Progression The Steward's Fear Vilya Outlands

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Progression The Steward's Fear Vilya Outlands 1 1 0 2.0
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DunYoss 34

DunYoss has a newer deck inspired by this one: Progression The Steward's Fear Vilya Outlands

Introduction

This deck assumes you are playing Progression style (only allow player cards published up through the current scenario), including incremental FAQ implementation based on FAQ release dates. Of note, Will of the West is used in this deck according to its original text (does not destroy itself upon use) so that we can cycle our two threat reducers as well as all the stuff we dump with Zigil Miner and Daeron's Runes. Note that I personally believe that the official FAQ for Will of the West was done improperly. Based on the designer's article explaining the change, their only goal was to break "unlimited combos" and therefore it should have instead added "Cards named 'Will of the West' may no longer be played this round." to the end in order to preserve as much of the original function as possible while still achieving the stated FAQ design goal.

Discussion

  • Imladris Stargazer is probably the most important card in the deck because it enables both Vilya and Zigil Miner.
  • Unexpected Courage is very powerful to allow Elrond to use Vilya and still take other actions. Extra copies can go on Elrond again or Beravor.
  • The red and purple allies can only be played via Elrond or Vilya.
  • Gildor Inglorion + Vilya is very potent to play any card from your hand for free in any Action window. This is especially good with Gandalf.
  • While Hirluin the Fair seems like an obvious choice to include for an Outlands deck, I've found that he's not good enough due to the low starting stats. Sure he becomes a powerhouse late game, but by then the host of allies makes it moot. The most important time for a hero is the beginning when there are no allies to help yet. Also, since I play with a partner who's running red/purple and thus already has all the best purple cards, I'd prefer not to have the awkwardness of a purple hero in my lineup. If you go solo, then Hirluin might work and you can add the usual purple power cards (Steward of Gondor, Sneak Attack, full count of Gandalf).
2 comments

Sep 11, 2021 BrnLmx 23

Interesting deck. One question out of curiosity: what kind of rule you usually follow when deciding if to whether to mulligan or not the first hand? Suppose that you do not find vylia, to mulligan in any case or if not, is a stargazer enough for you?

Sep 11, 2021 DunYoss 34

First of all, thank you for taking time to read and comment!

I've found that the opening hand is more about avoiding dead cards than it is about fishing for the best cards. This isn't a Steward of Gondor deck. For example, we don't want to see Will of the West, Lórien's Wealth, or duplicates of Gléowine, Unexpected Courage, or Vilya. We also would prefer not to see our expensive cards (Gildor Inglorion, Northern Tracker, Gandalf) because we want to find and play those with Vilya. As I said above, Imladris Stargazer is the most important single card and you'll want to pair it with Vilya or Zigil Miner as soon as you can (it also activates the Hunter of Lamedon, can set up perfect draw/discard pairs for Daeron's Runes, and lets you locate your expensive cards and avoid drawing them until Vilya can draw+play for free). Even without one of the "key cards", if you have a hand with no dead cards, you're probably in good shape because it means you're going to have a strong board state very quickly, which will free up Beravor to draw cards instead of questing or fighting. Once you are drawing with Beravor every turn, you'll quickly put all your missing pieces together and sprint to the finish line.