Deck Tech: Swords Shining in the South-kingdom 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey everyone,

Chris here with a nice, strong deck that really helps show off the power of the Long Lake Fisherman!

I know, I know, not everyone is okay playing Outlands, and that's fine. But the deck started out organically, centering on two cost cards because of the strength of Steward of Gondor, Imladris Stargazer and Zigil Miner.

And once you're there, you need more two cost allies to feed into the engine and get the deck up and running. Which lead me to Outlands, because they work very well en-masse and they have access to a low-threat hero that ignores resource requirements. (Though you could probably make the deck better by swapping in Elrond, if you can stomach the extra threat.)

The Zigil Miners got phased out along the way, and here we are! Let's take a look at how to maximize the speed and power of this deck.

Strategy

Let's talk opening hands a little bit. Arwen Undómiel and Denethor let you keep a lot of diverse hands that all speed up the game in their own way.

Arwen's resource lets you play a Long Lake Fisherman on turn 1, giving you another 5 chances at a Steward of Gondor or Herald of Anórien for a faster start. Imladris Stargazer is similar, but a little slower.

Elven Jeweler helps you power out an early A Very Good Tale if you have redundant cards in your hand, and there are a few ways to recur the cards that get discarded later in the game. Envoy of Pelargir works similarly to get the Very Good Tales flowing, and can smooth out the resources.

And I've had heavy ally starts where the easy first turn plays were Herald of Anórien into a couple of Outlands allies right away. Especially if one of them is the Anfalas Herdsman to keep them safe.

Once you get set up, the deck is relatively shenanigans light, but not entirely free of them.

You want a single Imladris Stargazer in play relatively quick, and an Elven-light to cycle for more card draw. Then you get the best two out of your five top cards in each round.

And if your draws start to clog up with cards you don't care about, Elven Jeweler turns those extra cards into a free ally. Or Galadhrim Weaver and Long Lake Fisherman let you shuffle them away. Hunter of Lamedon can even mill some of them into the discard pile for you.

I will say that you should be a little bit careful. The deck doesn't have any ways to natively play Warden of Healing, so you'll need to use the Herald of Anórien or A Very Good Tale to get them in play. In my experience, that hasn't been a problem, but it's worth thinking about if you have a very aggressive start.

Video Thoughts

The main thing, I think, is that I need a bigger table for this deck. I posted a picture of the end state on twitter, with 23 allies on the table. And you'll see the mess in the video if you check it out. It was a bit of a challenge.

I also think I may have picked the wrong stage 3 for my Wizard's Quest build, but I'm not sure any of the others would have been worse at that point. The deck I built was focused on swarming and clogging the board with locations a bit, and I think it did a respectable job.

It was better in my first attempt (not recorded, sadly), where I yolo quested for nearly 40 into the third stage, failed by a single quest point, and then lost two heroes to undefended attacks. Well, "better".

But my deck did exactly what it was meant to do. Dump out a huge number of allies right away, ramp them into even more allies, and laugh all the way to the end with the topdeck manipulation and draw/filtering power at our disposal.

Hopefully you enjoy the deck and the video. Thanks for watching!