Heroes are Placeholders (Helm of Secrecy edition)

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Some Sort 3493

Hobbit Gandalf is really, really good. And he has access to one of the best suites of hero tools in the game-- his Staff, his ring (which he can immediately use on the best potential target in the game: himself), his horsey, his official unofficial second horsey. It'd be really nice if he were a hero and you could start with him in play, but you can't.

But you can come awfully close.

With a powerhouse like Hobbit Gandalf on the board, your actual heroes are borderline irrelevant, and this deck really highlights that fact; given a perfect start, all three of your heroes will be exhausted before you even make it to your first planning phase. Given a perfect start, they'll be exhausted before you make it to your second planning phase, too. You don't actually need to use them to quest, to attack, or to defend. In many games they'll never actually contribute any statistics to anything for the entire game. And that's totally fine. They're just placeholders for when the real hero shows up.

So the goal of this deck is to quickly and consistently get Hobbit Gandalf set up with all of his toys and, ideally, a big second ally to target with Narya (for our purposes, that means Treebeard, Glorfindel, or Jubayr-- notable for their massive stat lines and either in-built readying or shadow cancellation). And the measure of this deck's success should be just how quickly and just how consistently it can achieve those goals.

To that end, I ran 50 hands "against air" (no encounter deck). Hobbit Gandalf was on the table by Round 1 86% of the time. (He hit the table no later than Round 2 98% of the time.)

In 72% of hands, not only was Gandalf out in the first planning phase, he also brought at least one support card with him (Steward, his Staff, Narya, a Wild Stallion, or Arwen). In 32% of hands, he brought two support cards with him (Steward + one of the other four).

On average, by the end of the second planning phase this deck will have Gandalf plus 4 other support cards: Steward, one of his toys, Arwen, Wild Stallion, or one of the top-tier allies (usually Treebeard). (Technically, the deck averages 0.98 Gandalfs and 3.94 "extra cards" by the end of second planning.) It had at a minimum Gandalf plus three other "key cards" in 94% of the hands. (4% of hands featured Gandalf and two "key cards", and the last hand was the total wipeout.)

The absolute best-case outcome would be drawing a Captain's Wisdom on Round 1, bringing you to seven resources, which you use to pay for Gandalf, Steward, and Gandalf's Staff, which you use to add an extra resource to carry into Round 2. Then on Round 2 you add eight more resources (three from heroes, two from Steward, two from another Captain's Wisdom, one more from Gandalf's Staff), bringing your total to 9, which you use to play Narya, Treebeard, and Shadowfax.

From there you can use Narya to ready Treebeard immediately, quest with him and Gandalf (he won't exhaust to quest thanks to Galadriel), defend an attack with Gandalf, ready him back up with Shadowfax, and counterattack with both allies. This lets you quest for 6, defend for 4, and attack for 8, and we're only in the second round. (If you don't need the Willpower you could quest for 4, defend two attacks for 5 and 4, and attack twice for 5 and 5 instead.)

This kind of start seems like it would require everything to line up perfectly; in fact, I hit the Gandalf / Narya / Bomb Ally by the end of Planning 2 trifecta in 23 out of 50 hands, had at least two other toys in 21 of those 23 hands, and had three other toys in 8 of those 23 hands. (And some of the "misses" included games like Gandalf / Steward / Staff / Narya / Shadowfax / Arwen / Stallion by Planning 2. Not a bad consolation prize.) So call it a coinflip whether we're getting a start somewhere in that ballpark.

One problem I had with an older version of this deck is that, because you're drawing 4 or 5 cards per round (plus whatever extras you get from Daeron's Runes and Deep Knowledge), it doesn't take long until you've drawn your entire deck-- about 8 rounds, give or take. Your heroes are placeholders from the start, but once your deck is gone Beravor is even more of a placeholder. She can pass that draw across the table in multiplayer, but in solo she's just two more willpower in a deck that's already got plenty.

Similarly, Denethor is great for those explosive starts. He's the perfect target for the Captain's Wisdoms and he can pass his extra resources over to the Stewarded Galadriel to pay for all those spirit cards, but once you're set those extra resources become pointless. You could use him as another defender, but with Gandalf potentially sitting at 7 defense / 7 HP, or Jubayr sitting at 6 defense / 6 HP with shadow cancellation, or Treebeard sitting at 5 defense / 7 HP with extra healing from the Wellinghall Preservers, and with tons of extra ally readying to go around among them, having one more mid-tier defender is... kind of unnecessary.

Enter the newly spoiled Helm of Secrecy. I'm pretty lukewarm on the card overall. You have to dig out a 1x card and spend 4 resources and then it lets you swap out a hero who you seem to have been doing just fine with for a different hero who is probably weaker statistically. It's... cool, but not especially powerful.

