A Wizard "Draws" Cards Precisely When He Means To 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Gameplay Notes:

This deck is designed around utilizing Gandalf's ability to maximum effect by repeatedly playing zero cost events from the top of your deck. This effectively draws you one card every time you do so, thereby reducing your effective deck size allowing you to quickly find the cards you need and build your board state.

The deck is effective in multiplayer or solo play, and is built to be all-rounded, capable of handling combat, questing, locations, treacheries, shadow cards, direct damage, exhaustion, and even nightmare difficulty. Just be careful to not get caught by treacheries that threaten Ethir Swordsman.

Steward of Gondor is put on Glorfindel and, generally, it is best to save Gaining Strength and Wealth of Gondor for him due to the high total cost of cards in this deck, though that shouldn't stop you from cycling those events from the top of your deck with Gandalf's ability when given the opportunity when Denethor is your only legal target.

Armored Destrier is meant to be played on Gandalf once eligible (see Shadowfax or Narya), along with all the other readying effects, though it can be played on Denethor in a pinch if he is your only legal target and you desperately need defense or, maybe more importantly, if you want all of your heroes to ride horses off into the sunset together!

Even though this deck is limited to only having one copy of Wizard Pipe in play, the deck effectively has five copies (see Bilbo Baggins) due to its importance. Once per round, it allows you to manipulate the top of your deck so that when an ally or attachment ends up on top of your deck outside the planning phase, you can simply swap it with an event from your hand and play the event with Gandalf's ability.

This is a small note, but when you have two cards left in your deck and you know the bottom one is Warden of Healing or Asfaloth, make sure you don't draw a card before your next resource phase because Wizard Pipe won't allow you to swap them from your hand to the top of your deck when your deck is empty.

Deckbuilding Notes:

A third copy of Bilbo Baggins would be fine if you don't like having cards stuck in your hand at all. It allows him to double as a chump blocker and thin your deck even more, but I found two copies to feel about right.

You can include Expert Treasure-hunter in the main deck if you'd like since you're already playing 3x Hidden Cache and they have amazing synergy alongside Gandalf. The reason it's not included here in the main deck is because I found it generally to be too slow to get into play since your only method of playing it is utilizing Gandalf's ability. If you're playing multiplayer and other players have access to sufficient healing, I'd immediately cut both copies of Warden of Healing from this deck and play both copies of Expert Treasure-hunter in place of it.

Elfhelm can be substituted for one copy of Northern Tracker if the quest does not require significant location control or if threat is a more concerning factor for a particular scenario.

Sailor of Lune, in conjunction with Narya is amazing in quests where enemies regularly make attacks during the quest phase.

While it isn't necessary, Steward of Orthanc is quite useful in this deck when playing solo, but I wouldn't opt to include it in multiplayer due to the doomed affecting all players.

When you know you will be playing a scenario where Asfaloth won't be particularly helpful, this would be my first cut. It's just really good in a large number of scenarios that I included it in the main deck for those that don't want to deal with any sideboards.

If you're playing solo (or somebody is using Dáin Ironfoot), I'd include Bofur as the flexibility it allows in solo cannot be overstated.