Wizards Quest Deckbuilding Challenge 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

A couple weeks ago I asked the LOTR LCG Players Facebook to give me a couple heroes to build around and the votes came in for Beorn and Lore Glorfindel (which was a coincidence since the alt art hero turned out to be Glorfindel)! These are both worthy heroes in their own right but they don’t work terribly well together since Glorfindel heals and Beorn can’t be healed and they both have high starting threat costs. I first added Spirit Merry as a third hero to mitigate the high threat and give easy access to strong Spirit cards like Light of Valinor and A Test of Will. That was working OK but I eventually switched gears and brought in Elrond as the third hero. Elrond can amplify Glorfindel’s healing ability, give Spirit access and possibly bring cards into play for free in the later game. 37 threat? Bring it on!

I ran the deck as a Valour deck and tried to utilize Fierce Defense and Horn's Cry to get more value out of Beorn but I eventually dropped the Valour cards from this Valour deck to make room for more conventional cards.

I landed on this strange deck which uses Beorn to tank the first couple enemies, then uses Glorfindel’s hitpoints to take most attacks undefended in the late game. I’ve never even thought of this strategy before but once you get Vigilant Guard on Glorfindel he has 7 HP and the Honour Guard can mitigate either 1 or 5 damage if you’re at 40 threat. Assuming you’re healed up you can survive any attack up 11 and dodge many if the shadow effects that target the defending character. It’s very strange but it works. You can heal up fast with the Wardens, Ioreth or Glorfindel’s resource in a pinch.

There are a lot of Spirit cards in here to manage threat and provide action advantage so it really relies on finding Vilya. The deck can flop if you don’t find it fast. It may be worth adding 1-2 Song of Travel just to make it more reliable.

While this deck does rely on Vilya to a certain extent, it’s not a “fat ally” deck and it has a very different feel than your standard Vilya build.

With that massive starting threat you will have to keep the staging area clear at all costs because you can’t afford to get bogged down and swarmed by enemies. If you have a Favor of the Valar out, it’s even worth not questing at all an intentionally threating out so you can keep all your characters up for combat!

This certainly isn’t a great deck but it gave me some new ideas and insights into the game and provided me with some new experiences so I thought I’d share it. Try it at your own risk!

I did win a PVP game of the Wizard’s Quest with this deck but my opponent was gracious enough to refrain from adding the threat-raising encounter cards to the encounter deck and the encounter I happened to have pre-built when we sat down turned out to be a hard counter to his deck style. A shoutout to @samthemangamgee for playing many games with me over several days at Gencon, bringing some great decks to the table and humoring me as I played this deck across from him on Sunday afternoon!