The Picky Peoples 1.0

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• 1.0

If you thought Henamarth Riversong was good, give this deck a spin! It is good at one thing: skip over cards from the encounter deck that you don’t want. In other words, it has the potential to turn the most exciting quest into an uneventful walk. It is the type of deck that you use to find unusual solutions to common problems.

Deck structure: The basis of this deck is Denethor + Unexpected Courage + Firyal + a bunch of scrying events and allies. Firyal can discard one encounter card, Denethor can do it before or after her. His ability has no limit, so it can combo with itself using Unexpected Courage. With just those 2, you give yourself at least 3 chances to draw a reasonable encounter card every turn. Their abilities stack up with Celduin Traveler’s and Ithilien Lookout’s, which are very much affordable since you start out in secrecy and can stay there for a while thanks to Folco Boffin, Merry and good ol’ core set Gandalf, whom you’ll be glad to pay straight up, since he remains the best Swiss army knife in the game.

The encounter cards that do get revealed must go through A Test of Will and Ranger Spikes, which are essentially A Test of Will for enemies. You’ll almost never optionally engage enemies, but the low engagement cost ones that manage to engage you can be removed efficiently by O Elbereth! Gilthonial! while you’re in secrecy. O Elbereth! Gilthonial! can also be a good card to remove enemies engaged during set-up (e.g., The Dunland Trap). A few Ents have found their way into the deck to handle the inevitable combat.

Tempo: Before Firyal or Unexpected Courage hit the table, don’t panic! First off, you’re in secrecy, and can stay there for a while. Besides Denethor’s and the allies’ scrying ability, you can play Risk Some Light right away for no cost, or The Hidden Way, making turns completely safe. The latter comboes very nicely with Elf-stone: since it is played before committing characters to the quest, it allows you to calculate the exact amount of needed to quest just short of exploring the active location, and therefore set up Elf-stone ideally. It also gives “look-ahead advantage.” Since Denethor doesn’t have to use his ability for this turn, he can do it for the next turn. If he then decides to move the top encounter card, he can chain that into the same action next turn.

After a while, you may sacrifice Folco Boffin and play Strider on Denethor, so that he can both quest and use his ability (in that case, after Firyal’s, since hers is a response to committing characters to the quest).

In the late game, you should have your Ent lineup ready. You’ll have enough willpower to free Merry to do his threat reduction thing, a few healers, and Will of the West to recycle the good stuff.

Testing: This deck is deceptively weak. It manages to beat quests I almost never beat with my other decks, including City of Corsairs (2/4) and Flight From Moria Nightmare (4/7). The first quest I tested was Journey Down the Anduin, and though this quest is obviously combat-oriented, you will usually be busy making a boatload of treacheries whiff (I just love that treachery that hits players with 35+ threat), and basically turn it into The Hills of Emyn Muil. This is also what happened to the last quest stage of City of Corsairs, where you’re supposed to meet something called enemies.

The quests it can’t realistically beat are those like Encounter At Amon Din Nightmare, which requires 10+ first turn. Battle/siege questing is also out of reach, I think.

The deck participated in the September Solo League, and won all 3 quests on the first try. Here’s a little session report:

Journey Down the Anduin : I defeated this quest right on the heels of defeating Journey Up the Anduin from The Wilds of Rhovanion (which is trickier and harder IMO). I didn’t need to discard Folco. The matchup is in favor of this deck because of the very low threat and the encounter deck manipulations. In the final stage, the only dangerous enemy that had a lower engagement cost than my threat was the Warg, and I removed it after its attack by paying O Elbereth Gilthoniel full cost (it thought it could escape to the staging area -- no thank you). Other enemies with lower engagement cost were caught on Ranger Spikes. So I just picked them off one at a time. The main threats were the setup and direct damage from Necromancer’s Reach and Dol Guldur Orcs. I drew Necromancer’s Pass for the setup, which makes you discard 2 cards at random when you travel to it. Luckily, I had the only copy of Thror’s Map in my opening hand, and later I drew into the only copy of Warden of Healing.

Conflict at the Carrock : a clinic in turtling. The scrying allows you to quest just enough to stay ahead of the encounter deck, without putting too much progress tokens. I stayed 10+ turns in quest stage 1, going almost through my entire deck looking for Treebeard.

Return to Mirkwood : I was apprehensive before this one. I had never beat this quest before. I had lost to it badly, and then I snubbed it because of how poorly I thought it played solo. This time, Denethor and Risk Some Light did the work. Together, they moved to the bottom of the encounter deck 2 Mirkwood Bats, 1 Wolf Rider, 1 Marsh Adder, and 1 Hummerhorns. As a result, I only met harmless locations and 2 treacheries (one was Gollum’s Anguish, which increases threat by 8, and it got Test-of-Will’ed). My plan was to have the Denethor-Firyal combo ready for stage 3, where you can’t play cards at all. They were my insurance against a game-ending Gollum’s Anguish or enemies that would have protracted stage 4 and led to defeat by threat. Sure enough, Firyal discarded a Warg which could have easily won the game for Sauron. Instead, I got a nice Woodman’s Glade location and sailed to victory. The only threat reduction all game was from discarding Folco. I would have lost without his ability, as I failed to draw Gandalf (the only other source of threat reduction) and finished at exactly 43 threat. His sacrifice made it possible to stay in secrecy for 2 turns despite Gollum’s threat increase, and allowed me to play Risk Some Light twice for free.