The Fellowship of THE Fellowship (Mono Leadership) 1.0

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• 1.0

Nine companions. So be it. You shall be the Fellowship of the Ring.

-Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

Intro

Building a Fellowship contract deck using the actual memebers of the Fellowship is something that many have done, I'm sure, but is an idea I've always ended up scrapping due to obvious inefficiencies and non-synergies with the options available. Hero Sam Gamgee, ally Pippin, and ally Boromir all want to have low threat for their abilities, but most of the possible hero compbinations (which include an obligatory 12-Threat Aragorn and 7-threat Frodo hero) result in fairly high threat--certainly too high to use Secrecy tricks reliably. On top of that, if you don't run Gandalf's hero version (which would put you at 33 Threat) Gandalf's only ally versions either leave play or ping your threat. And so on. Nevertheless, I think I've finally found a Fellowship of the Fellowship that I like.

Heroes

This has the obligatory Aragorn and Frodo lineup, with good ol' Sam Gamgee joining the fray. It hurts a bit, because if you're running hero Frodo ally Sam Gamgee is such a darn good ally... but the access can prove a bit of an awkward ask, and hero Sam Gamgee gives you access to Mono-Lore (the only other option would be Gimli, and he's high threat and not terribly ideal in this sort of lineup).

Frodo Baggins - The Ringbearer himself. We knew we needed a Frodo, and as good as Frodo is, I think the version has some real edge here. Frodo starts with The One Ring and fishes Power of Command at Set-Up. This lets him be a respectable 3WP quester, and you should use his ability every round to keep your threat low... remember when I brought up those incompatabilities earlier about the Fellowship's characters? Well, Sam wants to ready via his ability and Aragorn can quest readied thanks to his own ability, so in some sense Frodo's ability here is wasted. But, it can be used on any unique character, not just any hero, so once your allies start arriving Frodo can use it on someone else if Aragorn has enough money to also quest unexhausted.

Sam Gamgee - The friend of friends. Such an incredible statline and ability for a hero. Sam should quest every turn, and can be built into a decent defender (Ancestral Armor, Armored Destrier, Hobbit Cloak, Dúnedain Warning) to eventually cover defensive combat tasks.

Aragorn - Good ol' classic Core Box Aragorn. We know we needed an Aragorn, and the double-all-in approach to access works for this deck. You probably won't use his ability much early game, because you'll be using Frodo's ability instead to keep Aragorn readied after questing. Once your board state is a bit more built, Aragorn may use his ability while Frodo inspires another character.

The Basics

Willpower: This deck can quest for a lot. Out of the gate on the first round, thanks to Power of Command you can quest for 11 WP with a readied Aragorn (and maybe a readied-Sam, depending on enemy threat levels and engagements). [Note: use Power of Command sparingly, as you want to take advantage of the "enemies with higher threat" abilities of 25% of your characters]. But this is just one of several routes for global or semi-global WP buffs present in the deck. There is also Sword that was Broken, the Contract itself, Red Book of Westmarch, and Merry's enter-play effect. This means it's possible to have +3 WP for all characters, +1 more for all Hobbits, +1 more for all allies, which can theoretically ceiling out at something like 57 WP for just nine characers on board. Granted, that's overkill in most any situation, but it's nice to have multiple reliable tools in-deck for spiking WP as needed.

Threat: Threat is a big consideration, since we want to utilize those abilities of Sam, Pippin, and Boromir as able. Frodo helps tremendously here, since he keeps our threat from walking upwards, at least. To walk it backwards, we have Gandalf. While he's a bit of an annoyance to the Contract because he can't stay in play, his repeatable threat-reduction (or card draw... season to taste) is great. To that end, this deck uses Sneak Attack and Tome of Atanatar to exploit Gandalf as much as possible, especially in the early game before Fellowship is online. While I havne't played this deck a ton, I've always managed to finish well below starting Threat thanks to Gandalf. Also note that Fellowship flips immediately, so if you Sneak Gandalf into play during the Combat Phase and he's your 9th, this flips the contract until Gandalf bounces back out of play, which is a trick I utilize frequently with the deck.

Dear Old Bill: Speaking of Gandalf, there may be situations where you want to permanently flip the contract and forgo more Gandalf usage. Enter Bill. As much a legitimate member of the Fellowship as anyone, he can help flip it in the absence of Gandalf (or in the absence of whatever other character is taking the longest to show up). He also offers yet another global buff to your hobbits, in the all-important HP stat.

Tactics for Tactics?: There are three characters present in Boromir, Legolas, and Pippin. There are a couple of ways to get them into play. The Storm Comes, Send for Aid, Roheryn, and Sneak Attack+Sword-thain are the available ways to do it. [Note: it's a real shame that Faramir wasn't Boromir, because he'd be real good in this deck and would offer another +9 WP global buff... and Boromir blaring on his Horn does seem like a more thematic representation of that ability than Faramir... but I digress...]

Final Notes

I really like the theme of this deck. The Ring is present and thematically exactly where it should be, and Power of Command leans nicely into the thematic and mechanical identify of this deck. The deck uses Signals (one of my least favorite cards from a theme standpoint), but it's also got Aragorn the Signal-Master present to read them. While the deck uses Steward of Gondor, it puts it onto Aragorn which is... well close enough, thematically, for me.

That so many cards offer Global Buffs (Power of Command, Fellowship, Sword that was Broken, Red Book, Merry, Bill), Readies (Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Pippin, Gimli, Heir of Mardil), and Low-Threat Rewards (Sam, Pippin, Boromir, Hobbit Cloak) it almost feels like this clunky hodgepodge of cards is actually kind of cohesive in the end.

All of that said, in service of theme this is far from an optimized deck and there are a lot of other ways to build faster, more efficient, or more reliable Fellowship Contract decks, of course.