Nori Pays his Taxes 1.0

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• 1.0

Frodo learned that Grimbeorn the Old, son of Beorn, was now the lord of many sturdy men, and to their land between the Mountains and Mirkwood neither orc nor wolf dared to go.

"Indeed," said Glóin, "if it were not for the Beornings, the passage from Dale to Rivendell would long ago have become impossible. They are valiant men and keep open the High Pass and the Ford of Carrock. But their tolls are high," he added with a shake of his head; "and like Beorn of old they are not over fond of dwarves. Still, they are trusty, and that is much in these days."

Nori pays the Beornings' tolls and they get along quite well with him, it turns out.

This is a Messenger of the King deck with Nori as your MotK hero, for a starting threat of 31. The ultimate goal is to amass an army of Beornings, and be able to trigger Beornings' effects repeatedly while bringing them back into play cheaply (Beornings' effects shuffle them into your deck or discard them from play).

It quests for almost nothing, so this is a dedicated combat deck for multiplayer. 2-player is the sweet spot. With more players, you would have trouble getting all the enemies you want to engage. You'll have high threat (and no mitigation in this incarnation of the deck-- swap Song of Battle for threat mitigation), but no ranged and no ways to engage enemies through card effects. You do have a bit of sentinel, though.

Setting up involves depleting your deck. Really important cards to see early are Wizard Pipe and Longbeard Sentry. The Sentry depletes your deck for you. Dáin Ironfoot does as well. Gandalf allows you to peek at the top of your deck so you can judge whether to discard. Pause your mining shenanigans only to collect Beorning Skin-changers, Wizard Pipe if you don't have it, and Gandalf's Staff. It's also better if you can get a Rohan Warhorse on Nori and a weapon (preferably War Axe).

Loop:

Step 1: Deplete your deck via mining effects.
Step 2: Play a Beorning Skin-changer.
Step 3: Discard it to get any other Beorning in play (from your hand or discard pile). Skin-changer is now the top card of your discard pile. If you're doing this before your deck is depleted, best time to discard is after defense, because otherwise Dain will discard cards on top of it.
Step 4: Nori destroys an enemy.
Step 5: Move a Beorning Skin-changer from top of discard to bottom of deck (which is also top of deck, since it's empty).
Step 6 : Draw it next turn and repeat the process (go back to step 2).
Other: The Beorning you put in play on step 3 might get discarded via its effect, or shuffled into your deck (or heck, it might die to an attack). If shuffled, you can mine it off if you need to, to make sure the Skin-Changer ends on the top and bottom card of your deck when he needs to. You would want to mine them off after you have used Nori to put Skin-changer(s) on the bottom of the deck. Use Longbeard Sentries to mine in the refresh phase.

When your deck is empty, Gandalf's Pipe becomes dead and Gandalf can't spend resources. Get a Song of Battle on him.

Another trick for resources: when the deck is empty, you could cycle a Hidden Cache. You want to get it into your discard pile and then use Nori to put it on the top/bottom of your otherwise empty deck. If the deck is empty, you can't play it (can't draw a card, since there is no effect you can't do it). But you can use Nori to get a Skin-changer on the top/bottom of your deck, then Wizard Pipe the Cache onto the deck instead and mine it off with a Sentry. Next round the Skin-changer is in your hand, where he needs to be.

With Rohan Warhorse on Nori, a Sentry in play, Wizard pipe in play, a Skin-changer on top of discard pile, Hidden Cache in hand, empty deck:

1. Nori attacks/destroys enemy.
2. Skin-changer to top/bottom of deck via Nori.
3. Nori readies via Rohan Warhose.
4. Wizard Pipe Hidden Cache to top/bottom of deck and grab the Skin-changer.
5. Mine Hidden Cache off with a Sentry (+2 resources).
6. Nori kills a second enemy, putting the Cache on the top/bottom of your deck.
7. Draw Hidden Cache next turn. You're back at step 1 now and can play your Skin-changer with the resources you got from the Cache. You also will be getting 1 resource naturally from Nor, and 1 from Gandalf, one more from Gandalf's staff. So you can get 1 Skin-Changer into play every turn for certain, at times 2 per turn (you'd need to forego the Hidden Cache shenanigans in order to get the Skin-Changers out of your discard pile, instead of the Cache).

If you have an abundance of resources, you simply use Nori to cycle more than one Skin-changer instead of doing the Hidden Cache exchange.

Stand and Fight helps get Beorning Skin-changers into play if you mine them off before reaching the bottom of your deck. Reforged can grab any of the tactics or spirit attachments.

Play-testing:

2-player

Weather Hills: 1/1

Wastes of Eriador 0/2. May have fared better if I didn't use Gandalf to quest. Couldn't keep up with the wolves coming out, maybe because Gandalf was questing, got overwhelmed. Tried again later, even worse result. Got swarmed. If set up, the deck can certainly handle a bunch of wolves. But getting set up is the trick.

Into the Pit: 1/1 with Beekeeper actually as the clutch card. On stage 2, you advance if no enemies are in play. We had 1 enemy in play, a Goblin in the staging area. I played 2 Skin-changers, swapped them for 2 Beekeepers, discarded both to kill the Goblin. We advanced to stage 3 (final stage) and quested to victory. I checked the next few encounter cards just to see-- and sure enough, I would have threated out if we had gone 1 more round. The Beekeepers shortened the game by 1 round, so yeah, thanks to this deck I can say the Beekeeper actually saved a game for me.