Many moons ago, conventional wisdom was to include Favor of the Valar in every deck. Now, it only makes an occasional appearance. Another example of evolving game strategy.
Favor of the Valar - Resource - Short-event
Unique. Playable during your organization phase. Shuffle your hand and your
discard pile into you play deck (site cards remain in the discard pile). Draw a
new hand of 8 cards. Remove Favor of the Valar from the game.
Favor of the Valar can be really useful if you have a bad hand or if you need some stuff in your discard pile back in your hand. Variations of this card in other games are extremely powerful, I have seen too many decks based on infini-twister in The Other Game: The Broken Combos. However, in METW, Favor of the Valar is often very undesirable. Unless you get a bad hand early on, this card will generally slow down your cycling.
In general, you want to cycle your deck fairly fast. This is because if you have a lead, you must have also cycle the given number of times to call the council. If you take your time, your opponent may get ahead of you and call. There are some reasons why you might not want to cycle your deck. For instance, if you have The Will of Sauron out and you are about to cycle, this card can keep WoS in play for another couple of turns (although your opponent may cycle pretty quick).
Another reason this card doesn't lead itself to broken combos is that it is removed from the game. And since this is unique, you may only directly call upon the good-will of the Valar once in a game. However, if you find yourself in need of this card twice in a game, you may want to rethink your deck idea.
All in all, Favor of the Valar is useful if you end up with a bad hand, but may slow your cycling. The best reason for putting this card in your deck is if you have several cards specific to certain situations.
| Ratings for Favor of the Valar: | |
|---|---|
| Isildur: | 5.5 |
| Frodo: | 8.0 |
| Farmer Maggot: | 9.5 |
| Gandalf: | 7.0 |
| Legolas: | 7.0 |
| Strider: | 9.0 |
| Wormtoungue: | 5.0 |
| Samwise: | 7.0 |
| Average: | 7.0 |
Card names and text copyright 1996 by Iron Crown Enterprises, all rights reserved. This document copyright 1996 by Trevor Stone. Permission given to duplicate so long as no profit is made and the copyright notice is kept in tact, blah, blah, blah.