The Siege of Gondor - Support deck - Specialist Deck Series 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This deck is one of two that make up the Fellowship designed to beat The Siege of Gondor for my Specialist Deck Series. This deck is primarily focused on questing and support.

The Partner Deck is built almost entirely around Elrond's sons having complete mastery of the combat phase. That leaves this deck handling most other aspects of the game. Importantly, providing early - we can easily manage 10+ on turn 1. The other main purpose is healing, since direct damage is prevalent.

With that in mind, we start off with Elrond. His ability is going to almost double the effectiveness of healing for the fellowship, really taking the sting out of the effect on The Corsair Fleet. His strong and will also come in handy.

Next comes Galdor of the Havens. He's a decent enough quester, but his abilities are why he's here. Particularly, his selective mulligan gives us the best chance of finding cards we need on turn 1. The primary goal is to get Arwen Undómiel in play so Elrohir in the Partner Deck can manage defense for the whole table.

Lastly we are joined by Círdan the Shipwright. His 4 is extremely strong, and he also contributes to our goal of finding key cards quickly. As a bonus, he allows us to bring along Narya to supercharge our allies.

The plan for the deck is to build up our to progress through the quest, while providing healing and card draw for both decks. Defending should be handled by the Partner Deck, but early on we may need to muster up our own . Aragorn helps a lot with this if we are first player, as does his Banner.

Let's look at the cards:

Arwen Undómiel - One of the key cards for the whole fellowship. We need her ability to allow Elrohir in the Partner deck defend for us. We really want her in play on turn 1 if possible.

Bilbo Baggins - A decent questing ally, who we can also get some bonus value from with the Spare Pipes in the deck.

Ethir Swordsman - The pinnacle of efficient questing allies, we're always happy to play this guy.

Firyal - There may be no better card for ensuring questing success. This quest does not have the sort of back-breaking encounter cards that many others do, but the ability to control the encounter deck is still valuable. One thing to note, this quest relies on exploring multiple specific locations. In 2 player this is unlikely to cause an issue, but nonetheless Firyal can help in revealing a relevant location. Her 3 is also nothing to sneeze at with the direct damage coming at us.

Galadriel's Handmaiden - Another decent quester. The threat reduction is also welcome. This deck has a pretty high starting threat. Ideally we can manage our own threat while that of the Partner deck rises, as that may help with enemy engagements later on.

Gléowine - Extra card draw is always welcome. Gleowine's flexible and repeatable ability is an excellent way to supplement our other card draw effects.

Ioreth - We really want a good deal of healing and Ioreth is a strong addition to our deck. With Elrond she can effectively heal 4 damage each round, which is likely to amount to a full heal (attachments may allow more than 4 damage on a hero).

Mablung - Another decent questing ally. We may use the engagement cost part of his ability, but possibly not the rest. Having said that, there are a few traps in the deck so it might be beneficial.

Misty Mountain Journeyman - This is another extremely efficient questing ally. It should not be a problem to get an enemy engaged in order to play him. In fact, early on we may not have any choice in the matter anyway. Only 1 copy because we don't want them to be stuck in our hand in case we don't manage to have favourable engagements.

Quickbeam - Extremely strong ally for his cost. We have tons of healing so his ability is not really a downside. Early on we may need his 3 and he's also a great target for Narya.

Robin Smallburrow - Another questing ally. We are unlikely to use his ability, but it may occasionally be of use.

Súlien - Her ability is somewhat neutered in this quest, but her high makes her a welcome addition.

Warden of Healing - Another key card. Thanks to Elrond, each Warden can heal 4 damage per turn, more if we have spare resources. We definitely want to see one of these guys early.

Banner of Elendil - This card represents a massive boost to our characters. As an Artifact, it lets Aragorn quest without exhausting and then all the first player's questing characters get a boost (especially good if we are first player). Finally, this is probably the best way to increase our until Elladan is powered up.

Dúnedain Pipe - I'm a big fan of playing this card when possible. It's repeatable card draw and in practice I find the cost to be minimal. There's almost always a card in hand that we don't want. Something I particularly like is that each player gets to use the card when controlling Aragorn.

Entangling Nets - This is a very cheap way ease the pressure of combat early in the game. It turns a lot more characters into viable defenders and even opens up the possibility of risking undefended attacks, although I probably wouldn't unless there was already a healer in play.

Light of Valinor - This not a key part of the deck, but still very useful. The most likely target is Cirdan, since it allows free use of Narya. It also allows easier use of Tale of Tinúviel. It can go on any hero except Aragorn, so the board state will determine the best recipient.

Narya - This is an amazing card for action advantage. We're not likely going to want this for defensive purposes, although in a pinch it can still give us a chump blocker. Instead, we will either use if for a decent boost, or for getting extra uses out of Gleowine or Warden of Healing.

Silver Circlet - We don't really have any competition for Restricted slots, so this is a nice efficient way to boost Cirdan's .

Spare Pipe - These pipes play a few roles. The first is that the extra hit points can actually be very useful to manage our damage and healing. As an example, moving our heroes from 4 to 5 hit points means they can absorb an extra point of damage while still requiring the same healing effort (thanks to Elrond our healing comes in units of 2 and 4). The search for events is obviously very nice too and we can even get bonus value by searching a pipe up with Bilbo. Just want to note a rules quirk here - we can play Spare Pipe on the heroes in the Partner Deck for the HP boost, but if we do we lose the ability to search for an event since we no longer control the card to trigger the Response.

Unexpected Courage - There are many valid uses for this card depending on when we draw it. Early on it might be prudent to give to Elrohir in the Partner Deck to ensure he can defend as often as he needs. If that's not needed, the other heroes also have stats we may want to use more than once, particularly Elladan, Elrond and Aragorn.

Daeron's Runes - We want to find our key cards as soon as possible and this is a fantastic (and free!) way to do it. As mentioned above, we want to Mulligan hard for Arwen, but we shouldn't discard this card or Deep Knowledge using Galdor's ability since they offer better card selection just being played.

Deep Knowledge - More card draw, not quite as free this time. The massive benefit of course is that both decks will get to draw cards, and having an extra couple of cards is a huge bonus for the Partner Deck to get enough Restricted attachments in hand. We'll be very happy to see this in our opening hand.

Elrond's Counsel - This deck does start with a pretty high threat, so a little threat reduction is welcome. Not a key card, but with Deep Knowledge in the deck it's easy to imagine our threat creeping up to 50 without it.

Tale of Tinúviel - I've found this to be a really effective card when given the opportunity to play it. It does have flexibility on who it can be used for, either to ready Aragorn or using him to ready another hero. We already have other action advantage, increasing the utility even more. Even in a conservative use case, giving Aragorn +2 & , and letting him use both is very strong.