LotR TCG Card Strategies - #23

Here Lies Balin, Son of Fundin

...or, "this is as close as Dwarves get to Archery", because that's essentially what it is, two wounds dealt before the Skirmishes. In some ways this is better than archery since you get to choose your targets, and it does double the damage of Legolas Greenleaf or Aragorn's Bow which have similar targeted "exert to wound" effects.

Is it worth the cost? Here Lies Balin will almost certainly kill an Orc. If that orc was still alive, you'd have to face it in a skrimish. If you lose that skirmish, you take a wound, which is what you're left with from playing this card. The advantages here are that you don't need to risk being overwhemled, there's one less Orc to possibly assign to your Ringbearer, and that Orc can't follow you to the next site after winning the skirmish. Against a Moria deck this strategy is even more effective since you can usually get rid of two Orcs at once.

Sauron Orcs all have high Vitality, but this card is still useful even if you don't do enough damage to kill them. Being a Maneuver Phase action it can be used before the Orcs use their "exert to wound" Skirmish abilities. One damage now prevents two damage later. Remember that the Free People's player gets the first action in the Maneuver phase, so this card can also prevent Hate if you can exhaust some Orcs. It's still one damage, but in this case it's on a Dwarf of your choice.

You can exert any Dwarf to pay for Here Lies Balin, that means you can use Dwarf allies to keep wounds off your companions. While this is a Dwarven culture card, it can easily go in any deck that uses Elrond and Grimir. It's not as culture-specific as some other Dwarf cards.

What if the opponent is not playing Orcs? You get to discard a card from hand every time you reconcile, just pitch this for something more useful. As long as you don't have too many card like that in your deck they won't get in your way. If you use the card in multiplayer you should not have this problem at all.