Deck Tech: White Tower Sentinel 1.0

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Hey all, welcome to week seven of Deck Tech! Last week I started our exploration of the Arwen Undómiel Erestor combo with a mega Treebeard deck here, and my first non-deck blog post here.

This week I'm going to wrap up the Arwen Erestor celebration with an incredibly powerful solo deck focused on my favorite Gondorian wall, Beregond.

The deck is tuned a bit specifically for Carn Dum, but should see you right in most enemy heavy quests. Especially any quest with table-flipping shadow effects.

The main goal here is to get as many of the key Beregond attachments on him early as possible. Turn one Gondorian Shield, Spear of the Citadel, A Burning Brand is possible. Or Unexpected Courage instead of the Brand. And once he's a bit set up, you can use Dúnedain Hunter to pull enemies out of the encounter deck faster, potentially softening up your quest phase.

As for the elephant in the room when we talk about hard quests: I had A Test of Will in the deck previously, and it definitely could have come in handy on a few occasions when testing this deck. But it forces you to prioritize differently if you want to keep it around with Erestor's discard. And I found the deck functioned a lot more smoothly if I focused on getting Unexpected Courage on Beregond as many times as possible, instead of using the Silver Harp to save A Test of Will.

Your results may vary, but this is the kind of deck that takes a lot of bullshit on the chin.

Quest 1: The Battle of Carn Dum

I'm going to spare you a recap of all the ways I lost to this quest while initially tuning this deck and re-learning all of the encounter deck effects. Let's just say that at least once I drew none of the Beregond attachments early. And then he got buried under an avalanche of shadow effects. I checked after the game, and I wouldn't have gotten any in the next two rounds, either. Oh well. On to the win!

This was a super weird opening hand, post-mulligan. All 3 Silver Harps and all 3 Unexpected Courage after the resource phase! What could be better... So Beregond gets an Unexpected Courage, a Spear of the Citadel, and a Song of Wisdom. The tactics resource goes to a Vassal of the Windlord. And a Dunedain Hunter pulls in some small Orcs. Next round sees the Gondorian Shield, and the round after that A Burning Brand.

Once we were set up, things looked pretty good. I saw a decent mix of enemies and locations, but fortunately not too many sorceries.

The quest had a nice ebb and flow, while I was battle questing, allies like the eagles and the dunedain were generally questing. And the enemies were getting whittled down by Beregond's spear. And when I was willpower questing, those allies hung back to clear out enemies from the battle questing phase. And Dunedain Hunters kept pulling Orc Grunts out of the encounter deck to avoid the surge.

Really once Beregond was setup, and I had gained control of the number of enemies in play, the only scary moments were when I had to chump block attacks. So I picked the enemy with the fewest shadow cards and hoped. Mostly the ally just got absolutely crushed, but one time Thaurdir flipped unexpectedly, making a mess of my defense math. So I destroyed all the rest of the enemies in play using Treebeard's resources to avoid having to make a hard choice about shadow cards again in the following round.

I did think about playing out the quest until Thaurdir had been defeated by Beregond's Spear, but I chickened out. Instead I killed the last Carn Dum Garrison, readied Treebeard, and killed Thaurdir, clearing the play area of all encounter cards.

Final score: 176. 14 full rounds, 36 threat, 0 damage on heroes, 0 vp.

Quest 2: The Dread Realm

We already did one of the harder capstone quests from the Angmar Awakened cycle, so why not try the next one?

This time the opening draw is not so absurd, but Beregond still gets an Unexpected Courage and a Spear of the Citadel. An Elrond's Counsel also means I don't have to engage a Cursed Dead round 1.

I get a second Unexpected Courage on Beregond in the following round, though I don't see any Burning Brands for a long time. Fortunately, most of the shadow effects require attacks to kill characters, and Beregond is very sturdy.

Before we get to stage 2, Arwen and Erestor both get zero willpower thanks to Fell Dread, but the Lindon Navigators hold down the willpower for me. Once we get to stage 2, the Spear helps clear out those treacheries quick, but I haven't built up enough damage to clear out other enemies and kill Daechanar. So we grind it out with the Spear and Beregond's defense.

Round 11, I finally find a Burning Brand for Beregond, and I feel pretty good about that. But a Cursed Dead off the encounter deck brings along four other copies, and my threat is high enough that I must engage them. Plus a couple of reanimated cards thanks to the locations sitting around...

Lots of allies defend here that normally would have attacked. Including all three Lindon Navigators (who survive!). And then a Fornost Bowman swings for 9, with some help, to kill Daechanar for good.

The next round I play a Gandalf, drawing the last three cards in the second pass through the deck, and quest like mad. 23 isn't amazing, but it's enough to clear the two locations in play and escape the Dread Realm.

Final score: 116. 11 full rounds, 30 threat, 1 damage on heroes, 25 vp.

Quest 3: Road to Rivendell

After those two, I wanted an easy quest. And I have already decided I don't care that much about Hero vs Objective Ally uniqueness, so Road to Rivendell it is.

This quest sees Beregond with two Unexpected Courage, a Spear, a Shield, and a Burning Brand on turn two.

I see both Sleeping Sentries as shadow effects, but Beregond doesn't care! Cue maniacal laughter.

In the eighth round, I make enough progress to clear the quest, having been just short in round seven. And I feel a little bad about leaving two enemies in the staging area because my threat was just too low to engage them.

I should probably not play easy quests with power decks.

Final Score: 100. 7 full rounds, 30 threat, 0 damage on heroes, 0 vp.

Play Tips

1. Song of Wisdom is a must play card. If you see it, save a resource for it. Otherwise Beregond can't use A Burning Brand, and you need more resources than the other spheres.
2. Any hand with one of the major Beregond attachments is probably good enough to keep. You'll draw the others pretty fast.
3. Don't play the first Will of the West you draw, but if you skip the second you won't ever get to play it. When you see it again in the second run through the deck, you can probably skip it. Most of the time you'll win or lose before the second pass is done.
4. Lindon Navigator is really good with Erestor's draw power. It lets you turn one card into two and one , which is better return than you get from Protector of Lórien or Elven Spear. And you can use them as chump blockers if you need to, though I don't recommend it.
5. It's important to enjoy all the shadow effects that would have otherwise ruined you, and to appreciate every time Beregond slowly kills an enemy with his spear.

Next Week: I'm on vacation, so there might be some delay, but I'm going to try and have the deck published on Tuesday morning, same as always. (Morning for me, at least.)

Blog: As mentioned above, non-deck but still deckbuilding content is coming to the blog here, and you can follow along via RSS here.