Seastan's Gloin 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Nightmare Siege of Cair Andros Playthrough: https://youtu.be/2EmcRgqOTrc Ruins of Belegost Playthrough: https://youtu.be/jgMWf73cCBY

Gloin returns! And with a vengeance. This Gloin deck is a "rule them all" solo deck.

Give Gloin everything. Every attachment. Arwen pays for the Unexpected Courage and Elrond pays for the Wardens/Preservations. With Gloin's resources, my preferred order of play is Steward->Narvi->Plate->Brand->Elven Light->Everything.

Narvi's Belt is great here, and is the only reason A Good Harvest is not in the deck. It makes the Citadel Plate easy to pay for, and in the same turn you drop down the plate try to play Gondorian Fire as well. Next turn, you can use it as a Lore icon to give him A Burning Brand. After that, play down 1 or 2 Protector of Lórien and use the belt as a Spirit icon to draw up a ton of cards.

The deck can be slow to get going but thanks to Arwen it's quicker than most. Arwen's resource generation lets you get out Unexpected Courage quickly, and her icon lets you play Blood of Númenor as soon as Gloin has Steward, making him a strong defender with multiple actions and a built in benefit to taking damage.

Protector of Lórien is not just there for the sake of Elven-light. It lets you tune Gloin's defence to the exact amount necessary to take the maximum amount of damage without dying. And there will be no surprises, thanks to A Burning Brand.

The deck can start out questing for 8, which is nothing to sneeze at, but the Ethir Swordmen are there to help, and Gandalf often sneaks in during the quest phase once Gloin has combat figured out.

Once you get set up, you are completely unstoppable. Gloin will have the potential to get to 60+ attack and defense, ignoring shadows, and with 5 exhausts per round. And most of the time you don't even have to use up those exhausts for defending because he can just take the full damage undefended and heal it off right away.

Now, while this deck is meant to be well-rounded, there are certainly some unfavorable quest matchups. It might not do well against early battle quests like Into Ithilien or Carn Dum, but it's fine with late battle quests like Cair Andros. It will also struggle with the quests that punish 30+ starting threat, like Journey Along the Anduin or Morgul Vale, and quests with built in time limits like Return to Mirkwood or Raid on the Grey Havens.

It could be tweaked for multiplayer, most notably by including 3x Song of Mocking.