Control of Combat 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is a hybrid combat and control-focused mono-lore deck. It is best suited to larger player groups (not for solo play, and 2-player puts a bit too much pressure on it).

The deck can handle enemies in a couple of ways. First, through combat, with Elrond defending and your other heroes and allies attacking. Next, through the traps Forest Snare and Ranger Spikes, which in an ideal scenario will permanently remove enemies from the encounter deck "rotation." Next, it deals with enemies by removing them from the game with None Return, again removing an enemy from potentially impacting the game state. Finally, it can use The Door is Closed! in the right circumstances to completely cancel an enemy. If that card is too situational for your taste, you can sub in Quick Ears, which is in the sideboard here, although that card will mean the cancelled card replaces itself.

All of this means that, if your deck is doing its job, the table will end up seeing more location and treachery cards, so be prepared to deal with that.

It draws well; 11 of the cards will replace themselves (all of the traps and the attachments which go on the active location). Some of the traps will replace themselves multiple times if you get Anborn in play. And in multiplayer, you will draw even more cards if other players are also playing attachments on the active location. In other words, you have the potential to draw your deck here, but you won't do so every game.

This deck is not intended to quest. Damrod and Haldan attack, Elrond defends. Damrod can add his willpower to the quest if necessary. However, if combat is quite well controlled by other decks on the table, this deck can contribute around 20 willpower at need.

The allies were mostly selected for cost effectiveness, with a preference for attack power. The Wellinghall Preservers are intended as self-healing defenders. A Wandering Ent could sub in there just as well as a defender, minus the healing, but at 1 fewer resources. You could add ally Treebeard here to good effect, also.

It can provide a tiny modicum of location control in the form of Woodmen's Path, it can control its own threat with Woodmen's Clearing or Keen as Lances, and Henamarth Riversong can scry if you don't need his attack or willpower. Note that Keen as Lances could be used to add resources to another player's heroes if you needed to do that.

I would mulligan for Forest Snare or Ranger Spikes, those are great early game cards to stall the encounter deck while you get set up.

As I mentioned, in 2-player when the other deck quested and did 0% of the combat, it didn't fare as well as I hoped. But I think it has better potential in 3- and 4-player games where it can do some combat, but would not be expected to do combat for the entire table.

Here's a rundown on quests I attempted in 2-player, not an impressive win ratio for the reasons outlined above:

• Hunt for Gollum 1/1
• Drowned Ruins 1/2 (1/1 in current iteration). The deck got shut down by Soulless Cadavers right from the start (lost all of my hand except Wellinghall Preservers). But it performed its function.
• Three Trials: 0/2. Need faster setup. This is not exactly a fast deck.
• Watcher in the Water: 0/3. Can't handle forced tentacle undefended attacks.
• Foundations of Stone: 1/1. Companion questing deck got creamed but hey presto! this deck handled willpower at need.
• Treachery of Rhudaur: 0/2. Too many enemies. The deck just doesn't function as sole combat deck in multiplayer environment.
• Celebrimbor's Secret: 0/2, same as above. Too surgey and too many enemies too fast.

Update: I played this in a 3-player environment against The Woodland Realm in competitive format. It performed its function even better than I anticipated, tying up two enemies in staging, one with a Forest Snare, and removing one with a None Return. The number of enemies in that deck is between 10 and 15 depending on who built it, so this is half of the enemies in the scenario permanently removed by one deck. As a result, we did see lots of locations and treacheries, which we weren't really prepared to deal with (yeah, as I predicted above). So we didn't win -- this deck does what it's supposed to do, just be prepared to deal with the consequences!