Harken Now and Hear Us - Jon's Magazine 3 Deck 1.0

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• 1.0

NOTE: I added 10 Spirit allies so the deck would be publishable on RingsDB. They are not part of the deck as played in the video.

What would drive someone to create a deck like this? Did the magazine finally drive me crazy? Not to worry, gentle reader.

For those that haven't yet seen my playthroughs of the LotR magazine by Hachette Partworks, you can check them out on YouTube: https://bit.ly/2W1xlSi

For Issue 3, I constructed my own 20-card deck (per the magazine's limit) from the 50 player cards available to players at that point in their subscription. These 50 cards are an odd mix of 1-, 2-, and 3-ofs. Since I was limited to a 20-card deck, having 1- or 2-of some key cards wasn't as much of a problem as you might think - especially with cards like Pippin and Frodo's Intuition to guarantee drawing my entire deck over the course of a normal length game.

But First, Theme

Issue 3 runs the players through a heavily modified version of Fog on the Barrow-downs, a thoroughly excellent Print-On-Demand quest from FFG. This version is markedly different. The suggested decklist in the magazine has the same hero lineup as mine, except it uses the version of Pippin.

The magazine's precon is surprisingly thematic. There are no allies, except Tom Bombadil via the Encounter deck - though without access you can't play Tom Bombadillo!. Your heroes have to do it all on their own. Unfortunately, it's also not well suited to a quest with this many hard-hitting enemies.

You can hear more about my thoughts on the precon in the video. I played with it in an unpublished take and lost badly.

To create a deck that I thought had a chance of winning, I swapped in the superior Pippin so as to make use of the thematically fun (if mechanically inconsistent) Tom Bombadillo! included in this issue. That also allowed me to add the only healing in the card pool, Lore of Imladris.

I switched out attachments and events to create some action advantage, boosting attack and willpower for the relevant heroes, and generally making a Black Riders-era Hobbit deck. It's not quite a full "Tower of Sam", but he does get loaded up.

Y U NO GANDALF?!

Because in my magazine card pool, I don't have him. As part of our deal with listener AJ, who provided us with the magazines, he kept the special Gandalf card. Rather than pull one out of my regular card pool, I decided to look to a more thematic choice - Tom's other neighbor and old friend, Farmer Maggot.

Would Maggot brave the Old Forest and the Barrow-downs to go check on those young Hobbits? I think he might. And it makes for a very fun couple of moments with Sneak Attack.

Piloting

The magazine has you draw 5 cards in your opening hand, without a mulligan. With the added card you get in turn 1, you see over a quarter of your deck before playing a single card. Your priority should be stat boosts like Hobbit Cloak, Dúnedain Mark, and Celebrían's Stone.

("Celebrían's Stone?!" you say? I addressed that thematic lapse in the video.)

The encounter deck is only 9 cards, 5 of which are enemies. The remaining 4 are nasty treacheries. Thankfully, with Black Riders Frodo Baggins and the One Ring, you can cancel and re-shuffle the worst of them and give yourself time to stall until your and boosts are online.

Engage enemies at your leisure, get the and boosts to Sam Gamgee, and let a boosted Merry sate his bloodlust on the enemies. You'll need timely assists from Maggot, Halfling Determination, or Unexpected Courage on Sam to dispatch an enemy per round, but it is possible.

Control

There's no threat reduction in this deck. The low starting threat and the selection of enemies in the encounter deck (along with Pippin's boost to their engagement cost) means that you won't have to worry about your threat. That is, unless things go so far off the rails that you're losing anyway.

Shadow of the Past was MVP in my video. I used all 3 copies to keep putting Wights back on the top of the deck. That's how bad the treacheries are in this quest. And since you know how much to expect the next turn, use Frodo's Intuition for a rush to clear a stage.

Quick Strike is a core set card I almost never use, but a fully armed and operational Merry can make quick work of an engaged enemy before Sam has to defend.

The Sideboard

We've already discussed Tom Bombadil, but why are those three Dagger of Westernesse in the Sideboard? The magazine requires you to set those aside until the Hobbits make it out of the Barrow. You get to shuffle them into your deck, which, by that point, is probably just those three cards. Strictly speaking, you don't need to put a couple of them on Merry. But it is tremendous fun.

Wrap-Up

You'll have to watch the videos to get my thoughts on the magazine quests. It's an ambitious product, to say the least. As for this deck, its slimmed-down size makes it quite powerful in this scenario. If you'd like to find a regular, "tournament legal" version, both of my co-hosts, Seastan and TheChad have many variations on a similar hero lineup. Or check out TalesftCards classic "Sting Like a Bee" deck.