HASABE - Bond of Friendship 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

I started this deck design process with a desire to make a One Deck that could do well on the Reduced Quest Gauntlet without using Vilya. I knew that Bond of Friendship could be a good place to start, since it makes hero capture quests more manageable, and it's just a great deckbuilding challenge! Bond gives so many possibilities, but also creates so many restrictions.

I started with my Lore hero since I knew I wouldn't be using Elrond, and I looked to Lore for card draw. I tried a version with Pippin, but unless I wanted to go all hobbits, I wasn't getting a lot of card draw from Pippin because threat got too high. I'd been thinking about Haldan a lot since he got published, including this fun deck with The Burglar's Turn. With cards like Ranger Provisions being even more powerful with 4 heroes, he seemed like a great place to start for this deck. Also, I was surprised (at the time of this publication) there's no other Bond of Friendship deck with Haldan!

With Haldan in place, I next considered what else the deck needed. I wanted to keep my starting threat relatively low if possible, while still allowing significant questing. So that led to Éowyn (who is incredibly good for her cost) and Sam Gamgee. That left me needing a good defender, where Beregond serves expertly. I tried swapping the spheres of Eowyn and Beregond, but I need the threat reduction of this configuration more than the resource/questing power of the reverse, and the power of Éowyn's once-per-game ability is hard to overstate - it's so flexible and so powerful!

In terms of the cards in the deck, it's a bunch of good cards from all the spheres, with extra weight on location attachments. A card like Ranger Provisions normally is "spend 1 resource to gain 3 with some setup," and that's OK but not great. In this deck, it's "spend 1 resource to get 4 resources, draw a card, and +2 or +3 ," which is amazing! Ancient Mathom is "spend 1 resource to draw 4 cards and get +2 or +3 ." Yes, please! I normally wouldn't include Stone of Elostirion in a solo deck, but this deck has enough questing power, and sometimes it's useful to grab a location so I can put my other attachments on it. That said, I do sometimes not play it, so maybe it's better to replace with something else...

I'm not 100% settled on all the cards, and you can see some cards I'm still considering in the sideboard. While Armored Destrier does provide some nice Shadow protection, I'm wondering if can find space for Sterner than Steel or Hasty Stroke. Thoughts welcome!

I also think it would be great to find space for Firyal, which is just insanely good in solo, but it's hard to get to 5 Lore resources. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it, but I'm not sure that's right.

I initially included another Errand-rider and 2x A Good Harvest, but I found that I didn't need so much resource fixing as I initially expected. With the current balance of card draw to resource balancing, it seems to run pretty smoothly with 1 Errand-rider, 2x Envoy of Pelargir (which can push resources to Beregond, Eowyn, and whoever gets Steward of Gondor), 2x Ranger Provisions, and Steward of Gondor (which goes on whoever needs the resources most based on cards in hand). Most importantly to resource management, the biggest cost cards (which I'm very happy to play) are all neutral: Gandalf, Treebeard, and The Free Peoples.

Gandalf is obviously good, but his power in a One Deck is his flexibility. I use his card draw perhaps 50% of the time, threat reduction 40%, and direct damage 10%. It's not uncommon to have 10 resources and be able to play Gandalf and get two uses out of him with Free Peoples. And speaking of Free Peoples, it's quite easy to satisfy in this deck, starting with 7 traits, and that card is just crazy good, particularly in a Bond of Friendship deck - you start with an extra character, you have the extra resources, and you don't need to worry about the right sphere.

Treebeard is the only unique character included in duplicate because he's so good. One area where this deck is a little weak with it's starting heroes is consistent attacking power. Eowyn is great for a single big attack (or two if you don't quest with her... or three with Free Peoples!), but there's only 1 hero with consistent attack power, so the allies need to fill that gap. Treebeard is the perfect fit. He can be played round 1, he has massive stats, and he can multi-act on the turns needed. And if you happen to be running low on resources, he can help pay for Quickbeam (or even keep Wilyador in play!)

It's strange to be playing without Daeron's Runes, Drinking Song (with a Hobbit hero), and Sneak Attack. But, I've found I didn't really need the Lore card draw given Haldan's ability, and I preferred something like Gléowine for permanent draw. And, I was thinking about quests like Under the Ash Mountains or The Fortress of Nurn, where you might prefer just a playable ally or attachment instead of more draw. Lore was the trickest sphere to figure out which 10 cards to include. Sneak Attack seemed like an obvious include for Leadership, but I found it was often missing a great target, since I rarely wanted to save Gandalf if I drew him before Sneak Attack. And, I'm pretty happy with other Leadership cards. If I had another leadership card slot, I might include Prepare for Battle.

I haven't gotten through even close to all the quests on the Reduced Quest Gauntlet yet, but I did beat Under the Ash Mountains and The Fortress of Nurn both on the first try.

Note that the sideboard doesn't actually represent cards that I'm swapping in and out, since I'm playing this as a One Deck, but I included it here for discussion so people could see what cards I considered. Feedback and suggestions very welcome!