The Shirebroke

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The Shirebroke 0 0 0 1.0
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Seastan 44447

In play turn 1:

  • Folco
  • Pippin
  • Bilbo

In play turn 2:

Consistency: with practice, >80%

How.

Mulligan for Peace, and Thought and play it in the first refresh phase. If you're lucky and managed to play a copy of Fast Hitch already, you may be able to play a second copy of Peace, and Thought.

For the second turn (don't forget Bilbo's extra draw!), get out Song of Kings and start playing Legacy of Númenor for resources. Play Robin Smallburrow as soon as you can. Then play Scroll of Isildur and Bartering as soon as you can. Then play Sword-thain for free when you draw into it (you don't need it in hand when you play Bartering).

You now have 4 hobbit heroes. Play Mithrandir's Advice for 4 cards and then play Scroll of Isildur for 0 and use it to recycle Mithrandir's Advice. Keep doing this and playing Deep Knowledge until you've drawn and played all copies of Legacy of Númenor.

By this point you've probably raised your thread by 12 (3x Legacy of Númenor) + 6 (3x Deep Knowledge) = 18. Maybe a couple more if you've played The Seeing-stone. So simply play Elf-friend and Song of Travel on Pippin and then play 2x Elrond's Counsel and 3x The Shirefolk to reduce your threat by 12 + 6 = 18. So you should be pretty close to where you started. You may not have drawn all your threat reduction yet, but that's fine. Play Will of the West now, making sure you're holding a copy of Drinking Song.

Now your reshuffled deck is mostly made up of doomed cards, Mithrandir's Advice, Daeron's Runes, Drinking Song, and Scroll of Isildur. So play Drinking Song to get a bunch of those cards mixed back into your hand. Repeat the process of playing all the doomed/draw/reduction cards. This time around, you should be able to draw your whole deck, and you likely won't need every copy of Deep Knowledge, so after playing your threat reduction cards you may actually be lower than where you started.

Play a second Will of the West and do it all again. Then a third. Every time through your resources will be piling up from Legacy of Númenor and your net threat will actually be dropping.

During these second, third, and fourth times through your deck, take advantage of playing Scroll of Isildur + Bartering to get out Steward of Gondor, Song of Battle, and all three copies of Fast Hitch onto Bilbo for free.

Now, the deck has to be able to actually win once this whole process is done. So I tried to cram a winning board state into as few cards as possible. The 3x Fast Hitch on Bilbo Baggins lets him exhaust/defend multiple times, and Steward of Gondor/Gondorian Fire/Blood of Númenor ensures that he has plenty of / to do so effectively. A Burning Brand on Bilbo means you don't need to worry about shadow effects.

Questing is easily handled by the 4 Outlands characters, who together quest for 10 , and Firyal, who also serves as the deck's source of cancellation.

Altogether, you should be questing for 19 with a Firyal safety net, defending twice for 10+ with A Burning Brand and attacking twice for 10+ every round of the game from turn 2 onward, all with a threat below 20. This should be enough to beat nearly every quest in the game.

Some Notes

First, I think it goes without saying, but this is a solo-only deck. Since The Shirefolk and Elrond's Counsel only reduce your threat, the doomed effects would wipe out all the other players on the second time through your deck.

Second, the sideboard contains Warden of Healing for quests where healing is needed, but I don't think he's actually necessary. You have quite a large pool for archery damage with your two Anfalas Herdsman, and Firyal can bury any cards that might directly damage your hobbits. Also in the sideboard are a theird copy of Ethir Swordsman and Anfalas Herdsman if you want sacrifice a little draw combo consistency to increase your willpower cap.

Finally, the deck does have 56 cards. I'd love to bring this down to 50, but it's already been trimmed quite heavily. For example, I initially had 3x Elrond's Counsel, but found myself ending at 0 threat after the combo was finished. It was great, but I'd rather have slightly higher efficiency of achieving the combo and end up at ~15 threat instead. Maybe another Counsel could be trimmed as well and the deck could end up ~30 threat. If anyone else has suggestions like this to improve the likelihood of achieving the combo while still ending up at a winning board state, please let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

11 comments

Apr 12, 2019 TheChad 13760

Insanity dude. Pure Hobbit Insanity.

