Deck Tech: Beard-omir 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Hey all, welcome to week six of deck tech! Last week we went searching for buried treasure with all of the location exploration attachments.

This week we're going for a Treebeard deck, and we're going to load him up with attachments to turn him into a one Ent wrecking crew. (Hence, Beard-omir.) Unexpected Courage gets him extra actions, Self Preservation heals him back up when you use his ability, and A Burning Brand keeps him pretty safe on defense.

To fuel all of this, we have Arwen Undómiel and Erestor to keep our hand full and guarantee we can play at least one of the key attachments each turn, no matter what our resource situation looks like heading into it.

And rather than pick quests this time, I decided to ask Botomir in the COTR discord chat to suggest what we were going to do. And I only had to re-pick once because he wanted me to lose to Carn Dum.

Quest 1: Return to Mirkwood

Not my first choice for a solo quest, but let's see how we do.

Attempt 1: I start with an annoying goblin archer in the staging area (which I think is meant to be a different card, but it doesn't matter for long). And the next two stagings are both Gollum's Anguish, raising my threat by 8 each. Definitely the fastest loss in a while.

Attempt 2: This is the good one. I started with another Gollum's Anguish, but I drew a lot of threat reduction early to help counteract Gollum's nonsense. Then we get locations for a few rounds, which are easy to clear thanks to Steed of Imladris and make it into stage 3.

Finally Attercop Attercop shows up, but a quick couple of chump blocks keeps me safe. Final round of this attempt a King Spider shows up, denying Treebeard one attack. I still kill Attercop Attercop, and we reached 1 progress short of clearing the quest.

At which point I threat out.

Attempt 3: One Attercop Attercop in the first round, before I was really set up to handle it kept eating allies left and right. And we drew into two Brown Lands to lock the staging area up tight. Ouch.

Quest 2: The Redhorn Gate

I know this quest has an Objective Arwen as well, but we're going to ignore that for now. Botomir doesn't care about uniques, apparently.

This quest attempt starts off great. Both Elven Jeweler in the opening hand lets me dump extra cards productively, and I attach a Steed of Imladris to Arwen and Self Preservation to Treebeard. I know the jewelers are going to die in the snow when we get there, but they'll be useful until then, right?

The first few stages are pretty easy. Getting an early Unexpected Courage and Self Preservation on Treebeard means we can quest hard early on. And a Wellinghall Preserver is a great source of willpower and a little bit of extra healing.

Stage three does kill the Jewelers on Caradhras, but it's not a huge loss since we've set up so much power on Treebeard. And luckily we don't get any -1 treacheries until we've cleared the mountain.

So we quest until we find a second mountain to climb, Fanuidhol, and clear it in one round thanks to Steed of Imladris and The Evening Star.

Final score: 101. 8 full rounds, 26 threat, 0 damage on heroes, 5 vp.

Quest 3: The Fords of Isen

Attempt 1: Power questing at first lets us clear the first stage and reclaim Grima in two rounds. Erestor's forced discard keeps my hand below the 5 card threshold for a lot of annoying enemies and treacheries. The first round didn't see me dump a lot of cards, though, and a treachery did give me a lot of threat right out the gate.

And then I got disconnected from OCTGN. I was at 38 threat, Treebeard was well set up with two Unexpected Courage, and I had a Gandalf saved in hand to drop my threat if I needed it, so I don't expect I would have lost.

Attempt 2: I'm a little bit slower to set up this time, so I had to take some undefended attacks on Erestor and Arwen in order to use Treebeard's boost to clear enemies.

But once we get past the first few Dunlendings we were in good shape. And I dropped a Protector of Lórien on Arwen, so with the Steed of Imladris I could dump my whole hand on quest progress if I needed to.

Which was great for the last stage, since it's timed effect triggers based on how many cards you have in your hand. Zero every time at the end of the turn.

Definitely an easier quest now than it was at first, with Erestor giving you lots of cards but keeping your max hand size low.

Final score: 80. 5 full turns, 31 threat, 0 damage on heroes, 1 vp.

Play Tips

1. You're going to have to learn to accept that you're going to discard a ton of cards turn 1. There's no way to play more than a few of them unless you get incredibly lucky. But it's okay, they'll come back later.
2. Silver Harp lets you save a card from round to round, so if you have to make a choice between it and Unexpected Courage, pick the Harp. You can save the Unexpected Courage for next round.
3. Self Preservation is better than Wellinghall Preserver once Treebeard gets multiple actions, but the opposite is true before that, because of the willpower they bring.
4. Gandalf is mostly for threat reduction and some extra defense in this deck. You can use him to snipe annoying enemies, but with a bit of setup it's not bad to have him defend and Treebeard attack.
5. Keep track of your Will of the Wests. The first one you see you can afford to ignore, but the second you should probably play. And once you've played one, there's only one left in the deck...
6. Lindon Navigator is effectively 2 willpower for one card, whereas protector of Lorien only gives you 1 willpower. Plus you get an extra attack or chump block. I don't go out of my way to play them over setting up Treebeard, but they're a good use of your cards later in the game.

Next Week: Unclear! I've got a couple of decks ready to go, and I don't want to pick which one we're showcasing just yet.

Blog: A post about support hero lineups is going up on the blog on Thursday, check it out here and the feed is available here.