A Potentially Strong Minimum Purchase Deck

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Strategian 55

I’ve long thought that two expansions good for new players are Foundations of Stone and The Steward’s Fear. Admittedly, you can’t play the scenarios without other purchases, but the player cards in these sets really upgrade deck strength for new players with a minimal investment.

To test my theory, I built a deck with only the core set and these two expansions. The deck includes 14 of the 20 player cards from the two expansions, including both heroes. In addition, three more player cards from these expansion sit in the sideboard. Only three cards couldn’t be included at all; they belonged to the off spheres and the deck could not support more off sphere cards than it already has without bogging down.

For the hero lineup, the expansion heroes, Glorfindel and Hirluin, were auto-includes as part of the project. As for the third hero, it could have been almost any of the core set heroes, although tactics would have been the biggest stretch. I settled on Aragorn because I haven’t played him much and Ring of Barahir is in The Steward’s Fear.

With my hero lineup set, I went about filling up my deck. I deliberately used as many player cards from the two expansions as was workable. The Outlands allies were in, as was Imladris Stargazer. The Glorfindel package (Asfaloth plus Light of Valinor) was in. Ring of Barahir and Celebrian’s Stone were included for Aragorn.

Because I was trying to demonstrate the strength of a deck using this combination of sets, the power cards from the core set went in (Unexpected Courage, Steward of Gondor, Sneak Attack & Gandalf). Faramir was a useful core set ally to include.

A Good Harvest was included to help with resource smoothing, primarily to help get Asfaloth out quickly and secondarily for Gondorian Shield. Healing Herbs and Daeron Runes round out the included expansion cards.

The core strategy was threefold: 1) Put Outlands allies on the table 2) Equip Glorfindel with Asfaloth and Light of Valinor 3) Load Aragorn up with the remaining attachments. Aragorn ultimately becomes a trisphere hero (Ring of Barahir & Celebrian’s Stone) with lots of resources (Steward of Gondor) and lots of readying (Unexpected Courage & his printed ability) who can heal (Healing Herbs) and defend (Gondorian Shield) as needed. Rarely do you max him out with all these attachments, but he’s invariably tricked out effectively with some combination of these.

The sideboard includes interesting cards from these two expansions that could be used, but did not make my cut (Longbeard Elder, Gaining Strength, & Path if Need) plus two Spirit staples (A Test of Will & Hasty Stroke). Ancient Mathom, Sword that was Broken, & Roheryn would have been interesting choices, but belonged to expansions excluded from this deck.

The deck beat Passage Through Mirkwood and Journey Along the Anduin, but lost to Journey Up the Anduin. I plan to run it a second time against Journey Up the Anduin. More play testing will be useful.

7 comments

Aug 19, 2018 Goggen 113

If it's going to be minimum purchase you can't really put in 3x Unexpected Courage as the core-set only contains 1 copy.

Healing Herbs is a card I might think twice about. Resource-smoothing does seem like a bit of an issue as it is (even with A Good Harvest as that card has so many other uses allready), and with fewer Unexpected Courage exhausting Aragorn becomes more costly as well.

Other than that it looks like an interesting deck for minimum purchase.

Aug 19, 2018 Goggen 113

Actually, once I think about it, I don't think A Good Harvest can be used to help with Healing Herbs ?

It would allow you to pay for the herbs (presuming they cost 1 or more), but A Good Harvest still won't make Aragorn a legal target given the restriction printed on the card.

Aug 19, 2018 Wandalf the Gizzard 2415

A Good Harvest does not work with zero cost cards, since you are not spending those resources you changed to another sphere.

Aug 19, 2018 Strategian 55

Excellent point about two many Unexpected Courage cards. I need to make similar mods for Steward of Gondor and Sneak Attack. This might be a good discovery, because it opens deck space for cards in the sideboard like A Test of Will.

Healing Herbs comes into play with Ring of Barahir.

Aug 19, 2018 Strategian 55

It’s been a long time since I played with one core set ... I need to modify the card counts for multiple cards to match the core set. I’ll update the deck tonight.

Aug 19, 2018 Wandalf the Gizzard 2415

Oh, that's right! I often forget the second ability on the artifact attachments.

Aug 20, 2018 Strategian 55

To make the deck work with one core set, you swap 5 cards between the deck & sideboard. Drop Unexpected Courage x2, Steward of Gondor x1, Celebrian’s Stone x1 and Sneak Attack x1. Add A Test if Will x2, Hasty Stroke x2, and Longbeard Elder x1. The last add could easily be Gaining Strength or Path if Need instead, but I thought the extra ally would be best.