The Burly Bonds of Swolvanion 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

"I have slipped the burly bonds of Arda and hand-stacked the carrocks of the Anduin with bicep-silvered arms; Eastward I've pressed, and jogged the tumbling gloom of sun-hid Mirkwood, — and on its branches done a hundred reps you have not dreamed of — and from the streets free soloed high in the craggy slopes of the Lonely Mountain."

INTRO

This is a my take on a thematic "Men of Rhovanion" Bond of Friendship deck ("Men" in the sense of humans of the Rhovanion area, which leaves out the otherwise regionally-thematic Erebor Dwarves, Mirkwood Silvan, or even Radagast Eagles). This deck brings together the People of Dale, the Woodmen of Mirkwood, and the Beornings. While I started this mostly as an exercise of putting together a somewhat unusual but still thematic Bonds of Friendship deck, it turns out there's some decent synergy under the BoF umbrella for these three factions. Since you need to go 4-Sphered with BoF, it's nice that Dale covers and well while the gaps of and are nicely patched by the Woodmen and Beornings, respectively. There's also some mechanistic synergies as well, but see below for those.

HEROES

Obviously our thematic goal doesn't leave much choice for heroes, but they're still worth a few words.

Bard son of Brand is close to an auto-include in any Dale deck, though one could probably swap him here with Lanwyn and still have pretty decent results. Bard's ability to help Grimbeorn the Old pay for the Raiment of Wars can be helpful, especially since Grimbeorn will often want to spend his own resources for counterattacking. The true value of Bard is in his Response, which can help get extra mileage out of your attachments as you inevitably lose allies to the Encounter Deck's machinations.

Brand son of Bain is perhaps the biggest auto-include hero of any faction, as you'd never run a Dale deck without him as the core. The card draw and bonus simply can't be beat.

Grimbeorn the Old I went back and forth with running Beorn or Grim here, and settled on the Son for a couple of reasons. He benefits from a lot of the same attachments that you want to have for a Dale deck (e.g. Raiment of War and Hauberk of Mail), and he allows for running the exceptionally good Beorn ally form. But one could certainly experiment with Hero Beorn here instead.

Haldan Well, if you want a hero in this theme, it's gotta be Haldan. Fortunately, he's also really good in synergizing with some other elements of this deck, and he leans heavily into the "Swolvanion" meme, so that's nice.

THE SYNERGY

Well, there's some subtle synergies to tossing these three factions into a deck together. Haldan brings nice utility with Elf-stone, which is great to get Beorn, Giant Bear, or Haleth into play. And speaking of Haleth, she's fantastically helpful in making sure the Dale-folk never run out of gear. In addition to Elf-Stones, there are some more resource-smoothing tools. The Beorning Skin-changers also help get the Giant Bears or Beorn out more efficiently, and the deck is also sporting three 0 Cost attachments to help Grimbeorn save his resources for counterattacking. As noted above, Bard can also help pay for the Raiment of Wars to help keep cash in Grimbeorn's pocket. Obviously, King of Dale also allows you to play all of your Dale allies without spending many resources.

When it comes to loading up your Dale allies, they really benefit from the weapons and armor present in the deck, all of which Grimbeorn can also wield well. Whether you want to load up the Dale allies and let Redwater Sentry cover combat or load up Grimbeorn himself probably depends on the quest at hand. And thanks to Long Lake Trader you don't really need to choose, since he can let the Bear-Son share with the Bardians.

This deck also draws a lot of cards, courtesy Brand's draw and Haldan's draw. In fact, enough draw that I was comfortable jettisoning Daerun's Runes and other card-draw classics from the deck. This nicely shores up Beornings/Tactics' dirth of card draw options.

INTERESTING BITS

Starting in Valour is interesting, because it makes the Knight of Dale a particularly good ally. While Dale decks don't typically have any need or reason to rush into Valour, thus making the Knight a lackluster choice generally, they are far more useful in this deck which starts at 40. There's also the possibility of using the Valour Open the Armory to try to luck into "free" Raiments or Hauberks...but since all of the gear in this deck is so cheap you're probably better off using it's regular action.

Also, thanks to being a Bonds of Friendship deck, you're forced into some neat deckbuilding choices. For instance, Elf-friend becomes a really good choice in this deck to flush out some more attachments for Dale (note that Elf-Friend attaches to any character).

NOTES

This is not an optimized BoF deck, nor is it an optimized Dale deck. But it's certainly a very functional and thematic deck that is a lot of fun to play on the table and usually affords the player quite a few interesting choices during the game of when and where to play your cards. Still, I'm sure there's lots of room to smooth or improve various aspects of this deck, and I'm excited to hear some suggestions.