Lorefindel Walks to Mordor - Standard Quest Edition

Questlogs using this decklist
Journey Along the Anduin - 1 Player - 2019-07-10
The Three Trials - 1 Player - 2019-07-10
The King's Quest - 1 Player - 2019-07-13
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Onidsen 1102

One does not simply walk into Mordor..." - Boromir, The Fellowship of the Ring

The Saga has been completed. The Ring has been thrown into Mount Doom. Lorefindel has, at long last, finally walked to Mordor. All is well in the world.

Or is it?

Overview

This is a rather janky deck inspired by the Lorefindel Walks to Mordor Saga campaign, but tweaked for general play. The basic idea is to leverage Glorfindel's excellent stats for advantage across the board. In particular, Glorfindel has a large pool of hit points, which seldom get used to their full potential.

Large pools of hit points are often useful for taking an undefended attack early in the game, allowing you to preserve some action advantage and possibly eliminating an early enemy - moving you closer to establishing control over the board state. This deck aims to turn that strategy up to 11, by giving Glorfindel massive hit point boosts to repeatedly take attacks undefended.

Along the way, we'll build up a powerful army of questing allies (mostly Noldor), and a few combat allies to help kill the enemies that Glorfindel is taking hits from.

Strategy

This deck is not particularly reliant on the opening hand - it has enough card draw that you are likely to find what you are looking for quickly enough. That said, the following are very good cards to see in an opening hand: Light of Valinor, Rivendell Minstrel, To the Sea, to the Sea!, Master of the Forge, or Quickbeam. In addition, one of the or Guarded attachments plus Reforged constitute another good opening hand combo that you should keep.

All of the hit point boosting attachments go on Glorfindel, of course, and the various healing attachments are intended for his use as well. The remainder of the deck runs pretty much standard for a Noldor deck - draw a lot of cards, and discard most of them to various effects. To the Sea, to the Sea! is critical, despite only having 1 copy in the deck. The Rivendell Minstrel is included to find that song early - ideally turn 1, so that the deck can start playing down expensive Noldor allies.

This deck also boasts impressively strong card draw. Between Beravor, Elven-light, and Galdor of the Havens, the deck can reliably draw 4 cards or more per round, not even counting the single-shot events. Many of these will get used to pay for the cost of getting expensive allies in to play, or discarded to heal damage on the wounded.

For resource generation, we rely mostly upon Arwen Undómiel and To the Sea, to the Sea!. However, in a pinch, we can use the Necklace of Girion to add extra resources to either Glorfindel or Arwen Undómiel, depending on the board state at the time. After all, extra can easily be converted into cards for the Imladris Caregivers, while extra resources mean that you often have enough to actually use Glorfindel's ability to heal damage.

The last bit of general strategy involves when to play Will of the West. I will often wait until my deck is completely empty, and try to wait until I have all or almost all of the copies of Elrond and Lembas in the discard pile, in order to get the maximum number of uses out of those cards.

Questing: Between Glorfindel and Arwen Undómiel, the deck can quest for 6 on turn 1, which is not a bad setup. Using a Rivendell Minstrel or Quickbeam, it's not too difficult to end up questing for 8. Most of the other allies in the deck offer some sort of questing support, at least when you don't need their combat stats.

You also have Asfaloth for a little bit of location control, along with Elrond's Counsel to boost . Against quests with debilitating Condition attachments, replace all 3 copies of Lembas with Athelas - you will need the full heals that Elrond can offer so much that using his enters-play effect to remove a Condition feels like a waste of a play.

In multiplayer games, you can sideboard in Sailors of Lune - replacing the Guardians of Rivendell - to add more questing power if you find yourself paired with a combat deck that finds it difficult to post good willpower stats.

Combat: Defensively, this deck relies a lot upon Glorfindel's impressive pool of hit points. These are boosted further by use of the Ent Draught, Elven Mail, and Vigilant Guard - the latter two of which will need to be brought into play using Reforged. The deck also includes Guardian of Rivendell, Gildor Inglorion, and Elrond, who are each serviceable defenders if the enemies swarm too much. Elrond is even valuable as a chump blocker against really nasty enemies. He is going to be discarded at the end of the round anyways, so you might as well throw him under the bus.

