The King's Redemption 1.0

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• 1.0

Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day's rising he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. Hope he rekindled, and in hope he ended; over death, over dread, over doom lifted out of loss, out of life, unto long glory. ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

One of the parts of the Lord of the Rings I come to appreciate more and more is the character arc of King Théoden. Reading the trilogy as a young teenager, I already was fascinated by this character, but couldn't really understand it. But becoming older, I learnt that it's not always easy to see what is the right thing to do and often even harder do to it. In face of the darkness of a pandemic, economic uncertainty, injustice towards people of different race and sexual orientation, we might think we can't make a change and give up, retreat into melancholy and look for our own people. Théoden reminds us that we can overcome the darkness where we chose to ride out of our passivity and choose to act, hear the call of the ones suffering and come to there aid.

This LCG gave us with it's different versions of Théoden both sides of his character.The Spirit version represents the despaired old man that looks for his own folks, while the Tactics one shows us the glorious warrior that rides into battle. With the release of Thorongil we now can use both of them in the same deck and retell his character arc. This deck starts out with the Spirit one that helps us muster Rohan allies in the early game. We then ad the Tactics for more willpower (potentially for the whole table) that becomes with Golden Shield and Herugrim also extra attack and defense as well as ressource smoothing.

Thinking about the heroes to go with Théoden, I first included Tactics Éowyn. She was at Théoden's side for the whole story and is an in general powerful hero that can make use of the willpower boosting and give immediate access to the tactics sphere. I than had too chose between Gríma or Éomer who influenced Théoden for good or bad. I settled with the Wormtongue, mainly because I wanted the card draw from lore.

The allies are mostly Rohan traited, altough I didn't include to many dicard effects and more in general powerful stats and effects. There is a small side quest package to boost our Riders of Rohan and The Storm Comes helps us to use Grimas ressources to pay for those allies. This seems super thematic, considering that the dialogue with Gandalf in the flavour text made Théoden take away ressources from Grima and use them for the war. Speaking about The White Rider, his impact on Théoden was to big to leave him out of the deck and it's a strong and flexible card for that we can ues Grimas ressources in the early game (which to be fair isn't as thematic). The attachments go all on Théoden to make him the powerful hero and I also like Unexpected Courage from a thematic point. It also synergizes with Peace, and Thought that nicely represents Théodens passivity at the beginning of his story.

I took this deck up against Battle of Helms Deep (I know you are actually not allowed to use Grima, but there was the big change in Théodens Arc) and defeated it on the first attempt. Thi deck draws unusually well for a Rohan, I could even draw out of a Poisoned Councils hitting on turn three. I then played it alongside a Gondor Deck against the Battle of Pelennor Fields. While I lost to attempts the deck was still working and I enjoyed playing it. This also shows that this isn't a super powerful but a really nice thematic deck.