first deck build

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Mainston1 16

Hi this is my first deck that have built for a solo game. Any advice with what to add or take out will be great.

Cheers

3 comments

Jan 14, 2021 Flamewright 69

Ideally you'll always want to keep your deck closer to 50 cards. If you can make some cuts, it will mean you will more reliably find the strongest cards (Unexpected Courage, Steward of Gondor, Gandalf, etc.).
A few cuts I could see would be: Swift Strike, Second Breakfast, Ever Vigilant, Blade Mastery. Pay attention to your games and see if any of these are sitting in your hand and you were wishing they were comething else. That's a good sign you should cut it.
I would probably also get rid of the Lore cards and the Song of Wisdoms. If you haven't drawn the Song yet, the Lore cards will do absolutely nothing for you. Or you draw the Son but have no Lore cards and spent that resource and card for no benefit.
Welcome to the game! Stick with it; you'll have a blast.

Jan 14, 2021 _EricTheCleric 98

Something that I wish I had know when I started playing is that (usually) the best distribution of card types in a deck is 50% allies, 25% attachments and 25% events.

I don't really know how or why it works, but I do know once I started using it my decks became a lot more reliable and consistent.

It is only a "default" or "average" way of deck building, so will often not be the most optimal way to play (for example, a deck with Well-Equipped should have probably have a large % of attachments). However, I have found following the 50/25/25 rule has given me a better understanding of when is smart to not to follow the 50/25/25 rule. Does that makes sense? ... it makes sense in my head.

And keep building your decks with sideboards! Every adventure in this game is a little different and can throw up different challenges. So it does helps to have 5-10 cards on hands that can really change the way your deck plays to overcome a variety of types of adventure.

Jan 14, 2021 askelad 628

Beginner's advice: as previously mentionned you almost always want 50 cards. Some cards in your deck are better than others. If X is the worst card in your deck, removing it means you will draw instead another card which will be better. Only exception being decks that draw enormous amounts of cards (like with Erestor), decks that have a lot of tutoring effects (like Word of Command, Heed the Dream or Gather Information) and finally decks that you are building specifically against some quests that punish you for having a small amount of cards in your deck. For my part when i build a deck i start by putting in anything i think would fit, then spend 90% of deckbuilding time figuring out what to cut to reach 50 cards.

take some time to look at the cost distribution of your cards: if you have 3 heroes of 3 different spheres generating each one resource each round, then you want the total cost of your deck in each sphere to be balanced. If you have two heroes of the same sphere, then you should have twice as much resource to spend in that sphere. In your deck the total cost by sphere is already pretty balanced so maybe you already know about that. If you have effects generating extra resource (like Arwen Undómiel or Steward of Gondor), know in advance which hero will receive those resources and adjust accordingly.

There are three basic tasks that you will need to accomplish on most rounds: questing, attacking and defending. Because multiple units with a little bit of quest or attack can combine their strengh, you only care about the amount of stat you get for the resource you spend (resource is a tighter constraint than card draw most of the time). Defense is different. You cannot use multiple units to defend a single attack, which means you will want a small number of units with a large amount of defense. For that reason i find it useful to rely on a hero for defense and to rely more on allies for willpower and attack.

A caveat to that is: remember you can always sacrifice a low value ally to defend an attack. Also learning when to risk taking an attack undefended is a skill you learn through experience. Take risks, learn from your mistakes, and don't hesitate to go back on your decision when you realised you messed up, you will learn better that way.

because your deck will have synergy, the longer the game goes the better your board state gets (usually) which means you should put a lot of focus on the first few rounds which are the most critical.

know your staples:

in Feint, Foe-hammer and a bunch of restricted attachments (easy to find in cards->search) (Gondorian Shield in particular)

In : A Test of Will, Unexpected Courage, Hasty Stroke or Inner Strength, Elrond's Counsel, Northern Tracker, Light of Valinor if you have a noldor, Arwen Undómiel if you don't have her as a hero.

