Gil-galad, HKotN is one of the most powerful companions ever released by Decipher, along with Galadriel, Lady Redeemed and Madril, Defender of Osgiliath. He has two separate abilities, both of which are incredibly potent. He also has high vitality for an elf, which can be further increased by Aiglos; Vilya, Ring of Air or The Tale of Gil-Galad, and this makes him difficult for an opponent to kill.

Despite his erratum, Gil-galad, HKotN’s first ability is quite versatile in that it easily allows you to have a constant stream of skirmish events in your hand, provided you can remove the threats he adds. The best cards for this job are Glorfindel, Eldarin Lord and Into the West. His ability has extra synergy with the Still Needed event, which can return to deck after use, as well as Elladan and Elrohir, who get extra benefit from events. To counter this ability, you can either use The Balrog, Demon of Might, who skips the maneuver phase, or add many threats in the shadow phase to prevent event retrieval (With cards such as Black Land Chieftain; Ulaire Lemenya, Eternally Threatening; Captured by the Ring and Fat One Wants It).

Gil-galad, HKotN’s second ability has a plethora of uses. You can use it to play expensive conditions without having to worry about the twilight generated if you don’t double move, such as Elven Marksmanship, The World Ahead and Take up the Bow. You can play conditions that were discarded by the opponent. You can use it to play conditions that automatically get tokens when played, such as Namarie, Uncertain Future and Agility, so that you can play more conditions. You can also play conditions that self-discard in the regroup phase, allowing you to immediately use them multiple times, and bypass negative effects that they might otherwise have had, examples being Ancient Blade, Leaving Forever and Secluded Homestead. This is difficult for an opponent to counter; they can discard your conditions with tokens to try and starve Gil-galad, HKotN of tokens to use, however Gift of the Evenstar, Blessed Light in particular is nigh impossible to get rid of, because it is an artifact (Grond, Hammer of the Underworld is still effective).

• Corruption (With Songs of the Blessed Realm)
• Condition heavy decks (With Leaving Forever or Namarie)
• Beatdown Decks (Replaying skirmish events with Maneuver ability)

• The Balrog, Demon of Might
• Wounding Decks such as or archery. (Although Hosts of the Last Alliance helps with this)
• Grond, Hammer of the Underworld
• Fierce In Despair (Followers, Skirmish events and Regroup conditions make a lot of twilight)
• Mono-culture hate, such as Ulaire Nertea, Dark Horseman and Relentless Warg (Since Gil-Galad's abilities synergise with all elf decks)
• Early Beatdown (Uruk Blitz etc.), as he is not usually set-up at the first few sites.

• High King loop/Telepathy - http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,8720.0.html