Tireless Defenders, aka Bring on the Bad Guys

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JYoder 338

I usually create decks in pairs to play two-handed, but this came to mind for multiplayer, where you defend most attacks. However, I found it's excellent solo, so thought I'd publish it.

The usual goal is to get Watcher of the Bruinen equipped with Raiment of War, buffed by Arwen, creating a 4 4 Sentinel defender who doesn't exhaust, as long as you can discard a card, which isn't hard with this deck.

Backup is Vigilant Dúnadan (with side quest completed to make him not exhaust and Arwen for Sentinel.) His stats aren't quite as good as he can't have Raiment, but it's still 3 3 .

The side quest to aid everyone is Keep Watch, making engaged non-unique enemies -1 , essentially making the Bruinen setup described above a 5 .

How it works: Via Thurindir, get Keep Watch and complete it when feasible. To buy time, use Feint or cheap allies via Hirgon, but Defender of Rammas is no chump blocker. Use Song of Battle on Thurindir to spend his extra resources on , though he can ready Wardens if needed... yet Honour Guards prevent many wounds from occurring, often saving lives.

Lots of card draw for Bruinen discards, with Elven-light ideal, but don't over rely on him. If low on cards, buff Vigilant Dúnadan and/or use your other allies for enemies engaged with you. For larger enemies, Defender of Rammas with Raiment and Arwen works well (6 3 ) for a big attack.

This deck has performed better than expected, without feeling lame, as you block tons of attackers. Very fun with real decisions and not an auto-pilot feel.

My favorite moment was defending against 5 enemies in the range of 3-6 (all knocked down to 2-5 from Keep Watch), and I barely took a scratch (in part thanks to Honour Guards as I took the smallest undefended) after which I healed and attacked. I could only defeat 2, but it didn't matter as next round I defended again and took out 2 more.

Sideboard offers different options as quests change or you desire. I've not tried any, but for quest-heavy scenarios, I'd maybe tweak it to not mainly rely on Arwen and the heroes for a minimum of 10 (though it's 11 with side quest done, and 12 with Éowyn's discard).

5 comments

Sep 20, 2017 wharmy 17

Thank you for sharing! cool idea with watcher of bruinen.

Sep 20, 2017 JYoder 338

Thanks! I'm really pleased with this deck and was eager to share it... but it's not even made a short appearance on the front page over the past 2 days, so I didn't know how anyone would ever see it.

I don't know how it works to get a little time there, so I've been thinking of just deleting it until you commented, so thanks again!

Sep 21, 2017 JYoder 338

Thanks for the kind words!

Sep 21, 2017 Odsidian22 258

This is pretty awesome.

Dec 29, 2019 Watcher in the Water 27

I'm way late to this deck, but it was quite helpful building my own version so thank you! If you do see this, the one suggestion I have is to add Wait no Longer which has been absolutely amazing in my games with this style of deck. You can deal with enemies very easily and one more will usually do nothing to you. Also, I've tended to play The Storm Comes as my main sidequest with 3 keep watches in the deck to be drawn just because it speeds you up a fair amount.