[Thematic Nightmare] Green and Gold 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is a thematic deck built as part of my Thematic Nightmare series on my blog, Darkling Door.

The theme for this deck is "Mirkwood and Lórien" and it was built to defeat Nightmare Journey Along the Anduin.

Strategy

This deck is built to play the long game. The goal is to get Henamarth Riversong out as early as possible so that I always know what card is coming off the encounter deck. If it's an enemy with a low engagement cost, I play down a defensive ally like Defender of the Naith or Silvan Tracker, or if I'm worried about how long it will take to kill it I play down Ranger Spikes. If it's a location, I save a resource for either Secret Paths or Strider's Path so that I don't fail the quest, and if it's Gladden Marshlands or The Brown Lands I spam Needful to Know as much as I can afford. (2 resources to reduce my threat by 9? Yes please!)

Many cards in this quest have Surge. When I see a Surge card sitting on top of the encounter deck, I usually just have to assume the next card is going to be an enemy since they're more common and most likely to wreck my day. That usually works out, but obviously the deck can't keep on top of things nearly as well if it doesn't know exactly what it has to deal with.

I also have to be careful about when I exhaust Henamarth, since she's such a vital card for this deck to function as intended. If I have another copy in hand, I can be a little more carefree about using her ability whenever I want, but most of the time I skip using her on the round she enters play out of fear that she might foresee her own death at the hands of the Necromancer's Reach. Instead, I use her ability after shadow cards have been dealt but before characters ready during the refresh phase.

The key insight I came across while building this deck was realizing that some cards that are normally too expensive to play outright are actually worthwhile when playing a stalling deck like this one. Lore doesn't have much in the way of threat reduction, and it has next to nothing when it comes to resource generation. To fix these problems, I included Gandalf for threat reduction and Resourceful and Sword-thain for resource production.

Gandalf's 5 cost for 5 threat reduction is usually too expensive to justify all on its own, but I'm essentially trading 2 rounds' worth of resources for an extra 5 rounds before I have to engage the Hill Troll. Put another way, I effectively gain 3 rounds' worth of resources by playing Gandalf, which is often enough to make the difference between being ready and not being ready.

Similarly, the 4 cost for Resourceful and Sword-thain is rarely worth paying for the extra 1 resource per turn alone. I don't see a return on my investment until the start of the fifth turn after I played the card, essentially trading early game tempo for late game tempo. But in this deck, I always know what's coming off of the encounter deck, so I can coordinate the tempo hit to happen on a round that I'm getting an easy encounter reveal. The game almost always lasts well over 15 rounds so I'm usually getting my money's worth by the time that the encounter deck starts demanding more from me in the form of Hill Trolls and extra encounter card reveals.

For more analysis, check out my blog post on this deck.