Ride them Down (with Hobbit Ponies)

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Ride Them Down
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Ride them Down (with Hobbit Ponies) 15 6 20 1.0
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Aurion 868

This is my latest version of an older deck of the same name.

Ride Them Down is an immensely powerful card, turning any power-questing deck into a force to be reckoned with, easily capable of dispatching a hill troll or two. I have designed this deck for solo play but it would also compliment an Elfhelm deck very well, giving an extra boost to our hobbit heroes’ once they have mounted their Hobbit Ponies.

Strategy

Ideally, we are looking for 1 or 2 Hobbit Pipes in our starting hand as well as some threat reduction to get the card draw machine working and keeping our starting threat nice and low to prevent any early engagements. The only problems I have encountered so far with this deck has been from a lack of card draw, so it is vital to get as many pipes out as soon as possible. For this reason, Bilbo is also a great card to see in your opening hand.

A Westfold Horse-breeder can also be a good card to see early on as she can help fetch a hobbit pony and she can also be a cheap chump-blocker as our hobbits are quite susceptible to any direct damage during questing. Frodo can shrug it off with his ability so you should stick Unexpected Courage and/or Hobbit Pony on Merry & Pippin first.

In the early game, it is all about building your board state by keeping threat low and getting as many allies out as possible. I would recommend saving Gandalf for the mid-game so as not to raise your threat to early, unless you have got a couple of copies in hand and can let him leave play at the end of the round.

There is plenty of threat reduction between Merry and the event cards, and the latter can be recurred using Dwarven Tomb, although these should be reserved to retrieve Ride them Down if possible, so you can start clearing the staging area of enemies, which will build up (particularly in Journey Along the Anduin).

If there is a low-engagement cost enemy that is too hot to handle early on, you can repel it with Pippin’s ability and take it out with Ride them Down in the next quest phase.

You should avoid travelling to locations if you can get away with it. That way, the Curious Brandybucks will remain in play and you can clear the locations with your Northern Trackers whilst they are in the staging area.

In the mid to late-game, you should have enough allies out to power through quests and you should now have Gandalf in play for additional and to start bringing the weaker enemies down to be dealt with.

Don’t forget to trigger Will of the West if you run out of threat reduction cards.

One last thing, if playing multiplayer, I would swap out The Shirefolk for The Galadhrim's Greeting so you can help keep the threat down on both sides

That's it. Enjoy!

17 comments

Jul 16, 2021 Alonewolf87 1921

Cool deck.

Have you perhaps considered some copies of Pelargir Shipwright? They would have 3 WP in this deck and a substantial hit points pool for archery and other direct damage.

Jul 16, 2021 serpico 262

Cool blue deck!!! Lovely i will try this

Jul 16, 2021 GreenWizard 310

Cool deck! What are your thoughts on Gandalf's Staff for OHaUH Gandalf?

Jul 16, 2021 TritonWreck 256

Nice deck. I was going to suggest Map of Earnil since it’s not shown in your deck, but then you mentioned it in the write up. Is it meant to be included?

Jul 17, 2021 kjeld 615

Agree on Pelargir Shipwright. Also, what about Emery? She's a fantastic get-out-of-jail-free card for mono- decks. Also, like Map of Earnil, Resourceful is mentioned in the writeup but isn't in the decklist.

Jul 23, 2021 Aurion 868

apologues @TritonWreck & @kjeldThe writeup is from my original deck of the same name. I forgot to edit it before I published @GreenWizardI think it's possibly the best Gandalf in a deck with plenty of threat reduction - with Shadowfax he can quest, defend and attack for 4 every round! You don't want to get him out too early though. I would recommend getting your threat right down before sticking him out

Jul 23, 2021 Aurion 868

@Alonewolf87I hadn't ever really looked at that card before as I hardly ever play monosphere decks. same goes for Emery (I always read it as discard her if the the discarded cards weren't , so counted cards in that! They seem like some solid choices for monosphere .

Jul 23, 2021 Aurion 868

@GreenWizardcompletely misread your question - yes, Gandalf's staff is very good for getting rid of treacheries, particularly if you know that they discard allies. I'd probably swap out 1 copy of a Good Meal for it.

Jul 23, 2021 Aurion 868

@kjeldI found that resourceful wasnt really needed with Good Meal and Smoke and Think to reduce costs instead, both of which can be recurred with Dwarven Tomb

Jul 24, 2021 doomguard 1963

Good Meal is neutral, cannot recycled with Dwarven Tomb . just saying, i can understand the point.

i would consider replace Pippin with (MotK) Bilbo Baggins because then you can start the game with a pipe, that is perhaps faster.

Jul 26, 2021 Aurion 868

@doomguard you are right of course, I'm not sure why I typed both. Re: Bilbo, it's a nice idea but I like to use him multiple times to bring out the pipes. Also, Pippin's ability is really useful in the early game to prevent low engagment enemies coming down when there's no way to deal with them. I know he gets a lot of hate but I would actually say his ability is good in this deck, particularly in solo play as he allows you to push back enemies and then clear them our with ride them down in the next quest phase. In multiplayer, it's a little less useful as they are likely to engage the next player but I tend to pair it with a more combat proficient deck.

Jul 26, 2021 doomguard 1963

i am familiar with the multiple bilbo-usage. but, starting with a hobbitpipe means possible earlier carddraw and thats often more than the chance for a 2. bilbo.

@pippin, i deal him not a bad character. hobbit and spirit alone is worth. but early/unexpected enemys can be absorbed by frodo, i think with spiritfrodo there is not so much use o him.

Jul 26, 2021 Aurion 868

@doomguardI think you are right provided you've got some way of dealing with said enemy, but Pippin is pretty pivotal in making sure you don't start getting a build up of low engagement enemies before you are set up to deal with them. Remember the point of the deck is to ride the mdwon in the staging area and Pippin's ability helps immensely with that objective

Jul 26, 2021 doomguard 1963

o.k. understandable. but then i have another card i would include. Scroll of Isildur without you can ride down a maximum of 5 times (3 events + 2 dwarfen tomb) with the scroll its 2 more (or other spiritevents)

Jul 27, 2021 SubwayTolkien 125

Minor correction for those who maybe new to the game, `@doomguard meant Map of Earnil as opposed to Scroll of Isildur (which to be fair is probably the most used type of this card).

Jul 27, 2021 doomguard 1963

true ^^ and thx for correcting (i play with the german versions of the cards)

Jul 28, 2021 Aurion 868

@SubwayTolkien``@doomguardI did have Map of Earnil in my original deck. Not sure why I took it out tbh! I think it was after I added Dúnhere to my companion deck that I realised I only needed to Ride Down the biggest enemies as he would deal with the weaker ones. If I was playing solo though, I would probably swap out Good Meal for Map of Earnil as I'd be running The Shirefolk instead of The Galadhrim's Greeting so wouldn't need as much cost reduction and Smoke and Think would still be there if needed and it's not restricted to reducing the cost of just events.