Pippin Gets a Palantir

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Inspiration for
the self-confinement deck 2 0 4 1.0
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Discard Pile

Some Sort 3481

God damn it, Pippin, you just can't leave well enough alone. For most, it's "once bitten, twice shy", but for you it seems to be "once bitten, now convinced he's an apple, chomp chomp chomp".

Snooping around the Orthanc stone almost destroyed your mind and brought the full wrath of Sauron down on your head, so of course the first thing you did when you learned there was another Palantir in Minas Tirith was... break in and start playing with it? What is wrong with you?

How the hell did you even get in to see it in the first place? Isn't it one of the most highly-guarded rooms in... you WHAT? You... you just told the guard that you were nobility? ... and that WORKED?

Your friends are out here busting their asses to keep the dark lord from sweeping down and crushing you (and the entire city while he's at it), and here you are all just "hey guys how about I just see if I can't figure out Sauron's plans, that seems like it'd help!"

You're the literal worst.


So this is a multiplayer Palantir deck designed to peek ahead so the fellowship can approach the round with (near) perfect information. Of course it needs lots of threat reduction to handle that task without getting swarmed, and lots of draw to get its pieces in place. (The Palantir itself helps with this.)

Fitting all that stuff in requires sacrificing a good bit of other stuff that you'd be tempted to try. You're pretty iffy when it comes to combat, though you can limp along with Gaffer Gamgee, Rosie Cotton, and Gandalf. A partner deck with a strong ranged attacker would be a huge help, though. And/or Sentinel in case you don't have the Gaffer ready to go.

It might not look like this deck has much threat reduction; two copies of The Galadhrim's Greeting and three of The Shirefolk, good for 24 points (plus whatever your heroes get you), but those events can do double or triple duty. Boost your hand size as much as you can, drop your threat, play a Will of the West to get them back in your deck, and then use Drinking Song to get them back in your hand again. (The Sneak Attack / Gandalf combo can also add threat reduction or draw and also gets recycled with Will of the West.)

Frodo of course gets his Ring and Power of Command can help turn that threat reduction into extra questing power. Another fun play is to keep it in your hand, instead, to boost your Drinking Songs.

The threat reduction is actually excessive enough that you can use the Song of Eärendil to eat threat for any other decks at the table while you're at it.

If you want to do some Hobbit Smash, toss a Wild Stallion on Sam Gamgee and another one on Rosie. Quest with Frodo and Sam, trigger Power of Command, then pay a spirit resource to ready Sam (whose stats are now 4/3/3/3 for the combat phase with a 3WP Rosie standing by to further boost as necessary). Plus the whole exchange is thematically perfect from start to finish.

Steward of Gondor would probably make the deck better, but to be honest, I was sick of cutting cards to make room, and since this deck is designed for multiplayer anyway it's probably better to minimize potential conflicts.

Mulligan for draw. There's a good bit of it in the deck but you want to start letting it combo as quickly as possible so you don't get stuck top-decking. Peace and Thought is perfect, especially if you have a partner deck that can buy you a round to use it.

4 comments

Feb 28, 2020 Alonewolf87 1907

Cool deck.

For some double Palantir fun you could even include in the future a copy of the Stone of Elostirion from Under the Ash Mountains

hallofbeorn.com

Feb 28, 2020 Jtothemac 469

I love the concept of this deck. I say bring some hobbit ponies for more shenanigans and fun.

Feb 28, 2020 GrandSpleen 1392

I love the idea-- do you find you ever go whole games, though, without drawing the Palantir? Or being able to play it? Only 1 copy of Diligent Noble and 1 copy of Palantir, I see.

Feb 28, 2020 Some Sort 3481

@GrandSpleen It’s certainly slow to set up the Palantir, but Drinking Song is the star of the show and means that if you can survive 4-5 rounds you’ll almost certainly have it by then unless you’re just whiffing on all your draw and stuck top-decking.

It was a balance between “how badly do I want Palantir online and running early” and “how badly do I want the deck to not be total deadweight. You need to establish board state so you can afford to lose the hero action, and if your threat control isn’t ready a few bad Palantir pulls (and +10 quick threat) can send things spiraling out of control.

@Jtothemac Hobbit Ponies are great but not as necessary with this lineup since you have Frodo to ready Merry. As you can see I already couldn’t get down to 50 cards, and they were cut around 70 or so.

@Alonewolf87 I love the idea of using guarded cards to leverage the foreknowledge of the Palantir!