Really, to make it work you'd want a deck that sees most of its cards, winds up with tons of extra resources, and features heroes who have been rendered obsolete, all within a half-dozen rounds or so. A deck... exactly like this one.

I knew from experience that ditching heroes would be fine with this deck. But I didn’t have any ideal targets or combos I wanted to build around. So instead I’ve been using Helm as a utility-belt card, swapping whoever I didn’t need anymore for any hero who seemed most advantageous given the current quest and board state.

For example, if your threat is creeping up you can swap out Beravor or Denethor and grab someone like Frodo Baggins or Merry. Or you can bring Eleanor or Balin (to deal with treacheries or shadows, respectively), or the OTHER Denethor (who scries and deals with either treacheries or shadows, especially in solo). If you wanted, you could add a White Council to recur Helm of Secrecy and ditch both of your superfluous heroes. (Keep Galadriel, though, because that constant threat reduction is huge. But with Galadriel, Merry, and Frodo, even Hobbit Gandalf won’t be enough to keep yourself threat dial from rolling backwards.)

Or hell, pull out anyone. Éowyn to help you one-shot a Balrog? Legolas to place some extra out-of-turn progress? Dúnhere to pick off shy snipers hiding out in staging? Halbarad to bring even more of the fight down to you? Folco Boffin for some more threat reduction / expendable hero action? Gríma to troll your partners? Caldara to rescue an unfortunately-lost Jubayr (or even a Wild Stallion)? Fastred or Beregond to let you toy with enemies and reduce your threat while you're at it? Thalin because Thalin is OP? Fatty Bolger or Pippin just for swag? The choices are myriad and largely don't matter!

Plus from a thematic standpoint, what better way to drive home the "heroes are placeholders" theme than to just randomly chuck one of them to replace with another halfway through the game.


General piloting instructions:

  • Mulligan instructions are super-easy. Keep any hand that has Hobbit Gandalf or Drinking Song. Toss any hand that doesn't. (Technically from a mathematical standpoint it can make sense to keep something with e.g. two Deep Knowledges and two Daeron's Runes, because with that your odds of seeing a Gandalf or Drinking Song are higher than they would be with the mulligan, but that's a pretty rare exception.)
  • The reason you keep anything with Drinking Song is it'll actually let you see more cards than a mulligan would. You get to see four extra cards right away from your draw, Beravor, and Galadriel, plus at least nine more cards after that from Drinking Song away the whole hand, for a total of 13 extra cards. Mulliganing only lets you see 10 more. (Drinking Song also lets you draw from a thinned deck; at a bare minimum the post-Drinking Song deck is 49 cards because the Drinking Song itself is gone, but it can be much thinner if you land some Daeron's Runes or Deep Knowledges first, too.)
  • Always trigger Beravor, Galadriel, Deep Knowledge, and Daeron's Runes during your resource phase (and before the Drinking Song, except on rare occasions it can make sense to save the Daeron's Runes and shuffle it back). This way if you draw into a Captain's Wisdom it's not too late to play it. (If you've already played Captain's Wisdom for the round feel free to hold your draw events until the planning phase.)
  • Drinking Song choices are the trickiest. If you have a Captain's Wisdom in hand and you're digging for a Gandalf, your choice is to either play it before the Drinking Song to boost your upside (allowing you to potentially get Gandalf and a toy this round), or to shuffle it back with the Drinking Song to minimize your downside (letting you see one more card and giving you one more shot at finding that Gandalf). I tend to be very aggressive and play the Captain's Wisdom first; it's about a 3-4% absolute reduction in your odds of grabbing Gandalf in Round 1, but the upside to me is worth it.
  • Steward of Gondor also makes for some tricky Drinking Song decisions. If you Drinking Song during the resource phase you lose the chance to play Steward. If you wait to Drinking Song during the planning phase you can get Steward, but you lose the chance to play any Captain's Wisdoms you find. If I've already played Captain's Wisdom, I tend to go into planning, play my Steward, and then Drinking Song. (Again, it's about a 3-4% reduction in your odds of finding Gandalf.) If I have not played Captain's Wisdom yet, I tend to Drinking Song during the resource phase still.
  • Steward always goes on Galadriel, and Denethor always uses his ability to pass an extra resource to her every round. Also, when paying for neutrals, use Denethor's resources first because there's nothing else in the deck that uses those Leadership resources.
  • If you're using Gandalf's Staff to add an extra resource to carry into the next round, that will also usually go on Galadriel. The deck runs Spirit heavy. Sometimes you'll put it on Beravor if you have a Wellinghall Preserver in hand, though.
  • Gandalf always gets the first Wild Stallion if you can swing it. Glorfindel is the second-best target usually, but in quests with Archery or where defending is super dangerous (powered-up Balrogs, Sudden Pitfalls) I plan on letting him die and come back a few times, so save the Stallion. Jubayr is also a great target. Sometimes it's a good idea to toss the extras on Arwen Undómiel or even the Wardens to give them a hit point buffer against quests with lots of direct damage. (Same point for the Ent Draughts, except the big allies tend to get less use out of them so they usually go straight on the little guys or even the heroes if there's a risk of undefended attacks.)
6 comments

Jul 04, 2020 doomguard 1923

why not adding swordthain, to make gandalf a hero? (as soon as he has narya he is no longer without sphere) then u can give him more toys.

