Deck Tech: A Beautiful Monstrosity 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey everyone,

Chris here with another new deck, building off the past few Arwen Undómiel and Erestor pairings. This time, Théodred rounds out our hero lineup so we can spend all the resources!

But we're not going to fill the deck up with attachments for him, or any specific synergies. We're doubling down, literally, on the Lords of the Eldar plan.

Strategy:

In order to loop Lords of the Eldar twice, we need a few things. Six spirit resources, Erestor's card draw, and a way to discard two cards each round. So this section is going to talk a lot about how we accomplish that.

To start with, resources. Steward of Gondor on Arwen (or Erestor) gets us two extra each round, and really helps us play all the cards we draw. And the deck has three A Good Harvest and two Envoy of Pelargir to help us play it round one, if we draw it. Arwen is generally the safer target, so that's what I've done in the videos, but Erestor will be getting a Song of Travel eventually, so he can be a good choice.

With Steward, that's 3 spirit resources each round from Arwen. Plus one extra (and one of our discards) if she uses her ability to target herself. Théodred's questing resource is number 5. And we need one Song of Travel to get to 6. There are only two copies in the deck, so you need to be aggressive about playing it.

Our second discard will come from Protector of Lórien on Erestor, since he'll be our tank occasionally, thanks to Protector and A Burning Brand. And again, with only two copies of Protector of Lorien in the deck, you want to play it as soon as you can.

The rest of the deck looks a lot like some of the other Noldor themed decks. Generally good allies, like Elven Jeweler and Eregion Survivor, which will get boosted by Lords of the Eldar.

But we've got some jank in here, too. Two copies of Over Hill and Under Hill Gandalf provide great stats that we can use in multiple phases. And we have two copies of Elf-friend to let him get boosted stats, too! Treebeard works pretty similarly, so if you have one of them out before you draw Elf-friend, they're definitely the right choice.

Final Thoughts:

This is a deck for someone who wants to cackle like a madman while playing LOTR. Getting Steward of Gondor early and being able to play everything as soon as you draw it is very easy. And it feels a little like cheating to get this many resources, that many cards, and throw down very powerful allies with it.

And if you can keep your Noldor army intact until you get to cycle Lords of the Eldar, it's just glorious.

Unfortunately, for all that I really want Gandalf or Treebeard with Elf-friend, it hasn't happened for me yet! It's incredibly easy to draw the big allies at the wrong time and not get much value out of them.

This is definitely a comfort deck for me. It's got my favorite hero (Theodred) and the ally base is very strong. Erestor also makes a lot of decisions easy after the first turn.

The first video is up today, and features my revenge against Journey Along the Anduin! Check it out on youtube here, or just look for my other decks here on ringsdb.

Thanks for watching!