The Turd Burglar + Caldara Explainer 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Changes to deck: -1 Hidden Cache, +1 A Test of Will; Burglar's Turn: -1 Citadel Plate, -1 Raiment of War, +1 Silver Lamp, +1 Thrór's Key

The type of deck featured in my videos, Deck Dive or: Defend your Waifu.

Watch this beforehand if you want to learn in general about how Caldara works

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bMdrpQRZwzUoeQ9K9

Watch this to see a Caldara deck in action (I forgot to turn Spotify off before recording so I didn't upload to Youtube)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hOCmG_J1K2VHfitumsKg0gsMl8lZVwAO/view?usp=sharing

For the preamble, this is my favorite and most played deck. If you follow Cardboard of the Rings on Twitter, you should see that most of my games that I post pictures of include this deck. Not only do I find it fun, Caldara decks also belong in the S-Tier deck lists along with the Elrond/Vilya combo though the latter beats the former in terms of power. Two things need to be explained with this deck, how to play Caldara and what makes it good as well as why I picked The Burglar's Turn because even though I love that contract, I admit that it's not very good or consistent (hence the nickname, Turd Burglar; listen to ep 168.5 of Cardboard of the Rings to hear my tales of woe).

Hopefully, you watch the video to know how to run the deck, but I'll also include some details about the choices of cards. Note that I am not a theme player so I put zero consideration into that while making this deck.

Please explain Caldara to me

First off, try to watch the linked video as I go into detail there, but I'll explain it a bit here too. You may find yourself in a convention game and say "this is not my deck. This is not my beautiful playmat. How did I get here?"

To start, the hardest part of the game lies in the first few turns because you have nothing and the encounter deck does not care and wants to ruin you. Caldara essentially helps to get you out of your early game and into mid game very quickly. Let's start by examining her ability (her stats really do not matter, but the two willpower and eight threat are nice). Caldara lets you put spirit allies into play from your discard pile equal to the remaining amount of spirit heroes you control (note they must be printed spirit so no Aragorn with Celebrían's Stone).

So let's start with some basic math. If I discard Northern Tracker and Súlien, the discard has eight resources of allies in it. If I then trigger Caldara, I essentially generated eight resources from her (this is why a Caldara deck features many high cost allies and not just low cost ones). Denethor starts with three resources and people rave about how much he helps get quick starts. This is the most basic math of the Caldara deck. It also explains why people often include cards that either discard from your hand or mill from your deck; you want to get allies into the discard pile as quickly as possible in order to trigger Caldara.

However, you may say, "But Denethor stays in play, generates a resource each turn, and gives me three defense." All of those are true. A big weakness of original Caldara decks came from the long term detriment of losing a hero. Fear not. The developers of the game gave gifts to the players in the form of Prince Imrahil and Sword-thain. Both of these cards give you extra heroes to make up for the loss of Caldara. Due to a ruling from the developers, when you discard Caldara with Imrahil in play, he counts as a Spirit hero in play meaning you can bring back an ally for him plus your two starting heroes. Sword-thain works similarly in counting an extra hero for Caldara (note it only works on unique allies).

Now let's try to look at the math. I can't explain this perfectly, but hopefully you will get it. By playing either Imrahil or Sword-thain, you bring back another ally increasing our eight to possibly eleven if you choose Bofur. Additionally, you no longer take the long term economy hit from having only two heroes. Yes, you paid four for Imrahil and at least the same for Sword-thain plus your ally. But assuming you can bring back an expensive ally, it ends up a wash. This is where I struggle to explain the math. Normally speaking, it would take four turns for Imrahil to pay for himself, but you've brought back an expensive ally plus replaced the resource from Caldara. If you were to say "this hero generates you 11 resources" that seems pretty good, right? Yes, that's not a perfect analogy, but it works enough to get the point across. Also, I don't think you should be triggering Caldara without one of those two cards in play. I hope this makes sense to you as it's getting math into the game.

So essentially, Caldara helps you get off to quick starts. It's not uncommon to trigger her in turns one or two, and since the game starts in the hardest state, she helps to get you going quickly.

Why Dáin Ironfoot?

Arwen Undómiel should require no explanation. Not only does she belong in the top tiers of heroes, her ability to discard cards helps fuel Caldara. Some other popular choices to pair up with them include Círdan the Shipwright or Éowyn because they help to discard cards. I have run them both and both perform admirably so if you choose them, I'm not going to say anything (Seastan has posted a very good deck with Cirdan). However, I think Dain provides the most consistency with his ability to mill three cards on a defense which the other two would take two extra turns to produce; additionally, Dain provides you a super defender which helps greatly in certain quests that start with a boss enemy or something engaged with you. Importantly for this deck, he requires no attachments in the deck which allow Burglar's Turn. A Cirdan deck needs Narya and Light of Valinor at the very least. Shout out to fellow Badger, Bogie, for showing me the way.

The Gondor Allies

The crucial ally to this deck lies in Prince Imrahil. Due to a ruling, when you discard Caldara from play with Imrahil in play, he counts as a spirit hero for her ability. So you can bring back three allies instead of two. In my opinion, you should mulligan for him and dig hard for him if you don't get him immediately.

