Trampling Shadows 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

AKA Arnor Heavy Cavalry.

This deck is the first Dunedain deck I've made that I'm really happy with. It was made mostly because I thought Eldahir would combo really well with Armored Destrier. You look at a shadow card of one enemy and, depending on what you see, you can either defend against that enemy or discard that shadow by defending against another enemy. Entangling Nets is another recent card that helps the Dunedain idea of engaging enemies and keeping them around. With these 3 new cards, I decided to revisit the "classic" (classic as in 1 year old) Dunedain + traps combo and I was pretty happy with the results.

The strategy of the deck is pretty simple : engage as many enemies as you can handle while trying to keep at least 2 or 3 around. Amarthiúl is your main defender and your source of resources so pretty much all attachments go on him (well, not the traps ... obviously) . The deck can do some questing but it is better if it's played in multiplayer where someone else can quest while you handle combat.

Opening Hand

Armored Destrier + Amarthiúl is the center piece of this deck, so you really want the horse in your opening hand. Other then that, Steward of Gondor is also always nice to have. Ideally, you also want one of your traps and/or some card draw (Daeron's Runes or Heed the Dream, Sarn Ford Sentry is for latter, when you have several engaged enemies) to get what you need.

Sideboard and Other Deck Quirks

Not much quirkiness for this one. Errand-rider is there to feed Damrod some resources so he can pay for Eldahir's ability while still playing your Lore cards. Elfhelm is in the sideboard because he really helps the Destrier and Amarthiul combo by giving him +1 and +1. So, if you can't convince somebody else to run him, you can always swap Halbarad for Elfhelm, since they have the same stats and all. I feel that losing the 1 extra optional engagement hurts this deck, however.