Obvious Fellowship 2.0

• Versions
• 2.0
• 1.0

This is another deck of my personal series of disassembled decks. It does not mean the deck is worthless to keep. Instead, I want to keep the memories of this deck and might return to it in the future. You can find my list (which I started in juli 2019) most probably here. :)

Concept

This deck aims to assemble the original fellowship. Well, better said: every character which is on the Fellowship contract. Be warned: medicore deck only.

I think for now, there are two generic strategies to do so. First, using Gandalf hero. But as there is no Aragorn ally the starting threat would be quite high. This counteracts with most hobbit cards. So, in my opinion not a good choice to build a deck. Second, a leadership/tactics aproach. In these two spheres you can find all characters.

Most Hobbit cards have that "lower threat than your engaged enemy" theme. This is with what I went with. That is also why I did not use Gandalf from the Hobbit box. As the core Gandalf cannot stay for very long, there is the need for another unique ally. That ally will be Bill the Pony.

How to play

Basically, you want all the allies as fast as possible. But this will take some time. Until then, cards like Staff of Lebethron and Hobbit Cloak are a good starting hand.

After the first one or two rounds you typically have played most of those cards from your starting hand, in other words there are purple resources to spare. Use these to fuel Frodos ability and ready Aragorn.

I think all the attachments are self-explanatory. First Hobbit Cloak and Staff of Lebethorn for Sam, most the times playing the second copies to Frodo is an overkill. The first Rivendell Bow goes to Aragorn, the second to Legolas.

Sneak Attack and Gandalf mostly for card draw. Depending on the mission you play it might be necessary to use threat reduction to stay under that "common enemy threat".

When having a Sneak Attack and an ally on your hand you can easily chump block with the very same ally, then play Sneak Attack to bring the ally temporally into play (for the contract) and play the ally next round regulary to fullfill the contract again.

A similar strategy is when having Gandalf on your hand. Chump block (if having 9 characters in play), then play him via Sneak Attack (draw 3 cards to get allies) and if you do not have drawn the right ally just play Gandalf again.

When set up, you quest with Aragorn, Frodo, Sam, Gimli, Merry and Pippin (13 willpower plus another 2 from Friend of Friends plus 6 from Sword that was Broken and another 6 from the contract = 27). After that you can fight with Aragorn, Sam, Gimli, Bill, Boromir, Legolas and Pippin. Quite nice, I think.

Critical comments

The slow gathering of the fellowship is a major downside of the deck. This contract works faster when having lots of different allies, not the same over and over again. (That is why I initially wrote this deck is medicore only.)

Temporarily, I had 3 copies of A Very Good Tale in the deck. When having an early Gandalf (with Sneak Attack) and another ally in play, the chances are quite good to catch another one or two allies. That sped up the gathering of the 6 allies by a lot. Gathering the last ally takes lots of time and then A Very Good Tale doesn't help directly (except dicarding 5 cards you do not want to have). Anyhow, I was not very pleased with the outcome, because you have to save two allies to use it, these two allies cannot be Merry and Pippin and finaly many times I revealed (discarded) allies which I allready had on the table.

Send for Aid does a better job. Playing it mid to late game (when you do miss only one or two allies) completes the allies of the fellowship better.

To be multiplayer friendly, I did not add the Steward of Gondor. This might speed up the deck.

Sideboard and other cards to spare

Sword that was Broken and Rivendell Bow are not that much needed for the core strategy, but they do fit in very well. StwB because, the willpower of this deck is quite high and (if playing solo) RB doesn't make much sense. So, if you want to swap out cards these would be those to go with. Also, red resources a quite rare. Feints are a good countermeasure against an early enemy but are cards which I would consider to swap, too.

The cards in the sideboard are somewhat of an overload to the deck but would be fitting. So in the future, one or two of these might slip back in the deck.