Pre-marriage Lothirel deck 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This was the version of my Lothíriel deck that I brought to Con of the Rings 2019 and that has been getting some hype thanks to podcasts like Three's Company and Card Talk promoting it. With my proxies now replaced by the actual cards, I wanted to share the decklist with you all so you can try it out yourself.

The basic premise of the deck is a Caldara swarm, but with added bonuses from Lothiriel's ability to sneak allies into play, and Cirdan's ability to mill your deck and put allies in the discard pile. This ultimately builds up to a turn where you can play Prince Imrahil for free with Lothíriel during the quest phase, after which you can drop Caldara to get 3 free allies from your discard pile (4 if you played Sword-thain beforehand on a ally like Emery.

In order to get more use out of your allies, Círdan the Shipwright supports the deck with Narya readying allies and giving them buffs to and . Narya also opens up the sphere, which allows you to play Visionary Leadership. This gives allies brought in with Lothíriel some extra so that even allies like the Minas Tirith Lampwright are decent.

In terms of allies, this deck really relies on Gondor allies to do much of the heavy lifting, but with good Noldor allies like Glorfindel supporting you. This deck does not run any version of Eomer, but I did still want to use Horn of the Mark for its amazing card draw capabilities that were quite a problem in the original version of this deck. I used to rely on Elven-light and Ancient Mathom to draw me cards, as Lothíriel decks do run out very quickly, especially in mono- where card draw has always been a problem. In order to solve the lack of a Rohan trait on Lothiriel, I included Nor am I a Stranger to give her the trait regardless. If you are playing with a fellow player that runs Eomer, you can remove both copies from the deck. The card is only really essential for the horn, as there are no Rohan allies in this deck. This can be considered a pre-marriage Lothíriel deck, with elven influence thanks to her Amrothian roots.

The deck is mostly mono-Spirit to allow a free ally with Emery, but if you are willing to put in a bit more risk on her, then there are several other great allies that you can use to sneak in for bonus willpower with Lothiriel. The fact that her ability does not require any resource match opens up a ton of strong Noble and Gondor allies, but you won't be able to sneak in all allies in this deck. The lack of the Ranger/Dunedain trait prevents you from playing Northern Tracker for free, getting a point of progress on each location in the process. But Caldara and the fact that you run a mono-Spirit deck really helps out to get other allies out easily. The same argument goes for Jubayr, who is worth his weight in gold for all mono-Spirit decks.

For the convention, I also ran a copy of Light the Beacons. It makes sure that you have something to spend your resources on, but you can also make sure that the rest of your deck can tank any number of attacks if you are suddenly engaged with a lot of enemies. Having the Sentinel keyword on Jubayr with a +2 (+3 with Narya) and not exhausting to defend is amazing.

Threat reduction shouldn't be a problem either. It is a mono-Spirit deck after all. You will want to avoid combat, especially in the early game before you get your big allies out. 2 copies of The Galadhrim's Greeting will help with that, but you can also continuously look Damrod and discard him after staging for his effect. Get him back in your hand through the new Knight of Belfalas and continue the cycle. This should see you stabilize your threat, depending on the state of the staging area. If there is no copy of Damrod to retrieve with the Knight, then you can always recycle Minas Tirith Lampwright who makes for a very easy lightning rod for "discard a character" treacheries in this deck. Who knows, maybe you even get to use his ability and hit a card type that you wanted!

I will be recreating a Lothiriel deck with the intended Rohan synergy at some point, but wanted to share this take with you regardless. You don't really need to be forced to use Eomer alongside Lothiriel to make her good, as this deck has proven to me. This deck has defeated the following quests in multiplayer during Con of the Rings:

• Across the Ettenmoors
• Voyage Across Belegaer
• Flight of the Stormcaller (also in solo)
• Treachery of Rhudaur
• Drowned Ruins
• Intruders in Chetwood

The deck usually fills the roll of questing deck, but can also support the team with surge cancellation, placing progress on locations, and providing Ranged/Sentinel support. Narya is always useful to bring in multiplayer games.

In true solo, the deck has beaten a few testing quests, but tends to struggle with early combat. Splashing in allies from the sphere will help, but that does require some changes to be made with the deck.