Challenge Accepted #8: Loot the Mines

Play Shadow and Flame using a deck with only allies.

Deck Summary

Have you ever wanted to dig greedily? Too deep? Well here's your chance! Take a trip to the exotic ruins of khazad-dûm where you may just encounter ancient artifacts! By signing this contract, you agree to the terms that Moria Adventures Corp. holds no liability due to grief, death, or dismemberment...

This deck stretches the notion of only allies by using The Burglar's Turn, which allows for a separate "loot deck", comprised of attachments. The main player deck is still restricted to only allies for this challenge.

This deck is geared specifically towards Shadow and Flame, so the goal is to stay at 0 threat for as long as possible to avoid Durin's Bane. Between Galadriel and Frodo Baggins it's pretty easy to maintain 0 indefinitely. With threat so low, we can capitalize on throwing in as many secrecy allies as possible: Dúnedain Wanderer is worth the 2 and there's no reason to pass up free Balrog fodder cough I mean, free allies in the form of Rivendell Scout.

This deck is pretty simple to run, Frodo and Cirdan always commit to the quest, Frodo uses his ability to keep Cirdan ready for attacks/defense later, if ever needed. Hold out on using Galadriel until after staging, if able, so that if some effect raised your threat, you should be able to get it back to 0 before the combat phase.

Dunedain Pathfinder is here to help pull in locations for The Burglar's Turn. Nearly all of the attack-focused attachments will pile onto Cirdan, along with Magic Ring and Narya, allowing him to max out at 7-8 . Resources can be gathered with the classic Imladris Stargazer / Zigil Miner combo. Long Lake Fisherman is here to pull out any of the above pieces as needed (over 50% of the deck costs 2, so that's always a reliable number to guess).

Quest Summary

This tends to be a longer quest, since this deck wants to turtle as long as possible to throw out a bunch of allies and get a few powerful attachments onto the board from exploring locations. I went 2-0 on my test runs, first game was 13 rounds and second game I purposefully tried going faster and managed 11 rounds.

For my opening hand, I was either looking for a Pathfinder (to start getting locations out) or a Stargazer (to get Zigil and/or Pathfinders). Beyond that, it's extremely flexible since the secrecy allies will always be playable, no matter when they show up.

Frodo and Cirdan quest for 6 out of the gate, generally an ally or two later and I'm comfortable questing above the staging area forever. There's very little doomed in the deck, so by using Frodo I generally was down to 0 threat by the end of the quest phase. On the few cases where that wasn't the case, Galadriel was able to fix the situation.

Once I built up a bunch of allies it was fine to get to the final stage and feed a few allies to the Balrog, I usually had about 12-15 to send at Durin's Bane, so he would go down pretty quickly. The second game was a bit hairier than the first, I got into a situation near the end where a Chance Encounter pulled over a Great Cave-troll, a chance encounter indeed! I knew I had only so many allies left that could chump before I lose attack power, so I focused on attacking Durin's Bane that round and managed to get him to the point where he had exactly 11 health remaining. Due to a Stargazer, I was able to set up Gandalf, Elfhelm, Celduin Traveler as my top cards - then discarding them from the effect on Dark Pit gave me a total cost of 12, which was just barely greater than the Balrog's remaining hit points. Felt very appropriate that Gandalf was to be discarded into the pit alongside Durin's Bane! Why Elfhelm and a Dale scout were there, well, that is anyone's guess. ;)