Challenge Accepted #9: The Easily Distracted Hunt

Play The Hunt for Gollum and kill at least 2 full-health enemies with Dour Handed.

Deck Summary

There's a little bit of everything in this deck. You want Side Quests? You got it. You want Gandalf? He's there. You need some sweet, deck mining action? Got that covered. Of course, everything about this deck hinges on one vital piece - Dour Handed. Just kidding! Dour Handed was more useful than I anticipated, but mostly it's just funny to nuke the Hunters from Morder during mid to late game :D.

For Thurindir, start with Gather Information as your side quest, when you complete that (hopefully first turn), go grab another. If you happened to get another side quest or two in your opening hand, you should be swimming in options. I found Double Back to be a good one to grab from Gather Information, to keep your threat down, or Send for Aid if you have Wizard Pipe for Gandalf to play it. Unexpected Courages go on Gandalf and Thurindir along with the Legacy Blades (another fun option is to put them on Thalion if he's a hero at the time!).

What you want in your opening hand is very flexible, usually looking for card draw and side quests. Seeing one of Gandalf's toys - Gandalf's Staff or Wizard Pipe are certainly nice to see as well (or better yet, Bilbo Baggins to fetch the pipe).

Rider of Rohan, Thalion, Halfling Bounder all benefit from getting that first side quest completed as quickly as possible. Elven-light and Expert Treasure-hunter are the main card draw, the latter allows for mining to hopefully pull out Ered Luin Miner and Hidden Cache. Ered Nimrais Prospector is also there to do a bit of mining, but also his effect to pull something back is nice - just in case you need that 4th, 5th, or even 6th copy of Dour Handed!

Quest Summary

This deck has actually been a blast to play because the late game stats of Thurindir is bonkers and witnessing a hero Thalion gain , , , and icons! Also, wiping out the Hunters from Mordor without even letting them attack is a very nice feeling.

I went 3-1 against Hunt for Gollum, the one loss was exceptionally bad encounter luck (first turn Sign of Gollum guarded by a Hunter - then the next two turns in a row a smaller enemy kept getting a shadow card that returned my Rider of Rohan to my hand, fourth turn was an additional Hunter, both of which proceeded to engage me and end the game quickly). In the successful attempts, the play usually started like: play Gather Information, pass it on round 1, grab another side quest. Round 2 quest through that side quest and begin getting out allies that benefit from that one side quest in the victory display. By round 4 or 5, Thurindir's usually questing for 6-7 (depending on whether Rally the West was completed). A Legacy Blade turns anyone into a great attacker. Also a few Dour Handed's are in my hand - waiting for an unsuspecting victim.

My specific goal was to only use Dour Handed on the Hunter's, which was great to see when it worked. I needed to get 6 out of the 8 side quests completed so Dour Handed could one-shot them. (I'll note that this is totally unnecessary as my board state is generally good enough to defeat them at this point, but this is about the principle of the matter. Plus, I was under a strict no-chump rule, NO ALLIES LEFT BEHIND!) In my third game, I had this lovely scenario come up: I was engaged with 2 Hunters and had 2 Dour Handed's in hand, I reveal a Sign of Gollum which becomes guarded by another Hunter in the quest phase and complete my 6th side quest. After using an Expert Treasure Hunter i'm left with the third Dour Handed on the top of my deck. At this point I knew exactly what I had to do. I engaged the third hunter - each is now at 8 . I play the two Dour Handed's from my hand (using 2 resources from Thalion's pool of course) and used Gandalf to play the third copy. Felt good to wipe the board without requiring any of the 20+ power I had on the board and was certainly not overkill in any way. The following turn I played two Prospectors to pull Dour Handed back into my deck just in case. I ended up using both copies later in the game - again on the Hunters :D.

End game Thurindir was typically up to 10-11 and 5 with an Unexpected Courage. In one game, he nearly cleared stage 3 by himself!

I could see this being a pretty fun support deck in multiplayer, you aren't necessarily going to get through all the side quests but this deck will be able to put out all the options in the world. It's like going to a buffet!