In : Daeron's Runes, Deep Knowledge, Drinking Song and Fast Hitch if you have a hobbit, Warden of Healing, Master of the Forge if you have 18 or more attachments, Asfaloth if you have Glorfindel, Henamarth Riversong in solo.

In : Steward of Gondor, Sneak Attack paired with Gandalf, Dúnedain Warning (the best and only good warning, because of the "few characters with high defense" rule), Faramir if you have many low cost allies, We Are Not Idle (even without dwarves, choose x=0 and basically redraw a card. This virtually lets you have 47 cards in your deck instead of 50).

in Treebeard is an excellent ally in any deck and Gather Information is a "free" get whatever you want from your deck in many situations.

Don't hesitate to run multiple copies of a card, if it is really good/important to your strategy.

two or more cards combos need either 1/those cards to be good on their own 2/the combo to be highly profitable 3/ your deck to have a lot of draw

Compared to other card games, card draw is very easy to come by in LOTR, and higher cost cards have a decreasing cost to power rate, so unless your deck is specifically built upon playing expensive cards, you will do much better playing a lot of cost efficient cheap cards and a lot of card draw.

The golden rule:HAVE FUN. This is not a player versus player game, which means the difficulty and rules are ultimately what you chose them to be. If you have an idea for a deck that is fun or thematic but not very powerful, just play it against an easier quest. If you find a specific rule weird or that prevents you from playing the way you want to, just change the rule. If you wonder "what if this was allowed?..." allow it.

Applying this to your particular deck:

Beorn will only enter play if either you have one of your 2 Sneak Attack or if Legolas hoards resource for 6 rounds. He will be a dead card most of the time.

Éomund: you don't have enough rohan characters to justify his cost, and the ones you have only do 1 useful thing per round anyway.

Song of Wisdom+Gléowine+Rivendell Minstrel: to many cards that will do nothing on their own, and nothing special together.

Guard of the Citadel: just a bad card in general. Since all your heroes are noble Envoy of Pelargir would help you redistribute your resource while also having (almost) the same stats.

Snowbourn Scout: does too little, there are better options (search 1 cost allies and take your pick)

Westfold Horse-Breaker: compare this card to Unexpected Courage.

Citadel Plate: very expensive, and in general it is better to focus on than hit points, especially since you don't have any healing.

Dúnedain Mark: not a bad card, but not ultimately necessary and you need to cut things.

Blade Mastery and For Gondor!: Feint, Desperate Defense, Hands Upon the Bow would serve you better. Given the stats of your fighting heroes (aragorn and legolas), readying yields more impact that increasing their stats.

Second Breakfast: you have little reason to expect to discard attachments aside from Éowyn's ability, but then you are paying 1 to spend a card to gain a card, this gains you nothing.

Swift Strike: nice combo with Gondorian Spearman!

Will of the West: Even with only 50 cards you will almost never run out of deck except against some quests that discard cards from your deck. This is a sideboard card to play only against those quests.

Steward of Gondor is an absurdly powerful card, if you play you need a good reason not to run it.

reccomendations for things to try next: Build and play a noldor deck with Arwen Undómiel, Erestor and Círdan the Shipwright and all the noldor synergies. Play a silvan deck. Play a dwarves deck. Play a hobbit deck that benefits from your threat staying very low. Play any deck that includes the combo Steward of Gondor+Gondorian Fire+Blood of Númenor on a hero that you can ready many times. Play a deck with Gandalf and all of his favorite attachments. Build thematic decks that tell a story. Choose a contract and figure out how to break the game with it. Play a bunch of different scenarios without looking them up so that you have no idea what you are getting into. Play seastan's The One Deck to see what it feels like to be a god, and then resolve never to play Vilya again. Use this website to look at lists from reputable players, and try to figure out what makes their deck so powerful. Try building fellowships that work together and play them two-handed, four-handed once you are familiar enough with the game to handle a large table. Go try Battle of carn dum, it's an easy very fun feel-good scenario. The website "vision of the palantir" is useful when looking for a scenario you want to try a deck on. Don't trust anyone else telling you a scenario is easy for beginners.

well that was a longer comment than expected ^^ This game is absolutely awesome, i wish you epic adventures!