Deck Tech: The Quest for the Arkenstone 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey all, welcome to week nine of Deck Tech! Last week we looked at a new Denethor secrecy deck with a ton of toys from the latest pack. You can check that out here!

This week we're building up a dwarf swarm deck for solo play that gets off the ground a little bit faster than everyone's favorite Hall of Fame punching bag, AtaruSlash's Quad Sphere Dwarf Swarm. This deck is also entirely within the dwarf theme, though you could probably improve the ally flow a bit if you included Steward of Gondor.

The main mulligan target is any dwarf that you can play turn 1. Even if you aren't getting good value out of your Erebor Hammersmith, having a "fifth" dwarf on the table is worth it. And with twelve options, you should see one nearly every game.

And, just for fun, Brok Ironfist is actually a key part of the deck's strategy! Bombur defends a lot of attacks, but he isn't particularly resilient. Brok helps to mitigate that by being a free extra dwarf body if you have him in hand when Bombur bites the dust. He's also an option to use when you've generated 20 or more resources from We Are Not Idle and don't really have much to spend them on.

So, let's look at some quests!

Quest 1: The Seventh Level

This is the first quest I tested against to remind myself of just how powerful a free resource and card every round can be. Turn one I played Legacy of Durin and an Erebor Record Keeper to get myself up to the five dwarf threshold. Next round I drew and played King Under the Mountain. And by round six there were no cards in the deck.

The quest isn't hard, though. Lots of low engagement goblins that the dwarves just quest through or stomp on.

Final score: 86. 5 full rounds, 36 threat, no damage, no vp.

Quest 2: Foundations of Stone

Once again we start with an Erebor Record Keeper, but I don't get the Legacy of Durin until turn two this time. Lots of locations in this quest early, and I hit the treachery that removes all of the progress, but it's very non-threatening.

Turn five sees me draw both pieces of the We Are Not Idle + Lure of Moria combo, and I get to play out the combo three times in two rounds. Not as many resources as in the next quest, but at 14 resources for the last one I'll take it.

Turn 6 sees me move from stage 2 to my chosen stage 4, which is the 17 progress stage. Fortunately it doesn't dump a bunch of encounter cards into the staging area, and the swarm is really good at questing once it's set up. Turn 7 nets me more than the 17 progress I need, but Bombur gets shuffled back into my deck thanks to Lost and Alone.

But my deck is empty, so next turn he comes back out fully healed. Sometimes the encounter deck really does want to help. And then I finish the quest with a Sneak Attack Gandalf in the resource phase and a regular Gandalf in the planning phase to drop my threat by 10 for score purposes.

Final score: 91. 7 full rounds, 21 threat, no damage, no vp.

Quest 3: The Dead Marshes

This quest is definitely not a favorite for a deck without any cancels. I had to make extra escape tests in three of the first four rounds, and I didn't pass them. Which leads to more threat and more resource tokens on Gollum.

Fortunately, the dwarves make good progress, and have decent attack power, so I was easily able to deal with all of the encounter cards that came up. Having an empty staging area made my life a lot easier in some ways.

Unfortunately Gollum escaped just before stage 2, and I wasn't able to stall there long enough to keep from resetting. But oh well.

By turn 10 I'd gone all the way through my deck, with 22 dwarves on the table. So I could take any escape test I needed from that point forward.

So I played it out. The final rounds were all pretty fast, since the giant horde of dwarves had no trouble dealing with one encounter card a round, and I snuck in Gandalf as many times as possible to reduce my threat.

Final score: 252. 24 full rounds, 29 threat, 4 damage on heroes, 21 vp.

Play Tips:

This is a pretty straightforward deck, but there are a few cool things you can do.

1. You really want to have five dwarves out by the start of the resource phase on turn two. Mulligans should really only be used if you don't get one of the twelve that work.
2. Longbeard Map-Maker and Narvi's Belt let you turn your We Are Not Idle combo into a huge willpower burst. Or you can just use the resource boost to quest very precisely, giving you a lot of control over exactly how much progress you make each round.
3. Ered Nimrais Prospector is great for recycling Sneak Attack, as long as you wait to play him until after you've used at least one.
4. "swarm"*

Next week: look out for a start on the Noldor theme, with either a discard focused Galadriel deck or a Lords of the Eldar spam-fest.

Blog: coming Thursday, I've got a blog post about common failure points for secrecy decks in solo mode. You can see the blog here, and follow along with your rss reader here.