so few and far between that it is negligible. The only arguments I have against him being a 1 is that he’s not neutral and he’s a terrible Messenger of the King hero. Otherwise, any deck I’m building with Lore that isn’t a trait centric deck or using Forth, the Three Hunters is going to have a minimum of one copy of Quickbeam. Most likely 2 to increase the changes of seeing him and minimize having a dead draw since he’s unique.

• Dave – 3
• Grant – TBR
• Ted – 2
• Matt – 1
• Average – 2

External Links

• Tolkien Gateway
• Hall of Beorn
• Ringsdb

Sample Decks