There has been a natural tendency to find one’s best deck. Whilst before, Vilya decks have been a go-to when searching a deck that can consistently compete with various challenges of the game’s quests, lately it seems the trend have shifted clearly toward a Bond of Friendship kind of built. Among the contracts, which were a great addition to the game in its final production stage, Fellowship is the personal favorite but the Friendship has in general more to offer.
Not spending much time here, when I do want to (from unidentified reasons) submit a deck, I look if the hero line-up had been submitted before. It is satisfying not to find such hero combination among the thousands of submission. This is not such case, there have already been a few but very different ans far as the actual deck is concerned. There are not so many great options. Gildor Inglorion or Denethor usually take the Leadership slot, Beravor Lore, though my preference is Erestor, Beregond or Éowyn for Tactics (Boromir’s the favorite but harder to built around) and Glorfindel is the unchallenged Spirit star.
Shying away from the Villa (and Elrond) decks in recent years, it feels fresh to play it in a deck that is not focused on it. Elrond is great here for resource smoothing. But as always, getting Steward of Gondor or Vilya in the opening hand wins most of the games when played correctly.
For seasoned players, most of the cards in the deck are self explanatory. Oath of Eorl is the one very rarely seen used, and one that has a very satisfying effect. Whenever there is an endgame to a quest dealing with a surge of enemies, this is the card to have. In a similar fashion, Son of Arnor, a core set card but certainly not a staple, feels still fresh after all these years, entering play in the combat phase via Vilya or Sneak Attack and pulling in a doomed enemy.