To deal with damage piling up on Glorfindel, 3 copies of Lembas are also included. This gives needed action advantage to the Lore sphere, and also lets Glorfindel kill off 2 enemies while clearing off the damage from their attacks. Elrond should also be used primarily to clear the damage off of him,

To kill enemies, the powerful combo of Glorfindel and Quickbeam is a very good start. 6 attack will kill most of the average enemies in the game. Against those who need a little more, Glamdring helps, of course. In addition, Galdor of the Havens, Gildor Inglorion, and the Guardians of Rivendell each have 2 attack to lend to the cause.

In multiplayer games, you can just add 1 copy of the Rivendell Bow to the deck. Giving Glorfindel the ranged keyword can be quite useful. If you find yourself paired with a deck that lacks a lot of power, you can replace the Guardians of Rivendell with Mithlond Sea-watchers (and a Song of Battle to get them into play - luckily this can also be fetched from your deck using the Rivendell Minstrel).

This deck tends to take the shadow effects on the chin. However, against quests that have game-ending shadow effects, you can replace A Test of Will with Hasty Stroke to control the combat phase a little better.

That's all, and I hope you have fun with this extremely janky but incredibly interesting deck. The style of play feels completely different from anything I've ever run before. It is incredibly satisfying to watch attacks from extremely powerful enemies just go undefended, with all the damage healed off the next turn. And, between all the 2 allies, you even have enough combat power to take on some boss enemies and live to tell the tale.

7 comments

Jul 14, 2019 Denison 618

Stellar deck. Arguably best use of ally Elrond ever.

Jul 15, 2019 Onidsen 1102

Thanks! I have really enjoyed playing this one - and taking it to Mount Doom was a treat.

I have been rather skeptical of ally Elrond in general, but this deck has sold me on him. He never feels like a wasted card in your hand, because sooner or later, you will need that full heal, and an extra defender is never a bad thing.

Jul 15, 2019 Alonewolf87 1908

Very nice deck, just one question, what do you mean with "Guarded attachments plus Reforged constitute another good opening hand combo"? The Necklace is neutral, so Reforged can't be taken back by it. Or are you referring in general to the fact that since you can put the Guarded attachment into play at any time with an Action thank to Reforged you can avoid having to eat the threat during the quest phase?

Jul 15, 2019 Alonewolf87 1908

Otherwise Mithril Shirt could be another useful Guarded attachment.

Jul 15, 2019 Onidsen 1102

@Alonewolf87I had forgotten that interaction with the Necklace of Girion, but it's still useful for Glamdring. And yeah, I was referring to the idea that you could use Reforged to bring it back after questing but before the travel phase so that you can deal with the extra card right then.

Frankly, the Necklace of Girion has been less-than-useful in many of my games, and I'm thinking that a straight-up swap for Mithril Shirt might be useful.

Jul 15, 2019 The Purple Wizard 1151

This is beautifully creative. Well done, taking a hero off the scrap heap and putting him to work!

I was wondering, reading your description (and as a fan of ally Elrond) if it might not make sense to have Stand and Fight there to recur him. Or is that too expensive since you can't get a discount on that?

Jul 16, 2019 Onidsen 1102

@The Purple WizardI'd probably say it was too expensive. You can get 6 uses if I need to, with Will of the West, and with all the card draw, it's pretty easy to find him if you need him.

The big problem with Stand and Fight is that it uses up resources, which are already at a premium in this deck. If I could cast him from the discard pile with resources, it would totally be worth it.

If you really need more full heals, dropping Lembas and replacing it with Athelas is extremely effective - I used that all the way through the Saga Campaign (helped by the fact that almost every quest has Conditions to remove). Lembas is an inferior healing card for this deck, but the readying makes the deck more versatile in exchange for losing some focus. If you really wanted to commit to that route, you could do the swap and then find other readying for Glorfindel - the easiest and simplest would of course be Unexpected Courage. You could probably just go to 60 cards with that, although replacing the Necklace of Girion wouldn't be a bad idea either.