For Frodo 2.0

• Versions
• 2.0

Table of Contents

• Flavor
• Overview
• How do I win?
  • Your Ideal Starting Hand
  • Key Cards and Synergies
• Progression Journal
• Performance and Dependences

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The Flavor

'But I am the real Strider, fortunately, ’ he said, looking down at them with his face softened by a sudden smile. 'I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will.’

There was a long silence. At last Frodo spoke with hesitation. 'I believed that you were a friend before the letter came, ’ he said, 'or at least I wished to. You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way that servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine. I think one of his spies would - well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand.’

'I see, ’ laughed Strider. 'I look foul and feel fair. Is that it? All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.’

Aragorn and Frodo set off on a quest of epic proportion and peril. Along the way, Frodo develops into a defensive asset warding off great unknown evils with the help of Arwen Undómiel and Fast Hitch.

However It is not just dear Frodo that finds his new stature, but Aragorn too learns to muster his Unexpected Courage and accept his fate as the rightful king of Gondor. In an ideal game, you will witness Aragorn acquire Celebrían's Stone, the Sword that was Broken, and the Steward of Gondor. In doing so, Aragorn transforms into a versatile questing powerhouse that should close out the scenario.

Overview

For Frodo is a deck built around the secrecy mechanic introduced in the adventure packs of the dwarrowdelf cycle.

Secrecy cards, such as Timely Aid and Out of Sight introduce a host of powerful events, attachments, and allies at a high resource price. However, secrecy cards also provide a steep discount in their card description for any player whose threat level is currently 20 or under.

Thus, the goal of this deck is to lower your threat level as low as possible, and to abuse secrecy cards. Doing so will provide you with crucial tempo boosts that will hopefully make up for your lack of a third hero!

How do I win?

This deck depends on Timely Aid to field powerful allies at exorbitantly low costs. The allies you are hoping to hit with Timely Aid are:

• Gildor Inglorion
• Erestor
• Arwen Undómiel
• Northern Tracker

If you do not get Timely Aid at the right time, or Timely Aid does not hit an ally, things will be rough but not unbearable. This deck still provides a suite of useful attachments that turn Aragorn into a Swiss army knife:

• Unexpected Courage
• Celebrían's Stone
• Sword that was Broken

These attachments make Aragorn into the strongest questing character currently available, and questing is at the heart of this deck. Whether Timely Aid succeeds or fails, you will not win by slaying everything that comes off the deck. Instead, your goal should be to put down progress counters, and keep your threat low so that you may choose when you want to fight, rather than have the encounter deck decide for you.

Ideal Cards in Starting Hand

In order of priority, your ideal starting hand should contain at least one of the following:

1. Timely Aid
2. Arwen Undómiel
3. Resourceful
4. Sneak Attack
5. Unexpected Courage
6. Steward of Gondor

Despite being a major part of the win condition, neither Celebrían's Stone or Sword that was Broken are necessary for you to have a good starting hand!

Instead, Timely Aid is the highest priority as it offers a chance to effectively replace the stats of a third hero without the threat investment! In addition, both Resourceful and Steward of Gondor are high priorities for resource so that you may access some of the higher cost allies in case you can't cheat them out.

Key Cards and Synergies

Gildor and Erestor

At this point in my progression (from the Core Set through to the Long Dark), there is no Ally yet who is as powerful and mysterious as Gildor Inglorion.Upon entering play, Gildor Inglorion introduces a dilemma. She is great at attacking, amazing at questing and defending, but has an exhaust action ability that is hard to value at times. You will often feel tempted to either quest or defend with her in lieu of using her exhaust ability. For the most part, that is often a just decision. However, her ability provides a unique opportunity to increase the value of your hand and find the missing card to your win condition. I have often find myself wondering if her exhaust ability was worth it only to find a card worth much more than the three willpower she would've contributed in a quest anyway.

We also have Erestor, another unique noldor ally with an ability related to hand-management. His ability, however, does not exhaust Erestor. It provides an important utility in letting you filter out unique cards that you have already played for new ones.

Both Gildor Inglorion and Erestor allow you to mitigate bad card draws. This deck can be quite capable of bad draws as you enter into the mid game. Secrecy cards plummet in value after you accumulate more than 20 threat, and that will eventually happen as the game progresses. Your mindset with triggering secrecy should be to play two or three crucial ones, Timely Aid and Resourceful being the goal, and to then transition into a midgame where you have the stats and economy of a three hero deck without the threat level of one. In the mid and late game, Gildor and Erestor can help you find that Sword that was Broken or Northern Tracker that you needed to maintain a firm lead over the encounter deck.

Arwen / Fast Hitch / Frodo

Frodo Baggins is a powerful hero who would seem at first glance to have anti-synergy with this deck. However, he allows you to use your low threat level as a resource to avoid diverting your character's attentions to defense.

