Dinner With The In-Laws

This deck is part of a Christmas holiday themed series called Dinner With The In-Laws. Each deck embodies this theme by having the hero line-up consist of a couple from The Lord of the Rings alongside one of their parents. Because what better way to spend the holidays than a nice dinner with family and friends? With these decks, you can make your holiday season even cosier by enjoying a nice thematic game with your loved ones!

For a full list of the decks that make up this series and the accompanying Fellowship, check out the list below. I hope to post the remaining decks over the course of the next few days once I finish up typing their descriptions. When I do, I will update the list below with the correct links to the published decklists.

• Hobbits Ever After

• Ithilien Christmas Trees

• Dúnedain In Rivendell

• King, Queen & Prince

• Fellowship: Dinner With The In-Laws

• Bonus Deck: Unlikely Friendship

Ithilien Christmas Trees

This deck features the Lord and Lady of Ithilien, Faramir and Éowyn, taking their father (in law) Denethor for a Christmas dinner in the woods of Ithilien. Yes, in this storyline Denethor survived his own folly after realizing the error of his ways. He's been trying to make amends and improve his relationship with Faramir ever since. And what better time for strengthening the family bonds than the holidays?

This union of Gondor and Rohan brings with it a small entourage. After all, what is a Christmas dinner without music and company? Luckily, Gléowine happily provides both. And hey, there's Ioreth too! She's always remained a close friend to our couple after overseeing their healing during the War of the Ring.

But what would you know? Unexpected guests are stirred deep within the woods, curious to know what this merry gathering is all about! It seems the Ents are migrating, and here they stumble upon this unsuspecting family's evening festivities. Soon after this somewhat startling encounter, however, pleasantries are exchanged and the Ents happily join in both the food and drinks. They even bring some Ent Draught for sharing!

Heroes

First off, this is not a deck that tries to make the most out of Faramir's ability. He's here mainly for thematic purposes and for his resource icon. That being said, his stat line alone still makes him a worthwhile addition. While your Ents are still getting ready, he can help you get through the early game by either questing, attacking or defending. And his 5 usually allows you to take an early attack undefended to gain some momentum.

Combined with Éowyn's nuke effect and Denethor's additional 2 resources at Setup, your heroes are all geared towards the early game and should therefore be able to offset the naturally slow start of Ent decks. Given that the deck also starts out at only 25 threat, you might be able to avoid the nastiest enemies early on to buy some time before you get your Derndingle Warriors out. And if you do leave any enemies in the staging area, you incidentally power up Faramir in the process!

Playstyle

The rest of the deck functions much like your familiar Ent deck. We include all the Ent allies save for the unique ones because they are quite difficult to pay for and their effects are relatively underwhelming. Healing is provided here chiefly by Wellinghall Preserver, who should keep all your allies healthy. There's also Ioreth for healing your heroes if they ever need to, or Treebeard / Derndingle Warrior with an Ent Draught attached after they've defended against a particularly tough enemy.

Mulligan for Steward of Gondor, which goes on Faramir. This effectively gives you 4 resources per turn, if Denethor passes his along to Faramir as well. To prevent the deck from running out of steam we include a lot of card draw in the form of:

• Gléowine
• Peace, and Thought
• Daeron's Runes
• Entmoot

Thorongil

The coolest tech card in this deck is by far Thorongil, which can actually go on all three heroes in this deck. The primary target, however, is definitely Faramir who can gain his effect of readying an ally whenever you engage an enemy. This ability has a well-known synergy with the Ents to offset their inherent flaw of entering play exhausted. But even if you haven't just played an Ent that round, something as simple as readying a Wandering Ent that quested earlier also lets you double dip in their impressive all-around stats.

While I would recommend Faramir as the default target, exceptions can be made. In solo, getting Denethor's effect can be invaluable to know precisely what is coming each turn. Early game you might need Denethor for defense, but the deck grows less dependent on him as more Ents join the fight, freeing up his action for scrying. Lastly, Éowyn can be a valuable option in 4-player games where questing is especially difficult, but I would consider her the weakest target out of the three.

Closing remarks

This seemed like a fun and original take on an Ent deck. Yes, I'm aware the thematic justification for this deck is, well, flimsy at best (and that's being generous), but part of the spirit of this deck series is to have fun with the concept of family in the context of Lord of the Rings and I think this deck delivers on that front.

It's also really fun to play, especially the opportunity use Faramir who I normally skip over without a second thought. Despite not being focused around his ability, he really shines in this deck.

I will be posting the rest of the decks that make up this Fellowship over the next few days. Most of them are already done, but I have yet to write out the descriptions and I like to take my time with those. So be sure to keep an eye out for those. I'll update this description with the links to the remaining decks once I've published them!