Challenge Accepted #7: Radagast Frees the Zoo

Play The Dungeons of Cirith Gurat using a mono-Lore deck.

Deck Summary

Radagast caught wind that creatures were being held at Cirith Gurat, so he enlisted help from the most obvious candidates, Pippin and Beravor!

The deck is pretty straightforward, Firyal and Radagast's Staff are what you should look for in the opening hand. Besides Beravor, Wizard Pipe and Messenger Raven are another combo for card draw as well as an easy way to trigger Radagast every turn.

Radagast is the main defender, with Protector of Lórien and Loyal Hound as ways to prevent damage. Once the eagles begin rolling out, they can take some of the attacks. The resources begin to pile up on Beravor and Pippin (Radagast's are the most fought after due to the off-sphere creatures), so Gaffer Gamgee is a good candidate to be popping in and out of play every round or two.

Several cards are specific tech against Dungeons of Cirith Gurat:

• Thror's Map, to avoid all the nasty Travel effects
• Woodmen's Clearing, to keep threat low, alongside Gaffer Gamgee to prevent attacks from those enemies that are affected by the defender's
• Protector of Lórien to increase the or of Radagast, which can matter for various enemies and shadow effects.

Quest Summary

This quest is either over very quickly or tends to be a slog at the first stage. The deck begins with only 6 , and assuming you want to play Firyal round 2, it means the first round is effectively YOLO questing and hoping to not engage any enemies. If we find Firyal and Radagast's Staff early, we stand a decent chance of survival. The next tricky part is the rough travel effects on the locations, so hopefully Thror's Map was picked up along the way!

In one attempt, round 1 gave me a lovely surge train of 3 Dungeon Wargs. Suffice it to say, I was dead by the second reveal and the third was just insult on top of injury. In another attempt I was stuck at stage 1 for 10+ rounds, just treading water as I kept getting enemies / locations that would guard my allies (making it so every time I freed one I happened to reveal another enemy/location that would inevitably guard an ally). Eventually, the eagles carried us away to victory.

I'm very happy that a creature deck is officially a thing, Radagast is fun to play and pulls it together. I look forward to more experimentation with Radagast, most likely alongside my favorite hero from the previous cycle, Hirgon!