However, that trade-off will run out quickly without Arwen Undómiel and Fast Hitch. These are the primary support cards for a defensive Frodo that allow him to either defend multiple times in a combat phase, or to quest and defend once! Often you will be using Frodo to put off combat against Engaged Enemies until you can have Combat Characters ready, or you quest to victory!

Sneak Attack / Timely Aid / Gandalf

Sneak Attack / Gandalf is a combo as old as time. Both cards have been present since the core set, and have been a staple low investment option for struggling solo progression decks. Sneak Attack allows you to play Gandalf in any action window, and return him to your hand before his discard effect would trigger, effectively letting you to get two Gandalfs out of the one in your hand. I am slowly starting to consider this combo a crutch. It and Steward of Gondor have been present in almost of all my decks up to this point.

Timely Aid can sometimes in desperate phases function as a mini Sneak Attack whenever you have used Gildor to stack Gandalf ontop of your deck. It is a simple option, and sometimes an unpleasant one. Timely Aid will usually have bigger payoffs when hitting other allies. For the most part, you will want to think of Sneak Attack and Gandalf as a pair, one that is necessary to overcome the lack of combat strength in this deck.

Elrond's Counsel and the Noldor

By coincedence, or the subtlely great design of the dwarrowdelf cyce, this deck has happened to include a lot of unique noldor characters. Gildor Inglorion, Arwen Undómiel, and Erestor all provide the backbones of our allies. This happens to also be a deck very concerned with keeping threat down, which makes Elrond's Counsel a fruitful inclusion. Elrond's Counsel is the cheapest form of threat reduction currently available in the game, and includes a small willpower bonus that helps this deck to make it over the questing hump!

Song of Wisdom and the Galadhrim's Greeting

These are the fixers for a poor hand.

Neither Song of Wisdom nor The Galadhrim's Greeting are great cards by themselves. But they are included in this deck as necessary precautions. Song of Wisdom has been included so that you can play fast hitch on frodo, and have a backup measure for playing Gildor Inglorion. In an ideal game, you will get Gildor through Timely Aid, and only need Song of Wisdom for playing Fast Hitch.

The Galadhrim's Greeting is expensive in this deck. Without Resourceful, Steward of Gondor, or Celebrían's Stone, playing this card will require Frodo to save his resources for three rounds, three long rounds when you can't play A Test of Will. However, Galradhim's greeting functions as a third option in threat reduction along with Elrond's Counsel and sometimes Gandalf.

Unfortunately, these two cards are included to fix the hole that Aragorn (lore) currently cannot fill. There is not enough secrecy support in the lore sphere to warrant this deck to drop Timely Aid as its focal point. However, this will likely change in the future. Until then, Song of Wisdom and The Galadhrim's Greeting will be available to round out some of the rougher edges of this deck.

Progression Journal

Maybe this is odd that it's at the bottom but I couldn't decide where else to put it.

Currently, I am in the middle of the dwarrowdelf cycle, still very early in the game. In it, we are tasked by Gandalf to pilfer around Khazad-dum to search for the remnants of Balin and his dwarf army, or something!

Cycles

1. ~~Shadows of Mirkwood~~

2. Dwarrowdelf

   Khazad-dum (Deluxe)
   ~~Into the Pit~~	Difficulty 5
   The Seventh Level	Difficulty 3
   ~~Flight from Moria~~	Difficulty 7

   Dwarrowdelf APs
   ~~The Redhorn Gate~~	Difficulty 6
   ~~Road to Rivendell~~	Difficulty 4
   ~~The Watcher in the Water~~	Difficulty 5
   The Long Dark	Difficulty 7
   Foundation of Stone	Difficulty 6
   Shadow and Flame	Difficulty 8

   
   

3. Against the Shadow

4. The Ring-Maker

5. Angmar Awakened

6. Dream-chaser

7. Haradrim

8. Ered Mithrin

9. Vengeance of Mordor

Saga Expansions

1. The Hobbit

2. The Fellowship of the Ring

3. The Two Towers

4. Return of the King

Performance and Dependences

*For Frodo* is unusual by most standards at this point in lotr lcg's progression. The absence of a third hero means that you always be one resource token shorter than expected at the beginning of every round. So this deck seeks to make up for that resource loss by summoning powerful allies much earlier typically possible, and by choosing exactly when *you* want to engage enemies through optional engagement checks.

I do think it does make up for that one lost resource token per round, and it does so in a gripping, risky, and thematic way! However, it is inconsistent. I find that this deck's best draws outperform more consistent solo decks such as my Rohan or Elrohir/Elladan deck. It's worst draws can see you underperforming though, with too few resources and too much threat to make up the difference.

In order to overcome this inconsistency, this deck is built on some of the more powerful and typical card synergies up to this point in my progression:

• [Sneak Attack](/card/01023) / [Gandalf](/card/01073)
• [Steward of Gondor](/card/01026)
• [Celebrían's Stone](/card/01027) / Aragorn (leadership)
• [Unexpected Courage](/card/01057)