Finest Riddermark's Finest

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Durins_Father 2883

I really should stay away from deckbuilding sites when finding things like this. When doing research for the Creature trait, I found that none could wield (restricted) attachments. None but one: the The Riddermark's Finest.

You can probably guess where this is going: What attachments (and how many) can we fit on this ally to push it to levels that it was never meant to reach. So let's start at the beginning, playing the ally in the first place. Finding the card can be made easier through Mustering the Rohirrim or with Radagast's Staff. In order to accelerate card draw, you can run Messenger Raven with Wizard Pipe in order to be sure that you have one extra card per turn. If none of these tricks work, you can go for Word of Command in order to be sure that you find the Finest in your deck. This event is more used to find attachments alongside the Master of the Forge that allow you to gear up these horses.

Playing the Riddermark's Finest can be done with Théoden who lowers their cost to 1 resource, not a bad deal. He can also use his cost reduction on Gamling, who can assure that you retrieve the horses once they are discarded. Reducing the cost of The Riddermark's Finest with Theoden saves you the action on Radagast's Staff that will allow you to ready the ally in order to get more uses out of it. You can use this to quest with The Riddermark's Finest and use it to attack, defend, or use it for its ability. If you want even more uses out of a single ally, you can also use Valiant Determination in order to not have it exhaust to quest.

Now to the juicy part, the attachments. Since this ally is in Spirit and has no other traits other than Rohan and Creature, it locked it out of some of the stronger combat cards. You could play Mighty Warrior to give them access to things like Warrior Sword, but you lack the resource icon. Because of this, I went with generic ally attachments for the early game. This includes Squire's Helm to boost hitpoints. You can also play Grey Cloak to avoid enemies you don't want to engage while setting up. To heal The Riddermark's Finest I debated Radagast ally, but his hero version is vastly superior. Instead, Self Preservation is a valid attachment for The Riddermark's Finest. This heals any damage the ally takes when defending, for which you hope to hit a Round Shield early. The Rohan trait also grants us access to Spear of the Mark which boosts attack, especially if you are somehow able to attack into the staging area (again, a Tactics match would have come in handy for those events). Another thematic win is the Wild Stallion that joins the team of The Riddermark's Finest during the planning phase, increasing all stats by 1. This makes your whimpy 1 cost Creature ally a beast (pun intended) on the battlefield.

But it doesn't end there...

I noticed that Elf-friend is also a valid attachment on The Riddermark's Finest. This opens up more attachments like Rivendell Blade and Elven Mail for better combat stats. This is optional, but if you can get a group of horses upgraded to receive both Noldor and Silvan traits, they can also receive boosts from other players through Lords of the Eldar.

Eventually it becomes time to use The Riddermark's Finest for their ability. This places 2 progress on any location, which has its uses. This forces you to exhaust The Riddermark's Finest as well, so Valiant Determination or the ready from Radagast's Staff is required if you also want to quest with them. Discarding them returns all your attachments on them to your hand, setting up the next set of fully armed horses thanks to Bard son of Brand. You can also return The Riddermark's Finest to your hand with Gúthwinë and Gamling, making discarding the horses less of an issue since you don't lose any cards.

This loop does cost a lot of resources though, and Lore and Spirit aren't known for their resource acceleration, so you are kinda stuck on that. But still, your combo doesn't cost the world and is a lot of fun to pull off.

Fun, not powerful. I haven't tested this deck yet, but would figure it gets turned to horsemeat against tougher quests. Still, should be a fun trolling deck that doesn't use a lot of unique cards.

1 comments

Dec 11, 2019 The BGamerJoe 4799

This is an immense amount of work for a very poor end result. Lol.