Concept

This is a semi-thematic Valour Gondor deck. The core concept is to use the recently released Pillars of the Kings during your very first turn to enter Valour mode, boosting some of your most powerful allies, and then manage your threat with Beregond and excess copies of Pillars of the Kings afterwards. The rest of the deck plays very much like your traditional Gondor swarm deck, with Boromir leading your forces and boosting all your allies' (and once he gets Visionary Leadership).

Heroes

Rounding out the hero line-up after Boromir and Beregond is Gildor Inglorion, which is a minor thematic compromise, but he fits the deck well for several reasons. He provides some much needed so you can at least quest for 4-5 during your first turn if you manage to also play an ally. Still not great, but Gondor swarm decks have always struggled with during the early stages of the game. Gildor Inglorion does his job in alleviating this weakness to some extent. Additionally, his effect provides some welcome draw power whenever your resources allow it, which is otherwise hard to come by in . This also removes the need to run Rod of the Steward.

With this hero line-up your starting threat sits at a comfortable 30. This is perfect, because if you manage to play Pillars of the Kings while your threat is still 30 or less, you will get its additional effect of drawing 4 cards! Given that decks traditionally struggle with card draw, this is a huge boost to your early game.

Allies

Since this is essentially a Gondor swarm deck, all 25 allies in this deck have the Gondor trait so that they benefit from the boosts provided by Boromir and Visionary Leadership. Most of your allies cost only 2 resources to put into play, so you should be able to quicly amass quite an army of them. Once a decent number of allies are in play, you'll be able to get the most value out of the global buffs provided by Boromir, Visionary Leadership and Faramir.

Three of our allies play off of the Valour theme: Angbor the Fearless, Soldier of Gondor and Veteran of Osgiliath. Angbor the Fearless is especially useful as he greatly boosts your questing prowess, which is super important in the early game. During the mid game you can play Soldier of Gondor to replenish your hand or bring out the slightly more expensive Veteran of Osgiliath for his great stat line.

The only other ally I want to mention specifically is Herald of Anórien, which doesn't have the greatest stats, but is invaluable in getting the deck through its early game. It allows you to play an additional 2-cost ally for no resources, but at the cost of increasing your threat by 2. While this is somewhat dangerous in a Valour deck, the ability to bring out two allies on turn 1 should not be understated as it allows you to play A Very Good Tale on your very first turn!

Attachments

The attachments in this deck are mainly geared towards our heroes. Armored Destrier, Hauberk of Mail and Unexpected Courage all go on Beregond to boost his defensive capabilities even further, allowing you to trigger his effect more reliably.

Steward of Gondor is a staple in this deck and absolutely necessary to pay for all your allies. I personally prefer to play Steward of Gondor on Gildor Inglorion so that he also gets the Gondor trait and therefore benefits from Visionary Leadership. Speaking of Visionary Leadership, it should preferably go on Boromir, since you're already likely to keep a resource in his pool to utilize his own effect.

Events

I already explained the idea behind Pillars of the Kings and briefly mentioned A Very Good Tale for bringing out your allies even faster. The rest of the events in this deck are rather straightforward. A Test of Will is pretty much an auto-include, though you may replace them with something else when playing multiplayer. Captain's Wisdom helps in the early game by getting your allies out more quickly or play an early Armored Destrier on Beregond. Finally, Desperate Defense is an additional fail-safe for Beregond in case you're faced with an exceptionally strong enemy.

Playstyle

Like I said before, the deck plays very much like your traditional Gondor swarm deck, with a small twist in Pillars of the Kings. The two most important cards to mulligan for are by far Pillars of the Kings and Steward of Gondor. If you can play these turn 1, your early game is immediately kicked into high gear since you'll have resources to spare and start with an additional 4 cards in hand.

Early Game

During the early game your priority should be to pump out as many allies as possible. With Steward of Gondor you should have no problem paying for 1-2 allies a turn, but if you didn't draw into it, make use of Herald of Anórien, Captain's Wisdom and A Very Good Tale. Note that Herald of Anórien is not the only card to allow a first turn A Very Good Tale: If you have both Envoy of Pelargir and Knight of Belfalas in hand, you should be able to bring out both of them.

Mid-Game

In the mid-game you should have 3-4 allies under your control. It then becomes necessary to find the right attachments for Beregond so he can start defending the more serious enemies. In quests with relatively strong enemies, it may even be necessary to tend to his attachments sooner. While there is no way of directly searching any of his most important attachments, this deck does run some deck thinning in Pillars of the Kings and Soldier of Gondor to increase the odds of drawing into the right attachments later on. Also, if your resources allow it, you can use Gildor Inglorion's effect to draw an additional card each turn.

Late Game

In the late game, once you have played plenty of allies and Beregond is all set up, it's time to apply high value buffs via Faramir and Visionary Leadership. With enough allies, this will make questing almost trivial, which is also why it's so important to get to this point as fast as possible. This is why so many cards in this deck are geared towards speeding up your early and mid-game as much as possible.

Weaknesses

The deck is very reliant on its opening hand. Without both Pillars of the Kings and Steward of Gondor it may be hard to get started properly. I included some cards to offset missing either: Captain's Wisdom is a poor man's Steward of Gondor for a single turn, and Gildor Inglorion's effect allows some card draw outside of Pillars of the Kings, but they are both far from ideal.

Furthermore, like many decks of its kind, it suffers from low during the early phases of the game. In solo play this is especially troublesome since there is no one to compensate for you. Gildor Inglorion's high starting helps a bit, but even then you're only questing for 4-5 at during turn 1 at most. Once the deck gets rolling however, your goes through the roof, so one way to alleviate this problem is to pair up with a deck that has high right out of the gate.

Other options

While this is a Valour deck, I haven't included any Valour events. While they are great thematically, they are usually overpriced or too situational to be very useful. Doom Hangs Still for example is incredibly powerful, but by the time you have enough resources to pay its cost you're usually better off just playing a bunch of allies and questing normally. They also tend to clog up your opening hand, only being useful in the later stages of the game. Need Drives Them likewise falls into the same category.

With this being a deck, it would be wrong of me not to point out the possibility of running Sneak Attack and Gandalf. While I personally decided not to include them for thematic and deck space reasons, it's still an incredibly powerful combo that can help with your card draw or threat management, both incredibly important in this deck.

Finally, you may want to run some additional support cards for Beregond, because even with Hauberk of Mail he only has 5 which is not enough to reliably defend every enemy without taking damage. Something like Blood of Númenor or Dúnedain Warning might help. Or even better, a multiplayer partner who can play Gondorian Shield on you.

Sideboard

If more threat reduction is required, you have a couple more cards to fall back on. First, you can choose to play Elrond's Counsel thanks to Gildor Inglorion. For a potentially bigger (but much more expensive) threat reduction, you could also consider Derufin. Its cost of 3 is rather steep, but since it's an ally you can bring it out with A Very Good Tale or search it with Soldier of Gondor. Alternatively, you could play The Galadhrim's Greeting for the same cost for instant threat reduction, but without the added benefits of being an ally.

Silver Lamp is in the sideboard to assist Beregond in quests where there are many high-risk shadow cards in the encounter deck. You already run Hauberk of Mail and Armored Destrier to boost Beregond's stats and deal with shadow cards, respectively, but when this is not enough, Silver Lamp can be included for additional security.