Avoiding Combat 2.0

• Versions
• 2.0

Setup/First Round

First order of priority is to get Song of Travel on Ceorl to make the deck self sustaining, this deck is meant to be played with a quest deck so you could get a resource from there if you do not get Song of Travel in on turn one. You also want to get Steward of Gondor in quite early on as gaining resources is quite slow without it. Another card you want to play early is Pillars of the Kings to try and get more enemies engaged with you, it might seem like a waste to bump your threat up this much, but you want to try to get as many enemies engaged with you as possible so it is kind of necessary. Folco Boffin is only here as the wording on Messenger of the King requires you to have at least one other starting hero other than you chosen unique ally, but he also provides round one questing power along with a resource you can use for neutral cards, you want to discard him just after resolving questing on turn one.

General Gameplay

This deck functions on the principal that if you control no heroes to declare as defenders or to take damage from undefended attacks the attacks simply disappear and do not happen. So as you have probably guessed if you give away Ceorl and try to engage every enemy with cards like Westfold Outrider, The Hammer-stroke and Son of Arnor you can let all of the other players avoid combat, but is being able to ignore combat comes with the cost of an extra encounter card worth of staging threat each round, but with Faramir, Followed and Warden of Annúminas you should be questing for more than the threat of the revealed card. To play a card you have too first get Ceorl back in your control then you have to play the cards you want to play then give control of Ceorl back to another player. This system is expensive as is costs an extra two recourses to play your cards making it more efficient to save up your resources play multiple cards in one trip back to your hand. That's pretty much it an easy and simple way to ignore combat.

Other Notes

Evidently this deck does not work against quite a few quests that punish you for keeping enemies engaged or require you to kill lots of enemies to progress, however for all of the other quests this deck can work reasonably well against them. This deck uses a fair few cards from the Dúnedain engage enemies archetype because of the sheer number of enemies you have engaged just makes them totally worth it, Knowledge of the Enemy is one of the best resource building cards and can be huge when played right. Your Guardian of Arnor can defend those enemies that manage to engage the other players whale your Fornost Bowman can deal with those enemies or be used to take out the boss that you are required to defeat. Faramir is one of the other more useful cards allowing for your otherwise useless for questing allies like Westfold Outrider, Son of Arnor and Honour Guard to be useful when you do not need their abilities as well as making the higher ones quest for more. I have not tested this deck a ton as I am not a fan of two handed solo, but it worked just fine in my few tests. Feedback and suggestions are appreciated, Thanks.