Jul 04, 2020 Some Sort 3493

@doomguard I delved into it a bit more in the original decklist, but the short answer is that making Gandalf into a hero robs you of the single best target for Narya in the entire card pool: Gandalf himself. You're spending 4 resources, devoting more deck space, and making the combo jankier and less consistent, and the payoff actually winds up being negative.

Jul 04, 2020 doomguard 1923

i would think the options to get more actions with him (courage miruvoir cram...) or attributboosts that only heroes can have, would be more then the +1 from narya (its not more, he must exhaust for narya and get refreshed no extraaction)

Jul 05, 2020 Some Sort 3493

@doomguard Ally Gandalf does get more actions with Narya than Hero Gandalf.

Imagine I have Gandalf, Treebeard, and Glorfindel on the table. Ignoring the stat bonus for a second, If Gandalf is an ally, I can exhaust Gandalf, trigger Narya, ready Ally Gandalf and Treebeard. This nets me +1 Treebeard action (beyond what I originally would have had). Now, if Gandalf is a hero, I can exhaust Gandalf and ready Treebeard and Glorfindel. This nets me +1 Treebeard action, +1 Glorfindel action, and -1 Gandalf action (because I exhausted Gandalf to trigger Narya and have no means of readying him).

As you see, both paths resulted in +1 action for Treebeard, so the only difference between Gandalf as an ally and Gandalf as a hero is Gandalf as a hero trades one of his actions for an extra action from Glorfindel. I'm +1 Glorfindel action, -1 Gandalf action. This is a bad trade, because a Gandalf action is more valuable than a Glorfindel action.

Now, sure, I can drop an Unexpected Courage on Hero Gandalf. But this doesn't get me an extra Gandalf action, this just offsets the -1 Gandalf action from not being able to Narya himself in the first place. Or to put it differently, Sword-thain + Unexpected Courage isn't getting me an extra action out of Gandalf... it's getting me an extra action out of GLORFINDEL, which is less valuable than an extra action out of Gandalf.

Of course you don't have to stop at one Unexpected Courage. If you can get two on him you are indeed coming out ahead. But that's a 3-card, 8-resource combo! (And yes, Cram can also get you one extra action out of him as a hero, but Ever Vigilant gets you an extra action out of him as an ally without having to Sword-thain him first.)

There are some great stat boosts available to Gandalf-as-a-hero, but none of them compare to the Wild Stallion (2 resources and 1 card for +1 WP, +1 Att, +1 Def, and +1 HP), which only works as long as he's an ally. Or to the +1 Att, +1 Def from Naryaing himself. Most rounds in this deck, Gandalf has a stat line of 5/6/6/5 (or 5/6/7/7 with Arwen and an Ent Draught, though that's usually overkill) with ranged, sentinel, and two actions per round (thanks to Shadowfax). He'd be hard-pressed to improve upon that as a hero.

The deck was originally designed around Sword-thaining Gandalf, and I dropped it because when I was playing it always seemed to leave me worse off after I played it. The deck was a lot better once I freed up that deck space and was able to streamline and speed it up. But I'd encourage you to try it both ways for yourself and see.

Jul 05, 2020 doomguard 1923

i understand your points. what actions are more worth, thats debatable i think, and the merit with cram, courage and miruvor is something to think about. but (for me) the bonus of the stallion matters in the end, because it is in the end +2 more then the hero and defending with 6 instead of 4 that is very important. i would nevertheless add some" to arms": ringsdb.com cheaper than ever vigilant.

Jul 06, 2020 Some Sort 3493

To Arms! is a great fit, for sure, and a clear upgrade over Ever Vigilant. (It can't target Treebeard, but he has built-in readying anyway). In previous versions of this deck I've included stuff like Boomed and Trumpeted, Flame of Anor, and Spare Hood and Cloak to try to maximize my ally action economy. They're powerful effects, but I ultimately dropped them because, outside of the first couple turns, I found myself with more actions than I needed already, so I run the Ent Draughts to improve late-game resiliance. (Especially useful on the Wardens of Healing in quests with direct damage.)

The nice thing about To Arms is the 0-cost doesn't really slow down your setup, so it could potentially be very useful for that first turn or two before Gandalf gets some friends out to Narya.