CSI: Bree - A Murder at the Prancing Pony Deck 1.0

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• 1.0

CSI: Bree

A Spirit and Lore deck specifically built to tackle the Murder at the Prancing Pony scenario as a solo player.

-- Heroes --

1. Arwen Undómiel: Questing every round. Her ability should be used most rounds to give a resource to either herself or to Galdor.
2. Beregond: On stand-by to defend. Load him up with either Livery of the Tower or Protector of Lórien (or both) as quickly as possible to ensure he won't take damage when defending (which will also allow you to reduce your threat by 1 each round). When drawn, Unexpected Courage should be played on him, allowing him to defend twice each round if needed.
3. Galdor of the Havens: Flexible for either questing or attacking depending on your needs. Use his mulligan ability if you wish, but his main advantages here are: 1) to generate an extra Lore resource through Arwen and, 2) to draw 6 cards when you run out.

-- Key Cards for an Opening Hand --
If any of the following cards or card combinations come up, don't mulligan. If you don't like all the cards, use Galdor's ability to toss a few to draw more.

• Unexpected Courage (so Beregond can defend twice)
• Henamarth Riversong (allows you to carefully manipulate the amount of progress you make on a stage, which is especially useful for 2B)
• Elladan and Elrohir together (see below)
• Any hand with a good selection of lower-cost allies

-- Starting Priorities --
There's a few ways you can get off to a good start with this deck. In no particular order, good first targets are:

1. Multiple allies out on the table. You're going to need a good number to handle both questing and combat as the game progresses.
2. Getting Elladan and Elrohir out together. You can actually achieve this on Round 2 if you have them both in your hand (just discard a card to get Galdor 1 more resource from Arwen, or through To the Sea, to the Sea!). They can quest or fight depending on your needs.
3. Attack power. One thing this deck is lacking is a lot of high attack power allies. As a result, it's a good idea to get out Quickbeam and/or Glorfindel when you can. This is an alternative to Elladan and Elrohir mentioned above. You're unlikely to be doing both in the early game.
4. Buff Beregond to he can withstand attack-boosting shadow cards, as discussed in the hero entry above.

-- Deck Usage Tips --
As always with Murder at the Prancing Pony, threat will quickly become a big problem if you can't reduce it. Fortunately, this deck includes numerous ways to reduce your threat reliably:

• Gandalf (you'll pretty much always want to use him to reduce threat)
• The Galadhrim's Greeting (self-explanatory, but use Dwarven Tomb to make it even better)
• Beregond's ability (very reliable, and sometimes it's worth not finishing off an enemy in order to make sure he can continue defending in subsequent rounds as long as he takes no damage)

As a result, on 1B you should opt to increase your threat by 2 (rather than draw another counter card) every single time. The deck can handle it no problem. Just keep an eye out for Ramshackle Manor and always prioritise exploring it so it doesn't block threat reduction.

Defending with Beregond is important, because if you have to chump block too many times, you'll find yourself short on allies. Blocking with him successfully means you'll have plenty of time to build up a solid ally army.

Other than that, just make sure you always Investigate the maximum number of times whenever you're given an option. Even though Northern Tracker is included in the deck for location control, most of the time you'll only want to fully explore a location when it's the active one.

-- Reasons Behind Other Card Choices --
I'm sure many cards from this deck could be substituted for others that perform a similar role, but there's a few picked out for very particular purposes. This section provides just a little more detail for those interested in the logic of my choices that I haven't already covered (or aren't necessarily self-explanatory).

• Bilbo Baggins: Purely as a low-cost Spirit ally that provides 2 willpower. You can easily substitute him if you want. I've included 3 to make sure I have some extra willpower early on.
• Daughter of the Nimrodel: An emergency button to heal Beregond, especially if you haven't yet drawn Protector of Lorien or Livery of the Tower.
• Ghân-buri-Ghân: Can contribute 3+ willpower fairly regularly, but especially helpful to avoid a couple of the more annoying travel effects (Dark Alley, especially).
• Mablung: To deal with Bill Fenry if your threat is low and he's in the staging area. That said, the scenario pushes your threat up so fast, he's unlikely to be there for long.
• The Favor of the Lady: A bit of a throw away, but that extra willpower can come in handy.
• Heed the Dream: Great for all sorts of reasons, but specifically to help draw Unexpected Courage and/or Henamarth Riversong.

My collection is far from complete, so I'm sure this deck could be improved with many cards I don't have. I hope you can use it, experiment with it and make it your own!