Progression Shadow & Flame Lore Spirit Combo

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DunYoss 54

Note: Partner should have Born Aloft.

Introduction

Previous (FoS) deck: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/21622

This deck assumes playing Progression style, including incremental FAQ updates based on FAQ date versus publication date of each card. Under those assumptions, the previous deck's combo is no longer valid because FAQ v1.3 weakened both Beravor and Zigil Miner.

Validity: Next errata to worry about is FAQ v1.7, just before The Lost Realm (Deluxe) and/or The Treason of Saruman (Saga), where Will of the West removes itself from the game.

Post-play update

We built our decks blind (as listed below), not knowing that the quest would have the particular things involved. We failed twice and had to adjust our two decks to account for the Balrog and the Secrecy. I added three copies of Song of Eärendil so that I could absorb all the threat and keep the Balrog off my partner. I also added three Elrond's Counsel that effectively work like Feint in this quest. My partner piled up all the 2-cost red Sentinel allies and three copies of Feint. The combo remained and happened on turn seven.

Discussion of Card Changes

While we lose power on two cards, we also pick up some powerful new tools in this pack, specifically Elrond, Vilya, We Are Not Idle, Risk Some Light, and Master of the Forge. The old combo is now broken, but there is a new one with We Are Not Idle to replace it. There is no longer any reason to have high cost cards to fuel Zigil Miner, because he now works on matching rather than working on cost. So, we can cut our second and third copies of Gildor Inglorion for two more Imladris Stargazer. Having Beravor weaker means that extra copies of Grim Resolve aren't worth it either, so we cut all but one. We also have no need for an early copy of Song of Kings, so we can cut all three Rivendell Minstrel. We now have five open slots.

To enable the updated combo, we need at least one copy of We Are Not Idle, two copies of Lórien's Wealth, and non-miner dwarf count of at least four (ten if we don't use miner money). We only had three dwarves before, so we need to add one. Longbeard Map-Maker enables unlimited Willpower for combo payoff while also being a dwarf. We've thus used four of our openings already.

For combo payoff, if we add Risk Some Light plus Shadow of the Past, then both Denethor and The End Comes are no longer needed. Removing Denethor makes room for Elrond and removing The End Comes makes room for Risk Some Light and also means we're not locked into Born Aloft anymore, which further means we don't need Song of Battle either. Shadow of the Past takes one of those spots, and Master of the Forge gives both card draw and shuffles away stale cards to get fresh views for Imladris Stargazer. If we're adding Elrond then we also want Vilya and we want it in our opening hand as often as possible so we want the full three copies, which uses our remaining opening and leaves us needing to cut two more. There aren't any easy choices, so we just skim one Northern Tracker and one Hasty Stroke off the top.

Since we removed our Born Aloft and since our partner is running a deck with , we can ask him to run Born Aloft (it's mostly for his Gandalf) to help with the combo payoff. Note that Parting Gifts is not needed because We Are Not Idle can put money on any hero, including your partner's.

Summary of Changes:

Updated Combo

The new Zigil Miner can only generate a maximum of $2 each, up to $6 total for three of them. This is enough to fuel Will of the West (pre-errata) and Grim Resolve, but not enough to make a resource loop. Therefore we need to add We Are Not Idle (pre-errata). Also, since we lost Beravor multi-use, we need to make up for card draw some other way. Most likely candidate is Lórien's Wealth, which means adding $3 to the loop cost (now $9 to break even, $10 to make a profit). This means we need to earn at least $4 from We Are Not Idle. If we can earn more from We Are Not Idle then we can have fewer Zigil Miner activations. With ten dwarves, we wouldn't need Zigil Miner activations at all. I'll show you what that (very simple!) combo would look like, but it consumes too many deck slots and fails to make use of our set of Imladris Stargazer, so it's not the one we're going to use.

Zero Miner Ten Dwarf Combo

Setup:

Combo:

Three Miner Four Dwarf (M3D4) Combo

Setup:

The basic idea is to use Imladris Stargazer to set up clumps for Zigil Miner and Lórien's Wealth, then We Are Not Idle and Gléowine to fill in the gaps. (Gildor Inglorion is also there to rescue a mistake.) The concept is simple, but in order to rigorously prove that we can cover every possible permutation, we have to go through all possibilities and it gets quite complicated. If you struggle with reading the proof, instead click the "play on dragoncards" button and just try it out for yourself. It's much easier to do it than to explain it. Note that We Are Not Idle can put money on any hero, so once you have a big pile on Elrond you can start putting money on other heroes as well. This means all heroes in play will get a big pile of money.

Notation: When I put square brackets around a card stack it means unknown or insufficiently known ordering. No brackets means we know the order. Cards at the left of the stack are on top of the deck, cards at the right are at the bottom of the deck.

Combo (deck will be 10 cards, [MMMMMMRRRR]):

Combo Exit

Now that we have unlimited money on every hero in play and want to exit the combo, we need to get down to only Will of the West, Grim Resolve, and Lórien's Wealth in circulation. It will take multiple loops, but if we do the first loop right we can use Gléowine, double Lórien's Wealth, and Master of the Forge (if we included attachments for our mining pairs) to draw a total of eight out of the ten cards (net progress of -4 cards). After that it's two simple loops to finish up. I'll assume we only have two attachments in the loop, and note that Gildor Inglorion can swap an attachment in from hand to make sure Master of the Forge always has one to find.

Exit10 (deck size = 10, get down to 6)

Exit6 (deck size = 6, WMMLLG, get down to WLGM)

Exit4 (deck size = 4, get down to WLG remaining)

Combo Payoff

All heroes in play now have unlimited money. We have an empty deck, and a discard with only Will of the West, Lórien's Wealth, and Grim Resolve. Using our third copy of Will of the West lets us reset the discard pile for each of our partners, and then unlimited activations of Gléowine lets our partners draw their entire decks.

Unlimited use of Events and discard-from-play effects: use payoff card (and put in discard pile), Will of the West, Lórien's Wealth, Gléowine, Grim Resolve, repeat as desired.

Unlimited ally activations: Will of the West, Lórien's Wealth, activate allies (for example, Gléowine on partner), Grim Resolve, repeat as needed.

Refer to my previous combo deck for payoff options: https://ringsdb.com/deck/edit/290039

The main notable addition is Risk Some Light, which can both reveal and choose the order of the entire encounter deck when used repeatedly. As such, it is mostly better than The End Comes plus Denethor, but the downside is that we lose the ability to shuffle the discard into the deck, which means we might have to wait for the deck to cycle before we can pick up a missed Victory card. We can add Shadow of the Past to cover the discard pile control.

Combo Restart

If for some reason you need to restart the money loop, it's possible. Starting from the Payoff ready state above, you have an empty deck. Play Daeron's Runes three times, discarding two Vilya and one Gléowine, then play We Are Not Idle (gain $4). Now Will of the West and you're basically in the combo state except that you will need to use Gildor Inglorion to swap one Daeron's Runes for one Gléowine during the first iteration of the combo, preferably as late as possible in the mining sequence.

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