Concept

This deck embodies the coming together of all factions of the race of Men, symbolized by the Bond of Friendship between Gondor, Rohan and the Dúnedain.

Mechanically, Lothíriel, Éomer and Prince Imrahil compliment each other perfectly: both Éomer and Prince Imrahil's effects are guaranteed to trigger during the quest phase thanks to Lothíriel. Beravor rounds out the hero line-up for and represents the Dúnedain faction. She provides additional early game and card draw.

On the first turn, the deck can:

• Quest for at least 7 with Lothíriel, Beravor and Prince Imrahil (+ whatever Lothíriel brings out);
• Defend with Prince Imrahil for 2 and 4 after he readies at the end of the quest phase when Lothíriel's ally leaves play;
• Attack back with 5 with Éomer, who will be powered up thanks to Lothíriel's ally leaving play.

And that's without spending any resources or playing any cards at all!

Analysis

I'll briefly cover each of the most important aspects of the game and how this deck aims to tackle them.

Offense

Éomer is guaranteed to swing for 5 every turn, potentially going up to 9 once Gúthwinë and Firefoot are equipped. He is quite obviously the main attacker of the deck. Prince Imrahil can serve as a secondary attacker with his respectable 3 if he isn't needed for defense.

We also run some high allies in Glorfindel and Angbor the Fearless (who pretty much permanently has 3 because you practically start out in valour). The many other 2 allies can also chime in when necessary. Finally, there's always Sneak Attack + Gandalf for a powerful nuke.

Defense

Defensively, the deck has a wide variety of options. The primary defender is Prince Imrahil who can quest and still be ready during the combat phase. While his defensive stats aren't anything special, he can still tank most of the weaker early game enemies. Once he gets Gondorian Shield and Armored Destrier, he'll be ready to defend twice at 4 . Ioreth and Warden of Healing can help keep him healthy throughout the game.

Additionally, we run a number of combat tricks to deal with enemies. Feint is the most obvious one. We also run 2 copies each of Ranger of Cardolan and Elfhelm, who basically serve as additional copies of Feint since you can play them for 1 resource when you suddenly need to defend unexpected attacks. In a sense, they're even more flexible than Feint since they don't require a specific resource match, and Elfhelm can even be recycled indefinitely by Gúthwinë!

Questing and Lothíriel

The deck can quest for 7 safely and consistently from turn 1 with Lothíriel, Beravor and Prince Imrahil. And that's not even counting the of whatever ally Lothíriel puts into play. Every ally aside from the Dúnedain and Gandalf is compatible with Lothíriel, and all of them have at least 1 (often 2) to contribute.

Most of those allies also have useful effects when they enter play (such as Envoy of Pelargir, Soldier of Gondor and Westfold Horse-breeder) or can be discarded for powerful effects (like Escort from Edoras and Westfold Lancer), doubling down on Lothíriel's effect. The latter two allies are especially powerful in conjunction with Gúthwinë, allowing you to repeat the same combo every single turn.

Threat control

While the deck starts out at 39 threat, it's rarely in danger of threating out. Between Sneak Attack + Gandalf, Favor of the Valar and Double Back you can repeatedly reduce your threat by 5. This should be more than enough for most quests, while we can still reap the benefits of spending most of our time in valour range, to power up cards like Angbor the Fearless and Soldier of Gondor.

Card draw

You might wonder how a combo deck like this could function with Bond of Friendship, seeing as how you're limited to only running 2 copies of each combo piece rather than 3. This is where the huge amount of card draw comes in. Starting with the 4th hero: Beravor. Each turn you can choose whether you need her 2 or if you'd rather use her ability.

We also run Gléowine, Daeron's Runes and Peace, and Thought to take advantage of the fact that we have access to . Peace, and Thought is especially good in a Bond of Friendship deck because its additional cost of exhausting 2 heroes is more easily mitigated. In this deck you will usually exhaust Beravor and Prince Imrahil, the latter of whom can simply ready after the quest phase anyway.

Horn of the Mark is of course mandatory in any Lothíriel deck, so naturally we also run the 2 copies we're allowed. Finally, we have some forms of indirect card draw in Soldier of Gondor, Westfold Horse-breeder, The Red Arrow and Gather Information, all of which search a particular type of card from your deck rather than drawing cards at random.

Solo or multiplayer?

Honestly, this deck is amazing either way. It can definitely hold its own in solo play as it is well-rounded and doesn't have any glaring weaknesses that it needs help covering up.

In multiplayer it can be a nice glue deck that helps out in various ways. It also doesn't run many highly contested unique picks, aside from maybe Glorfindel, but he's easily swapped out for another ally. The biggest downside of this deck in multiplayer is that it doesn't run many Sentinel or Ranged characters. But it can compensate for that by reliably healing everyone's characters and letting other people draw cards through Beravor and Gléowine.

Sideboard

• If a quest is particularly harsh on threat, you can always choose to include Secret Vigil and Woodmen's Clearing for additional threat reduction.
• Against quests with one particularly strong enemy rather than multiple weaker ones you might consider replacing Armored Destrier with Shining Shield to bump Prince Imrahil to 6 .
• If you care less about theme you can include Arwen Undómiel and Treebeard as well.
• For quests where you need to build your board state faster, there is also A Very Good Tale to consider. This card might even be main deck worthy, as there are several cards that work well with it: Elfhelm and Ranger of Cardolan can be cheated into play at a discount, and Gandalf is also a good target to exhaust during the refresh phase just before he would leave play anyway.