Twin Councils of the Wise

Description

This fellowship came from an idea Sappidus on the Cardboard of the Rings Discord suggested as a way to make building Council of the Wise decks less onerous with physical cards. Build 2 Council of the Wise decks using the same list of cards except for heroes. This allows the player to pull out 2 copies of each card from their collection instead of just one.

I would call these "good stuff" decks. Strong hero line ups with cards selected to provide a wide array of answers to the encounter deck.

Heroes and attachments

Eowyn and Arwen are the questers in each deck. These were pretty comparable to each other with strong willpower stat and discard abilities to make use of Elven-light. Lanwyn is a bit of hybrid questing and combat hero since she might ready if there is surge. This possiblity also helps keep the deck with Arwen willpower about as strong as the one with Eowyn.

Both have a strong sentinel defender and ranged attacker to be able to support each other in combat. These aren't as close to each other Eowyn and Arwen. The sentinel and ranged are key though since there are a number of attachments that can be played across the board. You can prioritized playing the attachments on the more useful defender or attacker for the scenario. Beregond being better for high attack enemies while Grimbeorn's built in action advantage better for scenarios with weak swarming enemies.

Special attention was paid to the traits and attachment restrictions. Bow of Yew can work well on Legolas, Grimbeorn, and Lanwyn. Legolas likely will get the most mileage out of Rohan Warhorse. Grimbeorn could get some readies especially if his ability kills an enemy while defending. Same could be said for War Axe.

Allies

A few strong defending allies with Defender of Rammas, Derndingle Warrior, and Gondorian Spearman in case readying attachments do not come up. Honour Guard can help mitigate not getting any defense boosts or pseudo-healing.

Some location control with Northern Tracker, Rhovanion Outrider, and West Road Traveller. Largely the deck relies on strong willpower to clear location via traveling.

Rider of the Mark is a really nice toolbox card in these decks providing decent willpower and repeatable shadow mitigation.

Events and the Contract

The events are intended to be useful for more scenarios, but you won't be playing events just to trigger the contract. The contract acts more of a additional bonus. This can be very helpful even so. In my test game, I often would play an event as needed then get a resource or card that I needed and helped me continue to get ahead. I found this to be very flexible as I could select the best option at the time and better adapt to the game state.

7 comments

Dec 16, 2020 ira212 256

Is Silver Harp not worth it? It seems like that effectively draws you a card each turn, since you have lots of discards from Arwen and Eowyn.

Dec 17, 2020 kattattack22 791

@ira212I just didn't think about Silver Harp. It's a good suggestion since then Eowyn's or Arwen's abilities could be used freely each turn without having Elven-Light in hand.

Dec 17, 2020 ira212 256

Cool. And even if the Arwen player has Elven Light, they can still discard a second card to Eowyn’s ability, so it can help then too.

The thing that surprised me with this build is that you don’t have that many events. I had been trying to build council decks with lots of events, but actually this seems like a better strategy. Thanks!

Dec 17, 2020 kattattack22 791

@ira212Good point about doubling up on the discard effects with the Arwen deck and the harp. Probably best then to play harp on the AGL deck first even across the board to get that going.

There are still more events than either attachments or allies, but it is not super heavy on events. I've found the contract doesn't compensate for events providing only a temporary boost. It just makes it easier to play them more frequently or higher cost ones.

Thanks for the suggestion and taking a look at the deck! I'm glad you like it.

Dec 17, 2020 doomguard 1963

like the basic idea.

i think not 100% have to be the same, but for the good ones its very good idea.

will think about my own "twins"

you beregonddeck is a fantastic campaigndeck every hero can swith sphere if needed.

Dec 17, 2020 kattattack22 791

@doomguard, thanks! I consider this my proof of concept. I'll be definitely interested to see any other twin decks people build.

Sure they don't have to match 100%. It does make building them easier if they do. :)

I hadn't really thought about it for a campaign, but that is an excellent observation.

Dec 17, 2020 doomguard 1963

there is my version: ringsdb.com