Thranduil

Unique. +2 direct influence against the Wood-elves faction.

Home site: Thraduil's Hall

First the features. He's an elf. There are many good (and also several bad) cards that can be played on elves only, and he's one of the better elves. The 7/8 is quite nice, almost as good as Elrond (who I think is worth the extra mind point for all his bonuses).

His skills aren't that great, Warrior and Sage are both rather common and Ranger isn't too powerful except for those "region-spanning" resource short-events like Anduin River and White Mountains. But there are three of them, almost as many as a Wizard.

One of his best features is the 3 marshalling points. Sure, several characters give you that many, but only Thranduil (at least, he's the only one I know of) doesn't give you -3 if killed. You can therefore bring him into all sorts of battles, and not worry about him getting killed as much as with other cards.

His +2 influence against the Wood-elves is pretty useful too; they're a +3 faction, so it's basically like getting an extra 3 points for playing him if you use his home site (which is included in all decks that include him). Pretty nice. 6 marshalling points (most of the other ways to get that are rather difficult) for just playing a character and a faction at his home site.

There are, however, several bad parts of this card. The first is the rarity - it's a fixed, only in 1 out of every 5 starters and no boosters. The second is the mind. It's only a -6 by my scale, but that's about as bad as they get. Also, there's other cards that do most of what he does better, like Elrond. Overall, a fairly good card, but mostly belonging in elf decks or faction-heavy ones, or as a backup in bigger ones.

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