Apr 12, 2019 Rouxxor 1860

You may not even need to wait until the refresh phase thanks to Good Meal and Lórien's Wealth. I will try to think and test to see if we are able to set up this constantly (so probably with 50 cards) in turn one.

Apr 12, 2019 Rouxxor 1860

It will need more time to make some stats but here is a list who was able to start on turn one on my first try: ringsdb.com

Apr 13, 2019 Seastan 44447

@RouxxorI was able to my list to work once or twice on turn 1 (dropping the Peace, and Thought of course) but it was not as consistent as this turn 2 version. But yours has some improvements, like 1 card (Fireside Song) providing 6 , which I overlooked. It looks like your deck is susceptible to bad luck finding Robin though. What threat did you end at? I noticed you dropped all Elrond's Counsel.

Apr 13, 2019 Mormegil 5418

Great deck! I would consider cutting Bartering, Sword-Thain and Robin. This combo certainly pays off in the long run, however at this point it is in my experience mostly gravy. The 3 cards (not counting the unique duplicates) you draw to set up this subcombo and the 3 resources it costs (not counting the resources it costs you to draw up to six cards that would be in your hand instead of the ones mentioned) are things that you do get back with Scroll/Advice, however by the point when you played both of them at least thrice (probably more often to get your value back) your doomed deck cycling should be well on the way. I tested it without these six cards and the deck does have a slightly lower ceiling at that point, but it is more consistent.

Apr 13, 2019 Rouxxor 1860

@The MormegilAs I see it there is two ways of building the deck: you can either get some way to build your entire deck before to make the combo or try to pull the combo quickly. In the first way you want few of each (1 of each, but 2 bartening anyway since it make you win 2 resources with steward). I tend to think that, at least to make it work on first turn you need the combo really fast in play so I will try a version with 3 of each.

Apr 13, 2019 Mormegil 5418

Yeah @Rouxxor when you try to pull the combo off turn 1 I would agree with your suggestions. I will also retract my statement from above, I did not calculate with the fact that Robin will get targetted by Legacy of Numenor. I am at a loss what I would cut. It just doesn't feel right to be playing with 56 cards but I have no idea what I would get rid of, maybe one Herdsman since Firyal can get rid of some or most direct damage effects?

Apr 13, 2019 Rouxxor 1860

I'm quite happy of my new version: ringsdb.com

It allow me to go on combo quite often on turn one, and if it don't I can still play some cards, stay my threat quite low and get back on turn two so it is still an improvement from this list I think.

Apr 13, 2019 Seastan 44447

@RouxxorWhen you achieve the combo with your list, how low is your threat, and how many resources do you have on Bilbo?

Apr 14, 2019 Rouxxor 1860

My threat would be about 28, but I got the opportunity to keep 1 or 2 legacy of numenor in hand that I would only play if Bilbo is 1 resource short for the combat phase. So more likely 24 or 20 threat. I'm around 7 resources on bilbo on turn one, it is at least enough to block, but this way I can't play Glorfindel in turn one. So depending on the scenario I will choose either to be able to fight or to have a character I can discard. I like to have Glorfindel in my list because it is the only one character in the game that I can play from the discard. So if any effect ask me to discard an ally (or to take archery damage) I'm not really bothered. I can also keep a Bartering](/card/18015) to return in hand a Sword-thain and transform him into a hero and put into him some condition attachment (like in the hobbit troll scenario to take the bags instead of Bilbo).

Feb 17, 2020 Sfrug 385

You could swap 1x Anfalas Herdsman for 1x Ethir Swordsman, and you'd end up questing for 5 more. You'd still have 2 on each of the Outlands allies, to protect you from treacheries that slip past Firyal. — Now, I assume there's a reason not to do that, but I can't think of it, and I'm curious what it is. Is it just to ensure the entire combo's online in round 2 (rather than having to wait one more round to play the last swordsman)? Or is it something else?