Do Not Stray from the Path 1.0

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• 1.0

Do Not Stray From the (Woodmen's) Path

Like everyone else apparently I've been pretty excited for Haldan and the Woodman themed cards. Anything that makes locations a more engaging and less frustrating part of the game is great in my book.

I was expecting the deck to not really come on line, at least from a one-handed solo perspective until the later spoiled Woodman themed cards come out, but in testing and tweaking the list over the last few weeks I've found this the deck does pretty well against some of the games better testing quests like Escape from Umbar and Treachery of Rhudaur.

There's still some issues with consistency in the early turns, some of which is due to the large amount of 1x and 2x cards in the deck. But given the amount of card draw it's able to put out over the course of a game, I find going for a more 'toolbox' approach to the deck to be more beneficial.

Opening Hand:

If you're playing the deck one-handed solo you need to get some willpower down from an ally. 5 Willpower on turn 1 isn't quite enough for most modern quests when you're playing one-handed. You do however have a bunch of options, Getting Elven-light in your opening hand is always a great start, there's slightly more spirit cards in this deck than I usually include with a single spirit hero deck so getting use from her ability every turn is ideal.

Mirkwood Pioneer can be a great starter if you're playing a quest that starts with a high threat card in staging IF you have another card in hand to help you with willpower next turn.

Mirkwood Explorer is my absolute favourite start in the mono-lore version of this deck, and with Magic Ring it's possible to get them out turn 1, by using Arwen Undómiel ability and paying for the ring with her resources.

Unexpected Courage is also a good first turn card. If you don't pull any way to get out some good willpower turn you can at worst use Unexpected Courage on Denethor to quest to squeak you over the first turn hump, which is where you'll probably have the most problems. Denethor's scrying ability is great, in solo, and now with the guarded player cards, useful in multiplayer too so he's getting all of our Unexpected Courage

The last big opening start is finding an Elf-stone and one of our big allies, preferably a defender if we don't see an Unexpected Courage, such as Treebeard or Jubayr

Aside from all that having at least 1 attachment you can put on a location like Woodmen's Clearing or Woodmen's Path

At the Table:

The deck doesn't have an involved strategy or combo for you to favour while you play, Denethor (once you get an Unexpected Courage and a Henamarth Riversong will let you peak at the encounter deck and choose the right time to play your guarded cards like Glamdring or Necklace of Girion (which usually goes on Haldan)

One handy combo for when you don't have enemies to kill (especially if you've scryed the encounter deck or discarded the upcoming enemy with Firyal) is to exhaust Haldan to trigger Guarded Ceaselessly. Guarded Ceaselessly isn't a card I'd usually play but with Haldan on the table it's essentially +2 and draw a card once the location it's attached to becomes the active location, which is pretty good value for a 0 cost card.

It's also really good to setup in to some global threat reduction in multiplayer with South Away!, the 0 cost probably being the deciding factor in running it over something like Power in the Earth. Throw in a guarded card beforehand and you can start tweaking down the threat.

Like I said earlier Mirkwood Explorer is one of my favourite cards in this deck, being able to scry so your guarded player cards hit a location instead of enemy then immediately blowing them up with the Explorer's action is great.

Sideboard:

There's a little flexibility with the sideboard here. A Watchful Peace is probably a card that we can cut, as for the most part we're not removing locations outside of the normal points in the turn when they leave play explored, so for most part you'd use it to get yourself a safe shadow card, which you probably won't need once you have A Burning Brand online.

While the deck has quite a lot of card draw (you can usually get down to single digits in your deck by turn 8-9 in most quests), having the ability to dig for a specific card can be incredibly useful so Heed the Dream and Long Lake Fisherman are good choices to add, perhaps dropping the Silvan Refugee especially in multiplayer where you have less control of them leaving play.

The below cards are included in the sideboard as proxies for cards coming in this cycle's pack 3 and 4.

Ranger of Cardolan = Mirkwood Hunter

Wandering Ent = Forest Road Traveller