A Elbereth Gilthoniel! Powerful thematic deck! 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

The idea of this deck was to build a thematic deck about Frodo and Sam fight against Shelob: the two hobbits, and Galadriel’s Phial, against a Giant Spider. A Elbereth Gilthoniel!

But then, without expecting it, it became a very powerful deck. The One Ring has a will!

The one Ring goes tipically on Frodo Baggins (or on Sam, as you prefer by story, see sideboard)

The combo you’re looking for:

The main idea of the deck is Action Advantage and the main combo – it’s not the only one – is the following:

• Commit Faramir to the quest
• Commit Frodo to the quest
• Activate Frodo Response to ready Faramir, spending a resource
• Activate Power of Command to give each unique character +1 willpower, increasing your threat.
• Commit other character, as Sam Gamgee for example
• Quest
• Staging
• Use Faramir ability, if needed, to boost willpower
• Win the quest, reduce your threat

With Just Frodo, Faramir and Sam, you can get a lot of will power if needed. Once your board will grow, you’ll have a huge willpower and always low threat, so that you can choose the engagement. It happened a lot in my games to have the staging area full of enemies and locations: this is not an issue, because willpower will increase during the game by playing allies, boosting them through Faramir/Power of Command, and use them (maybe ready thanks to Galadriel) to kill the enemy you choose, defending with Sam. In the Ruins of Belegost or Siege of Annuminas, I ended the game with the staging area crowded with cards, but all of them were under control.

The idea of the Deck

The idea of the action advantage is valid for all the deck. First, Galadriel will allow just playd allies to quest without exhausting: for example we can send Gandalf to the quest, without exhausting, ready Faramir with Frodo, play A Very Good Tale exhausting Faramir and Gandalf and put in to play one or two other allies. Gimli will get ready if you reveal an enemy; Treebeard will ready thanks to it’s resources; Anborn can exhaust if an enemy is revealed; Ceorl can get ready spending a resource; Glorfindel can get ready discarding a card, Rosie Cotton can go questing then get readied through Frodo effect and increase Sam willpower or combat if needed. Galadriel and Frodo’s abilities, Gandalf threat reduction power and Elrond's Counsel will put you in secrecy: this will enable Resourceful and Timely Aid, which can be used in the early game to drop a powerful ally, that can quest without exhausting and be a good target for a Very Good Tale.

Low threat and high willpower will typically means a lot of allies: Sam can defend higher threat enemies and keep your allies on the board, undamaged. Furthermore, only unique characters means Power of Command (and Merry) will trigger at its best, and the contract Fellowship will work since early-mid game: sometimes I feel it’s better to have something like 12 characters on the board, instead of 9 fellowship-boosted character, but fellowship is so cool:). At the end, Fellowship is not mandatory.

Mulligan for:

• Resource cards (Steward of Gondor on Frodo)
• Threat Reduction cards (Elrond Counsel)
• Sneak attack to allow Gandalf draw/reduce threat
• Faramir

Sideboard:

• Healing and condition removal: you can increase number of Elrond/Dúnedain Remedy and add Ioreth
• Location control: you can add Súlien and increase number of Nenya (even though, with so high willpower, I found location lock not so critical with this deck).
• Attach the One Ring on Sam and include Inner Strength if you need shadow cancellation (other than Staff of Lebethron).

This deck for sure suffers quest in which you are already engaged with enemies (Escape from Umbar, Deadmen’s Dike etc): you can sneak attack Gandalf and/or play side-boarded Saruman to take care of this. Once your threat is low and you can choose the enemy to engage, this deck will fly. I hope you can enjoy this deck, as I do!