56 - The Treachery of Rhudaur - (Progression Series)

This is another fellowship continuing on in my goal to play through all of the quests in release order to learn how all (or most) of the cards interact with one another. The first fellowship for the quests in the core set can be found here, and it contains a slightly more detailed overview of what I'm going for with building these decks. As always, any feedback is appreciated so that I can continue to learn more!

I really like how side quests have mixed up some of the quests in this cycle, and The Treachery of Rhudaur uses them in a way that is even more fun and interesting than the previous quests have, by starting you out with 3 of them to pick and choose from. I built these decks with the hope of clearing 2 of the 3 during Stage 1 of the quest (the location and enemy specific ones, the one with the reduced Willpower to Allies proved to be too much to try to manage).

I had only ever used Erestor in an Outlands deck, so I wanted to try to put him to use right away. The cost curve of that deck is low, so that you can hopefully make the most out of the first 10 card hand. Legacy of Númenor is a great card to see in the opening hand for the Aragorn deck, allowing for the Erestor deck to get to work a lot quicker. Silver Harp can be useful to hang onto cards that you can't play that round (particularly A Test of Will, Galdor of the Havens, or Will of the West depending on what the situation calls for).

The Aragorn/Beregond deck should be able to handle the majority of the combat. Due to a high starting threat, and some doomed events you shouldn't have much of a problem getting above 40 threat. Horn's Cry is fantastic with it's valour action. Most enemies in this quest only swing for 3 (even though there are a lot of shadows that increase attack power). I found it possible to play Horn's Cry and then just take everything undefended if I ever got swamped, allowing me to swing back with everyone and clear up the board a little bit. This is particularly useful on rounds before the encounter deck shuffles, so that you can make sure all of the Cursed Dead are shuffled in instead of sitting in the discard pile to be pulled out by another copy.