Rube Goldberg Sneak Attack Machine

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Box of Hats 677

The goal? Sneak Attack Gandalf in every round.

To accomplish this, we will need to empty out our entire deck, play Tome of Atanatar to recycle Sneak Attack, play Sneak Attack, play Second Breakfast on Tome of Atanatar, play the Tome, and then recycle Second Breakfast to get that same Tome in our hand and Breakfast in our deck. This leaves us with two cards in the deck (Sneak Attack and Second Breakfast), so we also need to draw two cards per turn.

Longbeard Sentry can empty our deck for us, throwing out fourteen cards per round. This necessitates a way of playing Tactics cards. We could either use Good Harvest or (as I have chosen) Amarthiul, as the hero fulfills another need: numerous resources.

Running Lore gets us access to card draw, which is important for assembling the pieces, in addition to the necessary second draw once the machine is working. Unfortunately, this also increases our resource cost per round from five to seven.

To reach that seven resources per round, we have employed many of Leadership's tool. First, Song of Kings lets our Lore hero contribute to the tally, putting us at the baseline of three. Steward of Gondor bumps us up to five. Amarthiul with two Forest Snares gets us to six. Theodred gets us to the needed seven. Dunedain Signal and The Day's Rising can net us an eighth to either help us play out some of the cards we've amassed while digging with Beravor or to shoot around with Errand-rider if all we have available is the Sneak Attack plan.

The rest of the deck fills a couple holes. Son of Arnor has some combat order shenanigan potential. Warden of Healing is generally useful, especially if Amarthiul is sentinel-ing around the table. Errand-rider can share resources, particularly before everything gets going. The card draw goes without saying, except that getting Gleowine down allows Beravor to hit other players.

Although the integral Song of Kings and Dunedain Signal are only at two copies, one can interrupt the endless stream of Longbeard Sentry uses to Second Breakfast one back to hand.

Another option would be to drop the Lore hero and run Good Harvest to play both Longbeard Sentry and Gleowine. It only requires Steward of Gondor to make the resource requirement, but loses a huge amount of card draw.

This was first and foremost a hypothetical idea that I fleshed out. I have not yet tested it, although I certainly intend to do so in the near future.

5 comments

Oct 19, 2016 Sechen 130

There's no way to make Beravor contribute to making the Tomes cheaper, but you could put sword-thain on a purple ally to get a discount on your tomes. In that case, you'ld only need 5 resources per turn, and steward plus theodred would more than cover it.

Oct 19, 2016 pokie 85

This is wonderful. I use a similar idea in a fellowship to recycle Out of the Wild. Really fun :].

Oct 19, 2016 Some Sort 3518

I have a similar deck I play that's designed to recur Reinforcements, and the "infinite recursion" loop is simpler and cheaper than you would think. Here's the sequence:

You want to reach the following board state: Reinforcements in hand (along with two allies, preferably), Tome of Atanatar in play, the rest of your deck in the discard.

From there, you (A) Play Reinforcements and drop two allies. (B) Blow up Tome of Atanatar to play one of the Second Breakfasts in your discard. That Second Breakfast pulls the Tome of Atanatar you just blew up back into your hand, and then the Second Breakfast becomes the only card in your deck. (C) Play the Tome of Atanatar again. End the round.

Draw a card, (Second Breakfast). Blow up Tome of Atanatar to play Reinforcements from your discard. Reinforcements is now the only card in your deck. Play Second Breakfast to pull back the Tome of Atanatar and play it again. End the round.

Next round you'll draw Reinforcements and be right back to your starting board state, ready to repeat. The entire sequence costs 6 resources per round if you're using Reinforcements, but would only cost 4 if you were going for Sneak Attack, and does not require any additional sources of card draw.

I still used Beravor in my Reinforcements Deck because she dramatically speeds up the process of getting to your ideal starting board state, although Galdor would work just as well. (Beravor is more party-friendly, as you can use her on your table-mates once your deck is gone.) I also use Theodred for the fourth resource a round, but then use Samwise as my third to give me more Willpower and a lower starting threat. In order to get to my 6-resource threshold, I either need to play a Steward of Gondor, or else I need to Sword-thain a unique Leadership ally, (which only gets me one more resource, but reduces the cost of my Tome of Atanatar by one, getting me to the same place).

(Using Reinforcements also means I need three heroes with leadership resources, which adds the intermediate step of getting a Song of Kings on Beravor or else getting a Sword-thain in place. But as upside, it lets me put Gandalf in play under someone else's control so that they can benefit from his response, and it also lets me bring along other top-tier sneak targets like Ally Elrond, Ally Beorn, Ally Mablung, etc.)

I haven't published, but the unpublished decklist should be visible here: ringsdb.com

Oct 19, 2016 Sechen 130

Man, reinforcements makes this even stronger. If you're doing it with reinforcements, you can sneak in gandalf every turn and not even screw around with tomes and second breakfasts. You just bring in gandalf and a galadhrim weaver, and use the weaver to put a different reinforcements back into your deck. Rinse and repeat.

Oct 19, 2016 Some Sort 3518

@Sechen That path can be tricky, because the Weaver only returns the top card of your discard. Any encounter deck resistance could cause it to fall apart.

If you're willing to devote your second Reinforcements ally, though, you could do Gandalf and an Erebor Hammersmith and use the Hammersmith to recur your Tome of Atanatar, thereby skipping the Second Breakfast step. You'd only have to use him every other round, so you'd be free to bring a more useful second ally half of the time, and it'd be cheaper, too, (since you'd only have to blow up your Tome every other round and you'd save the cost of the Second Breakfast).