Santa Tryouts 1.0

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Santa Tryouts!

Who is the merriest Santa of them all? In this deck, each Santa contender will vie for the profligate privilege of providing presents to the people of Middle-Earth. Your sack of gifts, or "loot deck," courtesy of The Burglar's Turn, will make this a memorable yuletide experience.

Is it Santa Théoden, whose very countenance engenders in one a desire to drink cocoa and hang tinsel? His army of Rohan willpower will clear more than a few active locations, bringing joy to the fellowship around your table.

Is it the diminutive Santa Bifur with his list of naughty and nice? His resource-gathering Christmas spirit will allow important mechanical aspects to reach the table, sending more loot to your fellowship.

Or is it Santa Círdan, whose beard, solitary among the Eldar, has waited aeons for this very moment? His card drawing ability will get you to needed components of your deck faster, making possible your ability to spread merry gifts among your fellowship.

Merry Christmas 2019!

For a mechanical explanation: the 14 attachments in this deck are your 'loot deck' for The Burglar's Turn contract. They are chosen because, barring a copy of one of these unique cards already being on the table, they cannot "miss" : they can all attach to any hero. In the sideboard are more specific cards that could be useful, but many of them can only attach to certain types of heroes, so you will want to be sure that one of those heroes can receive them, before including them in your loot deck.

This is a willpower deck and would like to avoid combat. The Burglar's Turn is best viewed as a multiplayer card, as it depends on locations being available to you (not always possible in solo). As such, since this will be played in a multiplayer environment, you are free to specialize (specialization is the Christmas cheer of LotR LCG). The purpose of the deck is to cycle through active locations quickly in order to cycle through your loot deck. For loot to get attached, you must actually Travel to the location in question. It cannot simply "become" the active location. There are three ways to do this: 1) normal travel. 2) Ghân-buri-Ghân's action. Or 3) play Strider's Path when a location is revealed.

The most important action window for this deck is during the travel phase. The phase begins and you have the option for regular travel. No action window yet. After you have traveled, you have an action window. This is where you want to use effects which place progress on the active location, such as Ancestral Knowledge or The Evening Star to clear that active location, and immediately get whatever loot card has attached to it. Then, use Ghân-buri-Ghân to travel to another location, pulling out another loot card.

Other cards in the deck are chosen mostly for willpower, to make sure you can clear the active location normally, direct progress effects, and draw.

One earlier iteration of the deck used Haldan instead of Círdan the Shipwright. This gets you easy access to Distant Stars, which is also very good for that travel phase action window, to immediately claim a loot card (alas, the replacement location does not get loot attached to it). Cirdan made the deck carol better, although they both serve the function of providing some deck cycling. However, the deck ended up being somewhat anti-Haldan synergy as, in testing, there were some turns in which the active location got explored in the travel phase (to claim loot) and there was no active location for the next round. This deck can still use Distant Stars, if you would like to include it, but you would need to get a Mirkwood Explorer or Forest Road Traveler on the table first.

Merry Christmas!