If you like to do some bookkeeping this card can actually work to great effect in high player counts for one specific kind of deck.

The deck: The deck in which Keeping Count works involves Aragorn, Merry and (in most cases) Pippin. This deck usually attaches 3 Fast Hitches and 2 Rohan Warhorses to Merry. This would allow Merry to attack 5x when setup and Aragorn 6x. Having at least multiple attacking actions with Aragorn is necessary to quickly setup Keeping Count.

Setting up the first copy in round 1: The first copy should go on Aragorn. Since Aragorn can possibly kill 3+ enemies from the first round on. The second copy goes onto Merry the following round. Assuming you're able to get all the readying on Merry, Aragorn will stack 3 resources on his copy of Keeping Count and Merry's copy of Keeping Count will grant at least +3 .

Setting up the second copy in round 2+: From then on Merry attack will increase by one every round, because Aragorn will have 1 extra attacking action compared to Merry. So if you kill 3 extra enemies, the counts will be 2 on Merry's Keeping Count and 6 on Aragorn's copy, which results in +4 . Kill 3 more the next round and the counts continue to 4 for Merry and 9 for Aragorn. So Merry gets +5 .

In case you leave multiple rounds between playing the first copy and the second one, it's not unlikely Aragorn's Keeping Count is already at 10 resources. In case you also find the third copy of Keeping Count, an attack boost of 20+ isn't out of the realm of possibilities.

Can you get this setup reliably? To get the maximal effect of Keeping Count you need quite a number of cards: 3x Fast Hitch, 2x Rohan Warhorse and 2x Keeping Count. This might sound like a lot but isn't as hard as you might think. Pippin is drawing you a card for basically every engagement. So Pippin assisted by Take No Notice, Daeron's Runes, Drinking Song and possibly Deep Knowledge and Foe-hammer gives you very good chances of finding at least 2 copies of Keeping Count and at least 2 copies of the readying attachment for Merry which is sufficient.

Conclusion: That all said. The card is not good outside of this deck. The card might work efficiently if you can quickly pull off Hour of Wrath or set-up Elladan properly but both are not easy nor likely. So in most cases it is like they said before: "A pretty bad card with a high fun/meme level"

An example: One deck where the card is ran efficiently: [DB11] Aragorn, Again a Machine

Another thing which seems to be the case with this card: multiple copies can be placed on a single location.

This is interesting and different from many other location attachments, potentially providing for a strong sudden draw, should you find a couple of copies in your hand and some spare Spirit resources!

So unless I am missing something this hero allows you to play a eagle ally from your hand at no cost every quest phase and choose between doing some direct damage or boosting quest power?

It doesn't look like this action even exhausts the hero. How is this card not broken lol. OP

The Herbmaster is good in decks that don't have much access to healing. heroes that benefit include Fastred, Galadriel, Merry, Beregond, and Nori (and Dwalin, I guess). In particular, Fastred becomes a 4 5 defender who heals 1 after every defense if you have a Raiment of War on him.

This card seems to suffer from a design flaw. Its basic effect—paying 1 resource and discarding a card to draw just one—results in a net loss, making it inefficient and rarely worth including. It lacks meaningful impact or synergy, which limits its usefulness and suggests it may not have been fully balanced during development.

While it could find a niche in strategies that rely on triggering draw effects or thinning the deck, its overall value remains questionable.

A possible fix for this card could be:

Event. Cost (0) Action: Discard X cards from your hand. Look at the top X cards of any player's deck. Add 1 of those cards to its owner's hand, and return the rest to the top of the deck in any order.

This way, its effect could be better utilized by discarding cards that aren’t needed in hand, enabling synergies in mining-style decks or those focused on discard pile interaction.