Book Club: You Cannot Pass! 1.0

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Book Club: "You Cannot Pass!"

"It came to the edge of the fire and the light faded as if a cloud had bent over it. Then with a rush it leaped across the fissure. The flames roared up to greet it, and wreathed about it; and a black smoke swirled in the air. Its streaming mane kindled, and blazed behind it. In its right hand was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left it held a whip of many thongs."

I've decided to build a series of decks that encapsulate a specific point in the Lord of the Rings books, so they're essentially broad "theme" decks and the cards within are selected primarily for 'thematic fit' than their 'raw power'. As such these decks probably won't work against every quest, and should probably always be played as part of a two-handed/two player setup, so plan accordingly.

This deck represents the iconic scene where Gandalf faces Durin's Bane on the Bridge of Khazad Dum, as the Fellowship fly from Moria.

Opening Hand:

Gandalf is the star of the deck, so as many of Gandalf's toys in his opening hand the better with a priority order on Wizard Pipe > Gandalf's Staff > Shadowfax with Narya bringing up the rear. We have a lot of high cost, unique allies so we definitely need to bring them into play using Gandalf ability or in worst case Elf-stone. Bilbo Baggins is a great alternative card to mulligan for if he don't get our Wizard Pipe

At The Table:

For the most part this pilots pretty similar to the usual Gandalf fare, we've got A Good Harvest as a back up for when we can't use the wizard's ability to get our off-sphere cards into play. Near-broken nonsense Expert Treasure-hunter and Hidden Cache should take care of our draw and resources, though we have a smattering more draw cards than resource acceleration.

We can have Frodo Baggins take an undefended slap or 2, maybe from a Cave Troll knowing we can have Aragorn reset our threat, though our starting threat is pretty high so we cannot dally in the mines too long.

Inspiring Presence is a card I've wanted to use in a deck for a while but haven't got round to it, so I've included it here to represent Gandalf's final stand upon the bridge.

Sideboard:

I've included a couple of readying effects for our heroes to get some extra action advantage out of our heroes who are all good candidates for doing double-duty in a round.