Deck Tech: Eowyn, Her Eyes Grey as the Sea 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey, welcome to week two of deck tech. In case you missed last week's deck, you can find it here and read the adventures of Secrecy Sam.

This week's deck is basically all about Éowyn, and would actually be all about Éowyn if she could hold more than two restricted attachments. As it is, she'll just have to settle for being Steward of Gondor and Heir of Mardil, while having a sword and a stone.

I started this deck as a solid Rohan mustering deck, with draw power thanks to Elven-light and Théodred. That deck was okay, mostly due to cool combos like Gamling and Háma. But in a solo deck, Éomer wasn't pulling his weight, and swapping in Théoden made the threat a little higher than I wanted.

So, back to the drawing board! This deck is all about questing and spamming Elven-light. You start with Arwen Undómiel and Éowyn so you can discard two a round, and generate the resources to pay for them. This lets you draw into all the combo pieces that turn Éowyn into a questing and combat machine. In a four player game, fully decked out, she can quest like a machine and singlehandedly behead a Hill Troll or one of the Nazgûl.

Once again, I played a handful of quests on OCTGN so we can talk about results and how the combo comes together.

Quest 1: Stone of Erech

This one actually started out pretty easily. Having so much willpower on the table in early rounds (9 with a discard) let me quest into stage three before the objective advanced to Dusk, let alone Midnight. I stalled a little bit in the third phase because the deck doesn't have a lot of strength in Battle questing, but not needing Herugrim for Éowyn to smite the undead definitely helped.

This quest was the only one where I didn't get Elven-light in the first round, but I did have multiple Sneak Attacks to help make up for the lack.

Final score: 87 (6 full rounds, 1 hero damage, 6 victory points, 32 threat)

Quest 2: Celebrimbor's Secret

I started this one out with an awesome combo. Play Envoy of Pelargir with both spirit resources to add an extra resource to Théodred. Then his two resources turn into a Steward of Gondor on Éowyn, and the Elven-light train was off like a rocket. I'd drawn through about half of the deck by turn 6, and assembled the full loadout on Éowyn. I played Gandalf on the last turn, intending to use him for combat. But then I remembered you could discard to add to Éowyn during the combat phase, so Gandalf just got to watch.

Final score: 86 (6 full rounds, 0 damage, 8 points, 34 threat)

Quest 3: The Hills of Emyn Muil

Everyone's favorite quest from days of yore. I hadn't actually played this quest in ages, so it was interesting to see all the locations that are only bad when they're the active location.

This was slow and grindy. It took a lot of turns for enough victory points to enter the staging area for the win. And I almost lost when a shadow effect made Chieftain Ufthak's second attack undefended. Instead Théodred went down and Éowyn buffed herself with a discard and Elrond's Counsel to smite the orc. And I cleared the last Emyn Muil location with Steed of Imladris before staging could reveal another one and keep me lost in the hills forever.

Final score: 112 (10 full rounds, 2 damage on Arwen, 10 from dead Théodred, 22 victory points, 22 threat)

Play Tips

1. Mulligan any hand that doesn't have Elven-light unless it's unbelievably amazing. Three Sneak Attack one Gandalf might be good enough, but it's a gamble.

2. Trust the Elven-light. With Arwen's ability and Théodred's extra resource, you can easily use a single copy to force your draw to be good through sheer volume.

3. Galadhrim Weaver lets you cycle Sneak Attack or Gandalf back into your deck, and probably shouldn't be played outside of that combo.

4. Remember you can boost Éowyn's willpower during combat so she has more attack from Herugrim. Including with Elrond's Counsel. It's not 100% necessary, but it can save you when you go all in on questing and need to kill an enemy with just Éowyn attacking.

Next week

Next week I'm going to stop making decks, I promise. But if you'd like to have one of your decks featured, send me a link! You can leave it in the comments here or find me in the COTR discord server. If/when I share it, you'll get full credit and a link to the original for all the internet status points.