With another month approaching its end, it is time to wrap up this month’s poll. I was interested to see what sphere lineups are the most favourite among players in this community. I listed every possible lineup and gave you three votes for sphere lineups. The results of that poll will be discussed in this article, after which the new poll for June (June already? Man, the time flies by) will be presented.
With everyone getting 3 votes to cast, there are plenty of datapoints to draw some nice conclusions at the end of this poll. A total of 163 votes were cast for this poll! My thanks again to everyone voting for these polls, really appreciate the input. So let’s see what the sphere distribution looks like.
So, with quite a clear lead, we have the supportive Lore-Spirit combo that takes the top spot. Decks of this type tend to quest hard, deal with locations, and provide cancellation of encounter cards and attacks. This is also one of my favourite line-ups, and I currently do run a Lore-Spirit Woodmen deck, with Bard giving access to all spheres for attachments.
Tactics-Lore takes the silver, with 19 votes. This combination is quite fun to bring to a multiplayer game, as it works well with Traps and Direct Damage. The Ent archetype also works best with this line-up. This setup is great to deal with enemies without actually attacking or defending. Outside of those archetypes, the added card draw from Lore can help a Tactics deck to keep going. 2 Lore heroes and 1 Tactics hero can allow the deck to deal more of a punch to enemies, without resorting to tricks.
The combination of Lore and Leadership is a very powerful one, as you can generate resources and draw cards to spend those resources on very quickly. No wonder that it is in third place, as I have had a lot of success with this lineup in the past. Add Erestor and Denethor to one Lore or Leadership hero, and you will have a powerful engine for the first round, in which you can quickly outpace the encounter deck.
Adding Spirit to the Lore-Leadership mix allows for a great questing deck. While you will rely on some staples for combat, you will have no trouble keeping a low threat and a high willpower throughout the game. This is the first tri-sphere setup on the list, with 17 votes in total.
Mono-Lore is the first mono-sphere line-up appearing on the list. This is somewhat surprising to me, as I was sure that mono-Tactics would take this spot. But the ability to play a lot of tricks, such as Traps and Victory Display cards appeals to many players. Lore also has decent stats all around, and won’t need to do combat a lot if they can keep a low threat with cards like Mirlonde, Smeagol, and Hobbits.
The Quad-sphere lineup is difficult to achieve, but certainly not impossible in decks. Dwarves can do this with Oin, and Hobbits can quickly get a Song out to help you get that fourth sphere match. But the fact that you must spread your resources around on 3 (or 4) resource pools is limiting to the costcurve of your deck.
Tri-sphere decks with Leadership-Tactics and either Lore or Spirit were also the least popular. This is likely due to needing resource smoothing to pay for your more expensive cards. Most decks will likely drop the third sphere in favour of enough resources to pay for 2 cost cards every turn. Archetypes in these catagories aren’t very popular either. It has been quite a while since I’ve seen a tri-sphere Dunedain deck for instance.
For June, I am going back to individual cards competing for the top spot in the poll. This time, I have listed all 10 side-quests. Vote for your top 2 favourites, and this time next month, we will discuss the results! Till then!
Vision Of The Palantir 
One thought on “Monthly Poll: May 2019”