Songs and Tales of the Great Hunt 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

I had forgotten how good mono-decks could be. I wanted to build a deck using Bilbo, because I had never used him, and I wanted to make use of the Gen Con alt-art card, as it is so beautiful (easily some of the best hero card art in the game, next to Gen Con Boromir).

Poking around for decklists to use as inspiration, I found Seastan's The Greatest Hunt. I loved the idea and the theme of the card (The Great Hunt) and the deck, but I suspected it might struggle against quests with boss fights, unique enemies, and enemies immune to player card effects. I next stumbled across Seastan's The Shirebroke deck and loved the idea of souping up Bilbo with Blood of Númenor and Gondorian Fire. Since this would already require songs, and I've always wanted to make a song deck, I also threw in Love of Tales to speed things up. So, this deck is basically an attempt to smash three deck archetypes into one in an attempt at making a (primarily) solo one-deck-to-rule-them-all. This meant there was a lot to cram in, and it's definitely possible to play with the balance of card counts in this list.

Your primary strategy is to 1) draw a _lot _of cards and 2) get a _lot _of resources. The card draw helps you get set up, as do the resources, but the resources also make sure you can play copies of The Great Hunt as much as you need without slowing down your board presence, as well as boost Bilbo's effectiveness against big, immune, or unique enemies with Blood of Númenor and Gondorian Fire.

In your opening hand, you're probably looking for Love of Tales to start your engine. The first song you want to play is probably Song of Travel, which lets you play a turn one or two Ethir Swordsman or Fireside Song to help with questing. Don't panic, however, if your first round or two of questing isn't spectacular - that will change! From there, you want to make sure you have at least two copies of Love of Tales in play before dropping too many songs, and since you have to exhaust it, try to pace playing the songs to maximize your resource advantage. Obviously, all of the attachments except for two Love of Tales go on Bilbo. In the early turns, you really want to draw as many cards as you can. Scroll of Isildur can be used later to recycle The Great Hunt, but don't fear to use them early for some of your card draw cards. I've gotten to turn two with this deck with almost half of my deck in my hand. There have also been games where bad luck means I got a little slower start, but the deck has eventually gotten its engine running and built up a high degree of inevitability.

Your combat strategy basically goes like this:

1. Early-game, avoid engaging enemies due to low threat and Pippin.
2. Mid-game, as your resource engine starts to hum, use The Great Hunt to take out enemies in the staging area, recurring them as needed with Scroll of Isildur, and recurring that as needed with Erebor Hammersmith.
3. Late-game, when you likely have to fight a boss/unique/immune enemy, ideally Bilbo will be suited up with a few copies of Fast Hitch, Blood of Númenor, Gondorian Fire, and A Burning Brand, while sitting on a pile of resources to spend from Steward of Gondor. This should make short work of the biggies.
4. For the random enemy that slips through before you're ready to deal with him, Gaffer Gamgee is a great emergency switch.

In summary, this deck is not as focused as either of its original inspirations, but it seems to maybe be a little more well rounded and able to deal more consistently with a wide variety of quest types. It's biggest challenges will be any quests that punish having lots of cards in hand, lots of resources on heroes, or lots of attachments on a single hero. I've not gotten to play this deck against too many quests yet, but it has done very well so far, and I think this has already become a new favorite of mine. Enjoy!