Samwise Inspired (Mount Doom and Cirith Ungol) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is a broadly thematic deck designed for the final quests of the Frodo and Sam storyline in the sagas. Sam Gamgee and Frodo Baggins may be alone, but our valiant gardener is nevertheless given hope, spirit, and will by his love of home (and of one Rosie Cotton), and of the beauty of the elves, which so inspired him. With Galadriel and Rosie working through other characters, they nicely embody this theme.

This version is the one I used to beat Mount Doom, and the cards in the sideboard are the ones I had swapped out from tackling Cirith Ungol. Mount Doom requires a more single-minded devotion to questing hard and building up a character with high willpower for the fortitude tests, and so this version is similarly focused on getting Rosie's willpower up fast, and grabbing readies (in the form of Unexpected Courage, Miruvor, and Fast Hitch) to be able to use that willpower for surprise fortitude tests and pesky enemies.

The central strategy is to get Fireside Song on Rosie, and then every song you can find goes on her. Extra willpower boosts like Strider, Celebrían's Stone, and Silver Circlet similarly serve to get her willpower up as high as possible. With a few readies, you can use Rosie for the fortitude test at the beginning of Stage 3, use her to boost Sam during the quest, and hopefully boost Sam again during combat.

Other cards of note:

• Nenya obviously goes on Galadriel, and is one of the cards I most look for in my opening hand, largely in order to user her willpower to get through Stage 1 as fast as possible.
• Rivendell Minstrel is a little off-theme, but plays the essential role of fetching songs.
• Gandalf is another light theme stretch, but since he comes and goes, he can easily be thought of as wielding his influence from afar through Sam. In this quest, I usually use his entry effect to do damage on enemies, especially killing those lousy Snufflers (more on them below).
• Wealth of Adventure might as well read: 'search your deck for Fast Hitch.' Without readies, it is easy to get chipped away by enemies, or be caught flat-footed by an unexpected Fortitude Test.
• Steward of Gondor goes on Rosie since she'll end up with all of the spheres, though I found it much more useful in Cirith Ungol than in the more fast-paced Mount Doom.
• Bill the Pony made the journey with me all the way from Bree. He wasn't going anywhere.

The biggest weakness of the deck is certainly combat. In Cirith Ungol, where combat is much more important, I would load up Sam with the usual attachments - Dagger of Westernesse, Staff of Lebethron, and Hobbit Cloak, while using the Roving Herbmaster to handle some of the archery and other chip damage. However, I found more success in Mount Doom being more single-minded in my deck construction. Your threat can get pretty high, so a lot of the Hobbit bonuses stop working. What's more, there are not all that many enemies in the first place, and you are working on a tight timer.

My usual solutions for enemies are four-fold:

1. Use Gandalf to kill them with direct damage when possible.
2. Let them stay engaged with me, blocking with a souped-up (by Rosie) Sam each turn. Ideally I chip away at them with Sting, but that's a fairly unreliable strategy since it is a one-of treasure.
3. Use Frodo Baggins to shuffle back in the Snufflers. The Snufflers are really weak enemies, but their low engagement cost has made them much more dangerous to this deck than any other enemy in this quest.
4. Chump with the few allies you get. Once the Minstrels have fetched songs, they aren't essential, and sacrificing them has some nice benefits in this quest, such as keeping Mordor Road's threat low, and reducing the per-turn threat increase.

Of course, in playing campaign, I've also been saved by a long held Phial of Galadriel in this quest!