It's a new card, but one that I've found to be very good, Knight of Belfalas. The reason the Knight provides so much value comes from the ability of the card which lets you target Derufin, Emery, the Knight itself, Pelargir Shipwright, and Prince Imrahil. So blind mills from Dain, Emery, or the Zigil Miner don't need to be feared as much. I have used the Knight to bring back a milled Prince Imrahil to my hand so that I could play him next turn to trigger Caldara. Not to be overlooked, the two attack strength for two cost in Spirit turns out pretty well too.

To speak quickly on the others, Emery can be played for free and help discard spirit allies or get you a free Ered Luin Miner or resources from Hidden Cache. The Shipwright provides three willpower plus three hit points to soak archery. Derufin is not sexy but you get a unique ally for The Arkenstone, two attack strength, and an ability that can be useful on occasion (though not often).

Recursion

Because the deck runs Dain, Emery, Erebor Guard, and Zigil Miner, it mills quite a few cards from your deck. To keep the deck running, you should include some cards to bring stuff back. Will of the West helps refill your deck so Dain can keep triggering his ability; I've already talked about Knight of Belfalas; Dwarven Tomb can be used on cards such as Will of the West or Elrond's Counsel to help threat or Prince Imrahil; lastly Stand and Fight can get back a key card like Imrahil or the Knight to get back two cards or whatever else you want (including someone else's ally).

Sword-thain?

Other Caldara decks include this card because you get an extra spirit hero, meaning you get to bring back an extra ally. I've run that and it's good, no doubt about it. It alleviates the burden of needing Imrahil in play because you could use something like Sam Gamgee/Sword-thain when discarding Caldara to get the same amount of allies. To be honest, that deck might be better because you get a little more consistency and potentially four resources in the resource phase (five when you discard to Arwen). However, it blocks the Turd Burglar so I cannot include it. Yep.

Cuts/Sideboard

The reason the sideboard is not actually included in the deck list is because the easiest way to play Burglar's Turn in Octgn is to just make it your sideboard.

I have adjusted the deck slightly for certain quests. For example, in The Land of Sorrow, I needed The Galadhrim's Greeting. Maybe you will need an extra A Test of Will because of some treachery will hate on your ally swarm or blank textboxes. Got a stupid condition attachment you hate, put in Power of Orthanc. The best place to start would probably be Hidden Cache because it's awesome to hit while milling, but annoying to have in hand (though not entirely dead). If someone has a unique ally conflict, try out Damrod, Háma, Galadriel's Handmaiden (maybe should be in the deck to begin with), or the Rhovanion Outrider. It really doesn't matter. I am running Hasty Stroke because it costs one so it's cheap and matches many other one cost cards for Zigil Miner, but also because shadows have been annoying enough in the last cycle to include it, but for a long time, I ran a version without it. In fact, I often find myself doing what former Cotr host, Brandon, did and discarding it to Zigil Miner. Feel free to get frisky and drop it. Maybe try Shadows Give Way for a big multiplayer game if you want.

The Contract

The Burglar's Turn question takes the least amount of time. Simply put, the Caldara archetype provides so much power that it can carry the Turd Burglar. So I play it for fun, no other reason. Most of the attachments come pretty standard in the Burglar's deck, but a few apply specifically to this deck.

Armor of Erebor and Ring of Thrór go nicely with Dain to give him some extra defense or readying while The Arkenstone goes well with the high amount of unique allies in the deck. At first I didn't think it carried its weight when building the deck, but it gives you two extra willpower with Arwen and Imrahil which matches Silver Circlet or Celebrían's Stone in terms of that boost, but then any additional unique allies make it even better. It's not hard to imagine it giving like five willpower. Generally put the willpower attachments on Arwen or Imrahil, Raiment of War fits best on an ally, and Glamdring or Orcrist go on Imrahil (if you get them before you have him as a hero, you can take them into hand and discard them for a resource).

As a side note, the more players you add, the better this contract gets because you will end up with a higher chance to have locations to explore. It fizzled many times in solo play where I traveled like twice all game. Plus you can play the cards on other players' heroes.

How does this deck perform

Just watch the video and see.

I have played this against quests in the last cycle of the game and won (even with Burglar's Turn doing almost nothing). I've taken it back against some older quests and had no problem. What makes it so good is the flexibility and sphere because you have threat reduction and cancellation with Elrond's Counsel, Derufin (had to say it), A Test of Will, and Hasty Stroke. You can bring those cards back too. It may seem weak against direct damage quests because of the lack of healing, but only Stargazer and Zigil Miner have one hit point. By including Dain, big enemies don't pose as much of a threat. You can swap out allies if you need to for a quest that has battle or siege (might still be tough) since only a few absolutely need to be included in my opinion. I gave a decent list of sideboard cards and there could be so many more (but not attachments). The greatest weakness of this deck is the contract. If a quest does not feature traveling or locations immune to player card effects, then it's a total dud and you should either play it and laugh like me or go with a version that includes Sword-thain and attachments like Map of Earnil. However, if you see someone sit down at the table with a Caldara deck, you know they brought a high level deck.

Fin.

Well, hopefully this cleared things up if you didn't understand the Caldara deck. I'm not professing that this is the best Caldara deck, but I enjoy it and it functions like all Caldara decks so you should get the gist of it. Now, get your hands off my waifu.