Off to a Quick Start 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is a fun deck designed with the goal to play early tempo-cards and thus getting ahead of the encounter deck which should help you creating a foundation to build on and to hopefully defeat quests in the long run as well. It is viable for solo- and multiplayer.

Strategy

The cards helping you to get ahead in the first couple of turns are some of the classical burst-cards. Erestor and Denethor provide you with tons of cards and resources in the very first turn while Glorfindel can turn into a 3 quest/3 attack machine with the help of Light of Valinor which you should find really quickly thanks to Erestor’s insane card-draw abilities. Erestor’s digging is the reason I included cards like Gaining Strength or Wealth of Gondor. The “cost of a card“ is just not as grave in deck running him. The card next to LoV that should accelerate your game quickly is OHaUH Gandalf. He is basically a powered-up Glorfindel with LoV and can deal with many of the challenges the encounter deck throws at you.

LoV and/or Gandalf are therefore the cards that I would mulligan for because they give you access to crucial action-advantage early-game. After that, cards like Treebeard, Quickbeam or Gandalf’s toys can ensure you that you stay ahead of the encounter deck in future turns.

Gandalf is of course very costly which is why the resource-gaining events (and Denethor for that matter) are essential. Your starting threat of only 23 should allow you to keep the wizard around for quite some time without getting into a critical zone with your threat. The fact that Erestor (and Daeron's Runes) just rush through your deck is of course also helpful since your Elrond's Counsel's will turn up sooner than later. The Galadhrim's Greeting is also an option, more on that under the Sideboard section.

This is not a deck that allows much turtling once you get Gandalf out (since you do not run Aragorn or anything comparable), but if you do not see Gandalf early, your low threat should give you time to either find him or to set up Treebeard and a few other allies and attachments. Seeing Gandalf’s toys before seeing Gandalf can, of course, sometimes occur but I never found that to be a huge issue with your Elven Jewelers and Erestor’s digging. Elven Jeweler is really useful since you can trigger her ability during any action window. So if you have for example AToW and a dead card in hand, you can always wait until after staging to put her into play. Chances are however that you will not be able to play every card (especially in your opening hand) anyways since you start out with ten cards. The cards not mentioned or categorised so far (Envoy of Pelargir, Henamarth Riversong, Ioreth, Asfaloth, Steward of Gondor, which goes wherever it is needed most, and A Test of Will) should basically be no-brainers. They are simply very versatile and useful.

Sideboard

Errand-rider: If you find Denethor’s and the Envoy’s resource smooting not enough, or if you are playing multiplayer and want to help out other people he will be great (as always).

Henamarth: Scrying can be amazing and extremely important in the right quest so when you play solo and are concerned in terms of timing, he would be good as a 3x. But since your two strongest questers mostly won’t exhaust to quest anyways, deciding who you want to leave back for combat has not been much of an issue for me mostly. In multiplayer, I would probably take him out completely.

Warden of Healing: If you feel that Ioreth is not enough for healing, play him in addition or instead. You allies tend to have a lot of hit points and your games (especially solo) tend to be rather short so I did not find him that useful in most games. He would be absolutely essential against some quests of course.

Wellinghall Preserver: If you maybe plan to focus less on Gandalf and his toys but more on Treebeard, he would be a great include.

Asfaloth: In quests with many locations, a third copy is amazing.

Protector of Lórien: If you are afraid about the tons of dupes the deck runs, this gives you a good and easy way to burn cards.

Hasty Stroke: Tough one! It really depends on the encounter deck if I would run it but I much prefer Gandalf's Staff in an Erestor deck since it, well, sticks around. When there are a lot of nasty shadow effects, I would think about running it.

Galadhrim’s Greeting: I normally found that 1x (along with Counsels and a low starting threat) is enough but if you play a longer quest or a quest that specifically requires threat management, you might think about playing extra copies.

Testing

This deck won the following quests:

-Escape from Umbar

-Treachery of Rhudaur

-Nightmare Passage through Mirkwood

-Nightmare Journey along the Anduin

-Nightmare Into the Pit

-Nightmare Carn Dum (2nd attempt)

I am overall very happy with the performance of the deck, long-winded quests like The Withered Heath will probably be very difficult to beat.

As a foreign speaker, I apologise for any linguistic mistakes.

ENJOY!!