Storm of Deuces 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is an "Everything Costs X" deck that combines Erestor's card draw engine with the Zigil Miner resource engine, and access to allies of all spheres through The Storm Comes. The ultimate setup goal is to be able to play 4 allies every turn (Draw 4 x 2-cost allies with Erestor and play them all because you can generate 8 resources). It's literally A Storm of Deuces!

A few other people deserve credit for concepts leading up to this deck:

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Seastan's Everything* Costs 2: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/818/everything-costs-2-1.0

The original Everything Costs X, which uses Zigil Miner as a resource engine for 2 cost-cards, mostly allies but also includes cards to cover other aspects of the game in a well-rounded deck.

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Sappidus' Everything Really Costs 2: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/10118/everything-really-costs-2-1.0

Uses Erestor and Arwen, with Zigil Miner as the resource engine, but is focused around passing resources with Bifur for primarily lore cards (allies). A cool concept that I got to see first hand at Con of the RIngs 2018!

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Sappidus' Most Things Cost 4: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/6649/most-things-cost-4-1.0

Hey someone already found this hero lineup combo with The Storm Comes! He uses it here to access 4-cost allies of other spheres, but no Zigil Miner resource engine.

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Devaresh's Noldor Blitz: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/8625/noldor-blitz-1.0

An excellent Noldor deck and companion blog post, from which I learned how to play Erestor-based decks that really bend the cost curve/card draw relationship. Thank you!

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Tips on Playing the Deck

Start by fetching and playing The Storm Comes with Thurindir's ability and clearing it as soon as possible. Then, focus on getting resource generation, with Zigil Miner as the most efficient way to accelerate the deck. Dúnedain Pipe is a nice insurance policy to bury high value cards and keep them out of the discard pile.

Since you will be dumping a ton of cards into the discard, Stand and Fight can help get back out specific allies of any sphere, and Erebor Hammersmith can get attachments back. So, even if you can't pay for something early on, you will probably have a chance to get it into play later.

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A few notes on the design decisions that went into the deck:

Card Costs and Resources

2-cost allies are generally decent value and there are some exceptionally good ones. With Erestor drawing 4 new cards every round, you start out generating 4 resources with no setup due to Arwen Undómiel's ability. So, as a baseline you can play 2 allies every round. If you can find a way to generate more resources you can play them all. Consider that in 3 rounds you could have 12 allies on the board, with dozens more on the way - that seems pretty good. Zigil Miner, Magic Ring, and Necklace of Girion are the resource engines. Zigil Miner is the most efficient, since you'll get 2 extra resources almost all the time with his ability. He can also be played from the discard pile with Stand and Fight.

Deck Size

If you have Erestor and a Zigil Miner in play you're blasting through 6 cards a round from your deck. If the average scenario takes about 10 rounds, that is 60 cards + 10 cards for opening hand = 70 cards. Then you include Daeron's Runes, Drinking Song, and a second Zigil Miner you will probably find by mid-game, and so another ~10-15 card buffer for a total of ~85 cards seemed reasonable to me (Note: I haven't tried to optimize this 85 card deck at the single-card level like you would a 50 card deck, but rather I wanted to provide enough 2-cost cards to keep the strategy going for length of a game)

Most of the cards should be 2-cost allies. I've also added in a some key non-ally, 0-1 cost cards to dilute the deck, so early game you are drawing useful cards you can play when you may only have 4-5 resources to spend. Its also designed for a roughly 50:50 mix of Spirit:Lore cards to reflect your starting resource generation, maximizing efficiency.

Card Draw

Erestor, Daeron's Runes, Drinking Song. Also, I like Dúnedain Pipe but it always seems to be cut from my decks, so I'm leaving it in this one since I have virtually unlimited space :) It is quite useful when you need to keep a key card from going into the discard from Erestor at the end of the round, such as Will of the West or some of the 1-copy cards in the deck.

Allies

All the 2-cost allies from Spirit and Lore started in the deck, then I cut them back to 1 copy of (most) unique allies, and then after that added off sphere allies primarily for attack strength. Defense uses a chump-blocking strategy and if you're dropping 4 allies per round it should be able to keep up!

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Final Thoughts

The deck is fun to play because you get to process so many cards from your deck throughout the game and once you have a bunch of allies out, many of which have their own abilities, you have a lot of be engaged with on your board. It is easy to generate willpower early game, contribute to attack/defense once the allies start flowing, and has some capabilities that make it useful for multiplayer like threat reduction, location control, ranged, and card draw.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy!