My Friends, You Bow To No One 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Concept

I wanted to build a Valour deck that also felt original and thematic at the same time. After experimenting with a couple of different builds and themes, I settled on this one: a party consisting of the newlyweds Aragorn and Arwen Undómiel, along with their Hobbit friends. Sadly I couldn't fit in Pippin in this deck due to sphere limitations, but Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee and Merry are all present. (And Rosie Cotton too, so at least there's four Hobbits in total!)

The deck itself functions as a swarm deck, but I did not want to limit myself to just Gondor allies. This wouldn't allow for the Hobbits to fit in, but in a broader sense I also like to think of post-coronation Aragorn as someone who can bring together all factions. The majority of allies are still Gondor, since they synergize best with the Valour and swarm mechanics, but I purposefully included some off-trait allies as well.

Gameplay

In this deck you want to mulligan for Steward of Gondor and make sure that the rest of your hand can sustain you for a couple of turns. That means you should look for either Elven-light for repeatable card draw, A Very Good Tale to bring out additional allies or Pillars of the Kings to go into Valour when you need to and preferably draw 4 cards.

Between Arwen Undómiel's effect and Steward of Gondor, Aragorn should be gaining 4 resources a turn. Frodo Baggins' resource can then be used to ready him during the quest phase, so he doesn't have to spend his own. Additionally, Frodo Baggins lets you carefully control your threat, so that you can stay below 30 for as long as you like. This lets you draw 4 cards when you finally do play Pillars of the Kings. Once you're in Valour mode, Frodo Baggins helps keep your threat stable around 40 so things don't get out of hand. If they do however, you should have enough resources in the late game to pay the full cost of Pillars of the Kings and bring your threat back down to 40.

Early game

Ideally, you'd want to start the game off playing mostly cheap, well-rounded allies such as Sam Gamgee, Envoy of Pelargir, Pelargir Ship Captain, Soldier of Gondor, or any of the 2-cost unique allies (Angbor the Fearless, Ceorl, Merry or Rosie Cotton). Herald of Anórien lets you speed up your early game, also allowing you to bring out your allies more easily.

Speaking of our allies: we all know how good Ethir Swordsman is, but I want to give a special shoutout to Knight of Belfalas. He is absolutely amazing. Not only is 2 for 2 resources unheard of in , but his effect lets you recycle all your Gondor allies, including himself! It's a great way of reusing chump blockers, or get back excess allies that you discard through A Very Good Tale.

Middle game

Once you have a couple of cheap allies out, you'll want to start playing A Very Good Tale to bring out even more. With the 30 allies that we run, A Very Good Tale should rarely if ever whiff. It may even discard Elven-light, which is not an ally, but you want it in your discard pile all the same! The only danger of using it is that you'll discard valuable attachments.

This is where Reforged comes in. Did you discard that Armored Destrier or Sword that was Broken? Just get them back with Reforged! Of course are a bit harder to come by than in this deck, but with Arwen Undómiel's effect it shouldn't be a problem. Blood of Númenor can even be brought back for free! Also, how could is it to bring back Sword that was Broken with Reforged?

Since almost all our allies cost 2 resources, A Very Good Tale should almost always bring out 2 allies at the cost of exhausting 2 allies already on board. The only slightly awkward cards to discard are Veteran of Osgiliath and Sam Gamgee, who both have a printed cost of 3. Faramir is also a bit more expensive, costing 4, but you can at least bring him out after exhausting two 2-cost allies without feeling like you're "wasting" resources. And while Sam Gamgee is awkward to discard with A Very Good Tale, he's actually a good candidate to exhaust with it, since his printed cost is much higher than his actual cost, because we're playing Frodo Baggins.

Late game

During the late game, your board state should be pretty solid. Try to get out your Armored Destrier and Blood of Númenor on Aragorn so he can reliably defend for you. Once combat is decently under control, you can afford to not play any allies for a turn to bring out Sword that was Broken and/or Faramir. This will solve most of your questing challenges as well.

This is also the point where you might want to jump to Valour. If you managed to keep your threat below 40, play Pillars of the Kings to instantly jump to 40 and draw 1 (or 4) cards. This will power up all your Veteran of Osgiliath and Angbor the Fearless.

Strengths and weaknesses

Most importantly, this deck feels original and fun to play. From a more mechanical standpoint it can be incredibly strong as well, which isn't surprising as it is a swarm deck at its core. Those have always been strong. Once you're properly set up you can quest for 50+ in total, and Aragorn will defend for 10+ up to three times a round.

Getting to that point can be quite challenging though. During the early game, the deck lacks a reliable defender. Aragorn really needs a Blood of Númenor before you can count on him, and that takes a lot of time to set up (that is, get enough resources on him). Until then, you're forced to chump block attackers or disable them with Andrath Guardsman. Really, the key to success in the early game is bringing out allies at a higher pace than the encounter deck can bring out enemies.

Since your starting threat is actually decently low at 28 you should be able to avoid the strongest enemies until you're ready to go into Valour mode. Frodo Baggins is incredibly useful at keeping your threat consistently low, but he also provides much needed action advantage for your heroes during the early game. Even Arwen Undómiel might have to jump in to defend a couple of weak enemies.

Killing enemies can also be quite a challenge during the early game. Your strongest attacker is Aragorn with 3 , and this deck doesn't run any boosts. Once you're in Valour mode, Angbor the Fearless and Veteran of Osgiliath really step up, but before that, you're mostly reliant on assembling enough 1 allies to gang up on a single enemy. Rosie Cotton is actually really helpful in this respect, as she can boost the of one of your other Hobbits by 2. If you have Sword that was Broken out, she even provides 3 (or ), which makes her very valuable.

Other options

There's a lot of cool variants that you could build for this type of deck, as well as solid tech cards for personal preference or against a specific quest:

• Derufin is a Gondor ally with decent and a threat reduction effect. Though you must discard him to trigger his effect, he can be recycled afterwards by Knight of Belfalas.
• Being a deck, it would be wrong of me not to include Gandalf + Sneak Attack as an option.
• You could double down on the Gondor trait by including more cheap allies such as Guard of the Citadel and Squire of the Citadel. You could even include Citadel Custodian or Knight of the White Tower. This also opens up the possibility of running Visionary Leadership.
• Another trait you could focus more on is Outlands, by including Warrior of Lossarnach. Once you have a all three out they are all equally as strong as a Defender of Rammas, and they actually boost (and are boosted themselves by) your Ethir Swordsman as well!
• Any deck that runs both Aragorn and Arwen Undómiel can also make use of Tale of Tinúviel and Heirs of Earendil. The former can be used to great effect here, since Frodo Baggins provides flexible readying for either Aragorn or Arwen Undómiel. The latter has a very powerful effect and can get you into valour mode faster. I'd probably swap it for Pillars of the Kings if I did choose to include it.
• Valiant Sword provides additional once you're in valour mode, and can go on either Aragorn or Arwen Undómiel. One reason for putting in on Arwen Undómiel would be that Aragorn would preferably have 2 copies of Armored Destrier attached, leaving no room for any other Restricted attachments.
• Favor of the Valar is an amazing card in solo, because if your threat is high enough, you can just choose not to quest at all and actually decrease your threat as a result! It's quite expensive though, and you can't actually put it in play with Reforged since it doesn't belong to any sphere.
• Finally, since Reforged is broken, you could also run any other attachments from any other sphere. Gondorian Fire is especially nice since it costs you 0 resources.