Gimli. In my opinion one of the best heroes in the game. Let me explain why:

1. Great art. (He looks a bit ragged and battle-hardened, as he should though, being a great warrior).
2. Good all around stats. Already have another defender? No problem, quest with him. He's already 2. With Legolas discard a card to ready Gimli, that's another 1, because of Legolas's ability.
3. Sentinel. He can defend across the board. Beef him up with Ring Mail, Dwarven Shield, Ancestral Armor, Dúnedain Warning, you name it. Also, readying works great with him. Pop an Unexpected Courage on him and , he can defend twice for around 4 across the board.
4. His ability. With Steward of Gondor, Resourceful, or any other resource acceleration he can be a beast. Having a hard time deciding what to do with Thorin Oakenshield's stats, or Glorfindel's? Send them on the quest, have Gimli defend, then pay a resource to ready one of them and kill with them. No doubt that he works well with Legolas, but works great with any other decent attacking heroes.

That is why, in my opinion, he is one of my favorite heroes.

My rating: 9/10

if i had to think of a word to describe gimli+legolas, it would be "okay". they're not bad, but not particularly good at anything either; just "middle of the road"

getting 4 willpower, 4 atk and 2 defense from them sounds great at first, but sam already offers 3 willpower and 2 atk by himself, and if you pair glorfindel with him that's another 3 atk (all of that for a measly 13 threat, instead of the 20 you have to pay for gimli+legolas) then for 2 resources you can play light of valinor + hobbit cloak and end up with more willpower, and a tougher defender, for only 1 less attack (which can easily be covered by an ally - and you can play bill the poney for free with sam on the board)

and that's assuming allies don't exist... for 1 card and 1 resource you could simply play a snowborn scout to chump block, which is much better than tanking a 5-dmg hit with gimli (then you can use one hero to quest and another to attack, and benefit from whatever abilities they have)

so the main benefits of gimli+legolas are the multiplayer keywords, which can be quite helpful in 4-player games, but we're able to do so many crazy combos in multiplayer that these two hardly stand out

gimli can be used to ready other heroes, and you can use his ability with full board knowledge to get the most benefit from it, but there are so many ways to ready heroes in the game that i find him to be a little excessive

I think Gimli is a very solid, if ultimately quite unspectacular hero. His stat-line is fine, though it needs either boosting to make him a long-term defender or readying to use his spread-out stats (and ideally, you run both of course). His ability is good but a little costly, which you can however circumvent very well with the in-sphere resource acceleration of leadership (like Dwarven Shield, The Day's Rising or Steward of Gondor).

His congenial partnership with Legolas is in my opinion still the optimal setting to play him in, with Forth, The Three Hunters! making the pairing even more potent by reducing the cost of their go-to attachments (like Mirkwood Long-knife or the aforementioned Dwarven Shield). So while he can still be a decent source of defense and readying outside of decks also running his best friend or preferred contract, he is then often overshadowed by more efficient or cheaper hero options, especially with Leadership having probably the most stacked hero pool in the game.

Rating: 5.5/10

Decks of mine using Gimli

All my card ratings