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

Dúnedain in Rivendell

The Dúnedain have always stayed in good standing with the Elves from Rivendell. And for our lovebirds Aragorn and Arwen Undómiel this is of course especially true! Their union has only strengthened the bond between these two already closely allied factions. And what better? And so Elrond has extended his invitation for attending the festivities in his home of Rivendell to all Dúnedain.

And oh, did they accept! The Dúnedain have gathered in great numbers to enjoy the hospitality of Elrond and to catch up with some of their old Elvish friends. Because the Dúnedain are of course not alone in attending. Glorfindel eagerly joins in, as well as various other inhabitants like the Master of the Forge and Imladris Stargazer; even Gildor Inglorion pays a visit!

Playstyle

At its core, this is an Elrond + Vilya deck, but I've tried to give it an original and thematic twist here by combining it with the Dúnedain archetype. As such, we run a lot of Dúnedain allies along with some Noldor sidekicks who will of course also be in attendance. Arwen Undómiel and Aragorn round out the hero line-up and are a perfect match thematically. Arwen Undómiel is of course always a great hero and Aragorn allows this combo deck to forego the otherwise obligatory threat reduction cards and focus more on its core strategy.

The overall strategy with the deck is to get Elrond set up with Vilya and the associated tools (Imladris Stargazer and various readying effects) so you can bring out the big Dúnedain allies. Once Elrond's also set up with some defensive buffs such as A Burning Brand, Cloak of Lórien and Silver Lamp, he should be able to defend most of the attacks from the enemies that you choose to keep engaged with you.

Master of the Forge searches out all of your important attachments, making sure that we even see the many 1-ofs that we run consistently. He also helps make sure that we see our 3-ofs very early on, which is crucial for attachments like Vilya, Unexpected Courage and Forest Snare that really get the deck going. It also helps fetch multiple copies of Elf-stone, which can be used to play high-cost allies that ended up in your hand where they can't be Vilya'd into play.

Single-player or multiplayer?

This deck is fun in both cases, but I think it really shines in multiplayer. Most Vilya decks are chock full of unique allies, which is a hard sell in multiplayer, but that's not the case here! Elrond is of course always a great hero to have in multiplayer for his global healing buff; and this deck provides a lot of healing if necessary. Additionally, since Elrond will be your chief defender once he is properly set up, this leaves your Dúnedain allies like Fornost Bowman and Guardian of Arnor to help out other players through their Ranged and Sentinel keywords, respectively, while they can still benefit from their inherent buffs by you having a lot of enemies engaged with you. And finally, Northern Tracker is always great in multiplayer.

Deckbuilding challenges

There are a couple of inherent weaknesses I think any Dúnedain deck has to overcome. I'll briefly list them below along with a short description of how this deck aims to tackle them.

1. Multi-sphere: Dúnedain allies are spread across all four spheres, so if you want to somehow run a wide variety of them, you're going to have to find a way to gain access to all of them. Solved by:
   • Vilya,
   • Elrond's inherent resource smoothing for allies.
2. High cost: Dúnedain allies are typically very expensive, with most of them costing 3-4 resources. This is especially cumbersome in combination with issue (1). Solved by:
   • Arwen Undómiel's resource acceleration,
   • Elf-stone,
   • Vilya.
3. Keeping enemies engaged: Many Dúnedain effects trigger off of having enemies engaged with you, but defending that many attacks every turn can be quite dangerous because of the randomness of shadow cards and the required action advantage involved. Solved by:
   • Forest Snare (which is easily paid for in this deck, since we can generate 3 resources a turn),
   • Elrond once he gets his defensive and additional readying attachments,
   • Your defensive allies (e.g. Eldahir, Guardian of Arnor and Gildor Inglorion),
   • Aragorn in combination with Lembas and Warden of Healing (this is especially useful in the early game, when Elrond is not set up yet).
4. Early : Many of the Dúnedain heroes and allies lack high , meaning early questing is usually very difficult. Solved by:
   • An original hero line-up that can quest for 8 right away,
   • High allies that help scaling up our throughout the game (e.g. Misty Mountain Journeyman, Sarn Ford Sentry, Gildor Inglorion and Glorfindel).

The deck was built with the idea of blind Vilya in mind. Almost all of the cards are worthwhile Vilya targets, so Imladris Stargazer is not always necessary. Sure, she helps in getting just the right targets, but if you can spare Elrond's action for a turn, definitely go for that blind Vilya. The only truly bad cards to see are probably Elven-light, Forest Snare without any engaged enemies, and Elf-stone without an active location. Even Tale of Tinúviel has some use since you at least get to potentially ready Elrond again.

Sideboard

For additional ways of easily keeping enemies engaged, Entangling Nets is a great choice. Similarly, Leather Boots is a viable, albeit slightly inconsistent, option for even more action advantage.

As for the events, A Test of Will is always amazing but felt less thematic than something like Tale of Tinúviel and it whiffs on a blind Vilya. However, in multiplayer especially, it might just be mandatory for some quests, so always consider that. Finally, Gildor's Counsel and The Galadhrim's Greeting are both expensive but high-impact cards that can easily be Vilya'd into play here, and they even fit thematically.

Closing remarks

Elrond + Vilya decks tend to feel a bit been-there-done-that at this point, but I think this deck gives it an original spin that makes it feel fresh. It's thematic and fun to play, and requires some interesting decision making for defending attacks and when (not) to kill enemies or keep them engaged.

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!