The Last Alliance of Sniping Everything (ConOTR) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

I brought and played a good number of decks to Con of the Rings 2021, but this one probably got played more than any of my others. I only got in two games with it, but passed it around to four or five other players over the course of the weekend to let Haldir of Lórien and Rúmil stick arrows in a bunch of enemies.

This deck is very much a multiplayer only deck since it doesn't quest particularly well, and really needs enemies to be engaged with other players. It does really want both The One Ring and Steward of Gondor to function at its peak, which can potentially make for some uniqueness conflicts unfortunately.

The deck is full of cheap and good ranged allies, both Eagles and Silvans. So a good early game would be hopefully finding Steward (to go on Faunith) and/or O Lórien! to help speed up getting allies on the table. The deck can be really flexible with Faunith and Thranduil, allowing for an ally to be played in the Planning, Quest, or Combat phase depending on when you might need the enters play effect. The Tree People and The Eagles Are Coming! are both great targets for the contract, facilitating the card draw to be able to get a good number of ranged characters out. Eagles of the Misty Mountains can be a decent card, but this deck really wants to keep the Vassal of the Windlord and Wilyador out on the table, so don't try to get a big EotMM early.

Once there is a decent bit of ranged on the table, you can pretty much take over the combat phase. Haldir can obviously snipe an enemy himself, and either Strength and Courage or some nice weapons can usually mean you can take out a decent sized enemy. Rúmil can be played from hand thanks to Thranduil (and oftentimes at a discounted cost of just 2 with The Last Alliance and O Lórien!) and take advantage of all of the cheap ranged allies to do another massive burst of direct damage to an enemy engaged with a player. The Elvenking can pull Rumil back (usually the next round so you can quest with him) and ready Haldir so that you can usually kill two enemies before they attack and then have a whole bunch of ranged ready to send across the table for any enemies that managed to stay alive. Hidden Roosts can be targeted with the contract as well as a nice means of threat reduction when you pull Rumil back with Elvenking.

The same basic idea can be made fairly easily without limiting yourself to the contract and allowing for some things like Sneak + Gandalf, Eowyn for more questing, etc, but I tend to just really enjoy trying to build TLA decks, so this was the build that I ultimately settled on. I figured I'd publish it after talking with TritonWreck at the Con again and him reminding me of his fantastic A Flock of Silvans take on this TLA pairing.