65 - Flight of the Stormcaller (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 took a whole mess of Rohan characters on a boat in Voyage Across Belegaer, so with the addition of Denethor in this pack I figured it was time for to take some Gondorians out to sea as well. Boromir + Visionary Leadership more or less functions the same way for Gondor that Dáin Ironfoot does for Dwarves, so I build this Mono-Leadership deck hoping to get as many cheap Gondor allies onto the table as possible to aid with sailing tests and get the global boosts. It is a pretty straight-forward deck, hoping to get enough allies into play to make Citadel Custodian get into play cheaply, and then exhaust them with A Very Good Tale to get even more allies on the board.

Strength of Arms + For Gondor! can be used on rounds where a boat is engaged to pretty easily wipe it and all of the corsairs in one turn. I found it easier to quest over the Stormcaller during Stage 3, but this combo worked fairly well to take it out via damage, too. Much like the Rohan deck I ran earlier, this deck benefits greatly from the added card draw of The Dawn Star, so the additional 3 threat it adds during setup is no issue.

The Noldor deck is fairly similar, wanting to swarm the board with allies so that sailing tests can always be handled without issue. There are a few tools in both decks for dealing with some of the nastier locations that show up: The Evening Star, Thrór's Key, Explorer's Almanac, and Mariner's Compass should mean that they don't cause too many issues. I found that Will of the West wasn't really needed, since these decks wanted to blaze through the quest as fast as possible. Heed the Dream can be used to help the Gondor deck dig for Steward of Gondor or Visionary Leadership if they aren't able to find either right away.