Four Rings of Power 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Finally completed my card pool...So I wanted to have just a wee bit of funsies trying to use all the rings of power in the game with insanely powerful allies and shenanigans with three deliriously powerful heroes. It's way more than a wee bit of fun if you get it working.

I wanted to build a deck with a high starting , use all allies, and utilize all three of the named Elven rings: Narya, Nenya, and Vilya. But I also wanted to throw in Magic Ring just for the lulz.

Let me head off the initial criticism at the pass...This deck is kinda high variance in the sense that, if you don't get an early Vilya, then the whole contraption falls apart completely and has absolutely no other mechanism to stabilize the board because it starts at 36 (?!) . Quite frankly, I just think it's hilarious to cram a bunch of high-cost bombs into one deck and see what happens. I also hadn't seen an updated Gandalf-Elrond deck in a while.

The other glaring weakness of the deck, even if you come online within the first few turns is that it's very susceptible to location lock. I guess you could sideboard in some cards, but I just didn't really care when I was building it...My advice is just to hope for the best in solo play. I'm not posting this deck as a general-purpose, beat-all-comers type, anyway.

Side note: the deck has infinite replay value in my experience, as you end up with a different set of allies on the board, at different times, every single time you plop this monstrosity on the table.

Deckbuilding

Like I said above, I just wanted to stuff the deck with 50 crazy cards that seem to be really powerful. I initially had a build with Light of Valinor for even more action advantage with Elrond, but I ultimately cut it for cancellation, as I was consistently getting wrecked by encounter cards that hate on attachments or damage exhausted characters when I hadn't found Ioreth, yet. I also had a build with Light of Valinor for Círdan the Shipwright (as the original bearer of Narya), but Gandalf was just too stupid to pass up, and so the deck necessitated his toys instead of more flexible cards.

Déorwine, Jubayr, and Gandalf's Staff provide the necessary shadow cancellation, and there's plenty of draw, or at least pseudo-draw to find the pieces if you don't get blown up early. I can't stress this fact enough: this deck is very powerful in the right situation, but it's also pretty unreliable.

The rest of the cards should be pretty self-explanatory, as they're just huge allies and all the toys for the heroes. A bit of threat reduction to provide redundancy for Galadriel's ability and a singleton of Word of Command to fetch a missing piece. Steward of Gondor is just amazing and is only there to juice up Elrond to keep playing big allies if you find yourself stuck with a mitt of high-cost allies that can't be metered with Vilya.

Gameplay

Just mulligan for Vilya. That's honestly the biggest decision point in the game -- that and what to put on top of the deck with the Wizard Pipe...Other than that, I've found that Galadriel's ability should be used almost every turn, regardless of whether or not you've found some readying for her. Managing this deck's gain is ultimately the biggest deal in the early game. Prioritize the higher allies in the early game: Súlien, Gildor Inglorion, Firyal. Everyone else is just good, so just keep slamming down awesome cards and turning them sideways.

Hope this is a fun one for yall.