Scouting Party 1.0

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• 1.0

My best attempt at a Haldan deck yet! Works great both solo and multiplayer, though since Ancient Mathom, Woodmen's Clearing, and Elf-stone all target the first player, it's a bit more powerful in solo. This deck can quest well and has plenty of attack power. Treebeard is your best defender, so try to get him in play as quickly as you can.

Since Haldan loves exploring locations, and you want for access to Ancient Mathom, I felt like Idraen was a good pairing. You'll be exploring a location almost every single turn, so you'll always get double use out of her stats.

Galadriel is a trusty fall-back card for me, but I feel she's the best choice to round out the lineup here due to her versatility. She can contribute to the quest when needed, especially early if you get Nenya in your opening hand. If you don't need the questing, you can always use her for threat reduction and card draw. Her resource lets you play the Ethir Swordsman as needed, but once she has her ring, she can also help play your allies.

The best location attachments here are Ancient Mathom, Elf-stone, and Woodmen's Clearing. Guarded Ceaselessly is a fun combo with Haldan. As long as the active location has an attachment, he can quest for two, and then if needed, exhaust to reduce the threat in the staging area - basically contributing a willpower swing of four! The only catch here is that you basically want to keep that location in the staging area to keep getting the benefit. Having more than one in play at a time is kind of useless. Woodmen's Path is not as impressive. It's a location attachment in a pinch, and combos well with Elf-stone, but otherwise seems expensive for the effect compared to the other location attachments here.

South Away! is a fun way to avoid travel costs and reduce everyone's threat. This is one card that definitely gets better in multiplayer.

A lack of locations in the staging area can definitely make this deck stall out a little, which is a bigger possibility in solo than in multiplayer. To help with this, Dunedain Pathfinder finds locations for you, as does The Hidden Way. Fortunately, the payoff for exploring locations can also be much higher in solo, so this is fairly manageable.

I love how Haldan has changed the way we think about location control. It's no longer just about putting progress on locations in the staging area (which has been rendered ineffective in many quests anyway by encounter card effects), but now encourages exploring the active location to provide some benefit to the players.

Enjoy! Feedback welcome!

(Featured on the Unfinished Trails Blog here).