The Battle of the Pelennor Fields - Outlands - Specialist De 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This deck is one of two that make up the Fellowship designed to beat The Battle of the Pelennor Fields for my Specialist Deck Series. This deck is all about Outlands and its allies will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting in questing and combat.

The Partner deck is designed as a support for this one, partly to help things get set up, partly to cover some of this deck's weaknesses.

As an Outlands deck we kick off our hero lineup with Hirluin the Fair. He has a nice low threat, will end up with excellent stats and he's also our main way to pay for our non- allies.

Hirluin is joined by Forlong thanks to the Messenger of the King contract. This means that as the game goes on we will have 2 heroes who become exceptionally strong in terms of stats, and Forlong can contribute in both the quest and combat phases.

Finally, we round out our heroes with Denethor. He's going to contribute greatly to giving us a quick start. He also has a low threat, will make a decent defender and can help smooth our resources by passing them to Hirluin once he has Steward of Gondor attached.

A note on the contract - in terms of the timing of setup effects I'm firmly in the camp that prefers them triggering in Step 2 of setup and for the purpose of testing this fellowship I always put Forlong straight into play with the contract. Faramir is in the deck and can be an alternative to using Forlong as a hero, so the deck should not fail if Forlong is in our opening hand. In fact, I can see Faramir being a better choice as the hero anyway, so the deck can be played regardless of contract preferences.

Our plan is to get everything we need setup in time for Stage 3. We'll achieve that with Denethor's resources, Steward of Gondor, A Very Good Tale, and card draw from Beravor in the Partner deck. Having a free turn with a deck like this is extremely beneficial. One of the main issues is that we have poor out the gate and desperately need to find an Ethir Swordsman. Once we have that, we're pretty much good to go. Of course, Aragorn and his attachments are great for questing as well.

Let's talk about the cards in the deck (Messenger of the King and Forlong were covered above):

Outlands stat boosters - Anfalas Herdsman, Ethir Swordsman, Knights of the Swan, Warrior of Lossarnach - I'll group these together because they're all trying to achieve the same thing - create an army of super soldiers. The fact is that we want all 12 of these in play if possible, as they both boost the rest of our board and also bring those boosted stats into play themselves. The Ethir Swordsman is the most important as we can't contribute very well without the boost, but really we want them all. These are generally the priority when choosing allies with A Very Good Tale. Remember that we need one ally of each sphere to allow Forlong his readying effect.

Envoy of Pelargir - A cheap ally that also allows us to smooth our resources. The resource can even go on 2 of the heroes in the Partner deck if needed. This is a great choice for an ally to exhaust with A Very Good Tale, and we can always use her as a chump blocker.

Errand-rider - This ally is extremely useful with the decks we have. Firstly, Hirluin is by far the most useful hero to hold our resources, since he can pay for every non- card in our deck. This deck also has good resource generation and the Partner deck might struggle a little more, so passing them over is handy. It's also useful to just make up numbers for AVGT.

Faramir - We are an ally swarm deck which makes Faramir one of the best allies to have. Only a one-of because we have plenty of other similar effects. As mentioned above, he can be used as an alternative to Forlong as a starting hero.

Gandalf - With our resource generation Gandalf is a great way to spend our excess resources. We're running Sneak Attack to get even more benefit. We'll likely want his card draw to find more of our Outlands allies, but having the other options is great as well. He's a great card to have around when the Witch-king is attacking too.

Hunter of Lamedon - The only Outlands ally in our deck that doesn't boost the others. We want these anyway, as they still benefit from the boosts provided by the others. This one helps us dig through our deck to find more allies and I would almost always trigger his ability.

Treebeard - This is a combat heavy quest, so Treebeard can make a big impact. Like Gandalf, he's a good way for us to spend any excess resources. Bonus points if we can get him into play turn one, since he'll be ready for action when needed and he gets a headstart on his own resources.

Banner of Elendil - This card puts Aragorn on another level. Both decks have plenty of allies to benefit from the boost, and since he'll be ready for combat we can benefit from the as well. It's especially useful for taking down the Witch-king.

Lord of Morthond - One of the reasons to go with a mono-sphere deck. This is going to keep us drawing into more and more allies throughout the game, which is really all we want. We can end up with some pretty explosive turns since there's no limit on triggering the card draw.

Steward of Gondor - One of the keys to getting our ally swarm out early. Play this on Hirluin since he's the only one who can play the off-sphere allies. As a bonus it allows Denethor to pass his resource over as well.

Sword that was Broken - Another global boost the puts Aragorn over the top. This one also allows him to quest without exhausting and has the benefit of boosting Aragorn's own too.

A Very Good Tale - One of the best cards for an ally swarm deck. Aim to exhaust 4 cost worth of characters so we can put any combination of Outlands allies into play, which should be our priority.

Gaining Strength - It's possible we are stuck for resources early on, even with Denethor and Steward, so this makes up for that. If we dont need it, we can always pass the resource to the Partner deck instead thanks to Errand-rider.

Men of the West - Outlands allies could end up in the discard for a number of reasons, so this is insurance to allow us to get them back into play.

Pillars of the Kings - This is a huge card draw effect. We don't want to play it too early, because we want time to get our board set up. Once we do, especially for Stage 3, we want to be able to engage and defeat as many enemies as possible, preferably reducing the number of enemies that will engage the Partner deck. It's great to get a decent injection of cards when we do.

Sneak Attack - We are going to be using this with Gandalf. Cards are mainly what we are looking for, but he's also our only threat reduction if the game goes long.

Strength of Arms - The best reason to run mono-. We have a deck full of potentially strong allies, so this type of effect goes a long way. Only 2 copies because again it's not as useful early when we don't have everything set up.