Event Recycling Council of the Wise 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Council of the Wise is easily my least played contract. Prior to this deck I actually had not even completely built one myself, just netdecking a couple of games with it when it was first released before deciding it wasn't really the contract for me.

However, that all changed when Autumn mentioned in the CotR Discord that the new card, Salvaged Supplies, was a pretty fantastic addition to this deck. By waiting to trigger the contract's resource gain until you play Salvaged Supplies at the end of the Refresh phase, you can get two resources, distributed however you like. Effectively turning any cheap ally you found into a copy of Steward of Gondor (that can only be used at the end of the Refresh phase).

With that plan in mind, I thought that it might now be possible to build a version of a CotW deck that wasn't overbloated with mediocre events, but instead tried to capitalize on the five events that you can recycle each round, hopefully playing two or three of them each round to fully utilize the contract, while still having a deck that more-or-less abided by the general 25 allies, 12 attachments, 12 events sort of deckbuilding idea.

Since Noiseless Movement, Courage Awakened, and Swift and Silent all require Secrecy to be able to recycle, it made the most sense to me to go with a fairly classic Hobbit lineup, relying on the contract and Merry to keep us below 20 threat in order to keep recurring those events. In a perfect world Leaf Brooch can go on whichever Hobbit finds their recurring event first, but CotW decks are pretty wildly inconsistent at finding combo pieces unless you really build toward Thurindir or Heed the Dream lineups, so I wouldn't bank on that happening.

Bilbo Baggins potentially fishing out the Spare Pipe or the Galadhrim Minstrel can hopefully help dig for an event, but with 5 valid recursion targets and a smattering of other good events you'd be happy to see + Pippin doing his thing I was able to find myself two of the events with relative ease. In solo play, Noiseless Movement is by far the worst of the bunch, but can still be worth it for the card draw or threat reduction until you can find one of the other events that actually helps you out.

I found that between Fast Hitch, Unexpected Courage, Swift and Silent and Hobbit Pony + Bob I was able to get Merry set up for threat reduction pretty reliably as well. The wheels come off the idea pretty quickly if you get above that 20 threat threshold, so I found that prioritizing the threat reduction on the contract each round was typically my best option.

It would probably be Wise to throw a copy of Resourceful and Steward of Gondor in there just in case the Salvaged Supplies trick doesn't hit, but I figured I'd rather just go all in on the event idea.