Look to the West 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is an old deck of mine from 2016 that it looks like I never published. I still remember it fondly after all those years, and I'd love to get the chance to update it someday!

Original description follows:

Strategy

Look for Steward of Gondor in your opening hand, although a sufficiently decent hand that contains Gather Information (to fetch the Steward) could be good too.

This deck has a tempo to it. At the start of the game, you're hoping to use Gandalf to lower your threat, and otherwise you're just questing with everyone. For a few rounds, you just ignore any enemies in the staging area.

Once there are two or three enemies in the staging area, however, try to engage two at the same time. Two enemies equal +2 to all of Sam's stats which typically lets him tank one without taking damage. Use the "emergency" cards like Descendants of Kings, Sneak Attack, or Ranger of Cardolan to help you defend. Ideally, you'd like to be able to keep one around and kill the other, but sometimes you have to let them both sit there. That's okay--it's kind of amazing how well this deck is able to defend all the enemies each round even though at the start of the round it doesn't seem like it should be able to.

The goal is to ramp up faster than the encounter deck does, dropping a bunch of expensive allies relatively quickly in the midgame, usually culminating in a "desperate push" turn where you basically just clear the board. You'll run out of momentum slowly after that, so ideally you want to beat the quest shortly thereafter.

Use Gandalf as threat management. Once your starting threat goes too high, you lose the opportunity to control your engagements, and then things go downhill quickly. I considered adding Tome of Atanator to the deck to help keep the momentum going longer, but I have no idea what I would cut, since it's all pretty important.

Thoughts

I have played it against a few quests now. It was able to defeat Journey Along the Anduin and Wastes of Eriador pretty handily. It failed Redhorn Gate Nightmare at the last minute, despite good control over the board state; the lack of willpower-boosting effects meant a poorly timed Snowstorm combined with Caradhras wiped the board. It also failed The Steward's Fear due to location lock, but I think a few more tries could have seen a victory there.

This is a really fun deck to play. It has this weird dynamic where it has a really strong midgame but is weaker at the start and end. It does work slightly better when paired with another deck, particularly one that has a strong endgame, but it's perfectly serviceable solo, too.