Smoking Fellowship 2.0 1.0

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• 1.0

This is a slightly revised version of my earlier deck, but I realized that while it's the version I play most often I hadn't published it. So here it is. The main changes from the earlier version are twofold.

First, I have changed a few of the allies—I added in Ioreth (both to speed up the contract and, more, to add some much-needed healing), and took out Gildor Inglorion, to make room for Ioreth, and Bilbo Baggins, since I found I never played him.

Second, I adopted Some Sort's suggestions on the earlier version, and added one each of Map of Earnil and Stand and Fight (removing Reforged to make it still 50 cards, with the dropping of one ally (net)). This enables an infinite loop of replaying an event: use the Map to get the Tomb into your deck while playing an event (usually Elrond's Counsel, but Stand and Fight and Smoke and Think are also options); then next round draw the Tomb, use it to get back the Map, and repeat as needed. You can't do it every round—it costs 3 spirit resources per round & you only get 2—but there isn't any other use for resources after the first few rounds, so you can do it 2/3 of the time, which is plenty. (Folco Boffin's resources, of course, are for Ioreth's healing.)

Here's the description of how to play the deck from the previous version, with a few modifications:

You do need to almost completely turtle for two rounds, although you can take an attack as threat with Frodo Baggins if necessary.

You can practically always draw through the deck by round three. You want to card draw as aggressively as possible. Mulligan for Peace, and Thought; if you don't get it, do all the card draw tricks you can (including Spare Pipe) to find it. Once you draw most of your hand and get five pipes out, you use Smoke and Think five times (using two or three Dwarven Tombs to make that happen) to play down the five major allies in the deck. If you're lucky in your draws, you can get a few allies out on round two (especially Treebeard since he only requires four pipes to play for free with Smoke and Think.)

You should be able, fairly reliably, to flip the contract by round three. You can almost never do it by round two because you don't have the resources. (In theory, if you're really lucky in your draws, you could do it by round two, playing the 2 hobbit pipes for free, using 2 spirit resources to get out the two Spare Pipes and 2 to use the dwarven tombs to recur the Smoke and Thinks and get the five big allies out, then play Ioreth for free; but I've never actually done this. In practice it's by round 3.)

Then, over the next few rounds, you get out Narya, Shadowfax and Gandalf's Staff, and putting the last Spare Pipe on Jubayr (if it's not already spoken for). Then any leftover cards that aren't threat reduction are available readies for Glorfindel.

If an ally has to be discarded, recur Stand and Fight as described above, or just play Glorfindel directly from discard.

Good Meal goes on Folco Boffin, since it's there mostly to play Old Toby (although in a pinch it can play a Peace, and Thought of course), and if you only end up using two for card draw, you can use one to recur a (non-neutral) ally using Stand and Fight.

Have fun!