The Road Darkens - Min-Purchase Campaign 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is a deck built from just Core Set + The Road Darkens cards for Path Less Traveled, an ongoing series on my blog, Darkling Door.

Played Against: The Ring Goes South

Leading the deck

This is a slightly different take on the classic Hobbit deck.

The addition of Fatty Bolger pulls this deck in a more aggressive direction. Fatty is great for clearing early-game questing blockages, albeit at the risk of forcing me to engage things sooner than I might normally like to. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much for Merry to become a killing machine—especially when he’s supported by his retinue of cards like Dagger of Westernesse and Halfling Determination.

Frodo, Sam, or Fatty can be used as a defender once equipped with a Hobbit Cloak. If it doesn’t show up early enough, though, there are a handful of chump blockers in the deck as well, like Snowbourn Scout and Gondorian Spearman.

After a few rounds have passed, Fatty gives me access to threat-reduction cards like The Galadhrim's Greeting and Smoke Rings, buying me a little more time if I need it. It can take a while to afford one of these cards, but there aren’t many cards in the deck anyway, so it’s not too big of a deal to spend a few rounds saving up. I tend to play Steward of Gondor opportunistically in this deck based on the board state, so if I really need threat reduction fast I can give the Title to Fatty.

Ideally, the goal is to win as quickly as possible by taking big risks and hoping for big rewards!

► For more analysis, check out my blog post on this quest.