There be Dwairves 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Table of Contents

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

The Flavor

“Then about a year ago a messenger came to Dáin, but not from Moria — from Mordor: a horseman in the night, who called Dáin to his gate. The Lord Sauron the Great, so he said, wished for our friendship. Rings he would give for it, such as he gave of old. And he asked urgently concerning hobbits, of what kind they were, and where they dwelt. “For Sauron knows,” said he, “that one of these was known to you on a time.”

I honestly know very little about the dwarves of Arda, except that they seem to have been falling into a steady decline. They history is a somber one, being ravaged by dragons over and over again as some sort of supernatural punishment for their avarice.

This deck There be dwairves, is just as greedy. We play a suite of strong dwarves on a mission to take back one of their mountains as one last great host.

Overview

There be Dwairves is a deck built around dwarf synergies, and is a foundational archetype for the dwarrowdelf cycle.

Unlike Rohan and Eagle deck archetypes of the previous Shadows of Mirkwood cycle, Dwarves don't focus around such finnicky synergies as entering and leaving play. Pfft, Foolish.

Instead, Dwarves focus on accumulating massive stat bonuses from other Dwarves in play, and overwhelming engaged enemies with a swarm of aggressive and highly cost-effective allies! In the words of the wise and oft-misquoted Dáin Ironfoot:

"It is much easier to quest when all the orcs are dead."

How do I win?

The beauty of this deck lies in its consistency. Two of its major dwarf characters are two of its heroes, Dáin Ironfoot and Bifur. Dáin Ironfoot is currently at this point in my progression (now encompassing all players cards up to the end of Dwarrowdelf) provides an all-important buff that makes all dwarves extremely cost-effective for their resources/threat level.

Bifur provides a major chunk of this deck's questing potential until you have enough dwarves to take back Khazad-dum (a lot of them).

The other dwarf that does more than his fair share of work is Erebor Battle Master. His ability to grow as you play other dwarves means that he eventually becomes a 4 or 5 dwarf.

In an ideal world, you will have multiple Erebor Battle Master who will do the bulk of your fighting while the other dwarves quest and defend. Essentially your performance in a scenario will often depend on how many dwarf allies you can put down along Erebor Battle Master, and have enough to defenders to avoid having to block with Dáin Ironfoot.

Ideal Cards in Starting Hand

1. Narvi's Belt
2. Steward of Gondor
3. Legacy of Durin
4. We Are Not Idle

The major focus of your starting hand should be resource ramp. This is a very resource-hungry deck and has therefore pulled all stops with Steward of Gondor and We Are Not Idle. The placement of Steward of Gondor is crucial until you manage to place Narvi's Belt on that same hero.

It is often best to place Steward of Gondor on Dáin Ironfoot as he will immediately sure that you can Narvi's Belt within the same planning phase.

The resource fixing of this deck is crucial because it will trigger Legacy of Durin as much as possible, which will in turn allow you to draw more dwarves to play them to draw even more dwarves!

Even though Erebor Battle Master has been described as a major part of your win condition, he is not a pre-requisite for a good starting hand. He will not be as crucial until you have a couple of utility dwarves already played such as Bofur, Bombur, Erebor Record Keeper, and Longbeard Elder to fill out the questing and defense of your small dwarf army!

Performance and Dependences

This deck performs quite well, and I think is an excellent deck to lend to someone who may not be super invested in lotr lcg yet! Unlike my previous deck, For Frodo, there are significantly less pitfalls and false starts that this deck can fall into.

However, due to the lack of effects such as Unexpected Courage, this decks current weakness is action economy. It spends a great deal of resources and effort to buff its dwarves without having much of a way to have its dwarves do more than one thing a round.

The inclusion of Lure of Moria seeks to alleviate that issue a fair bit. Still this means that you will have one or two miraculous rounds followed by the rest where you have some dwarves relegated to questing, and others to fighting. Your only defense against treachery effects that require you to exhaust characters is to simply have pawns that you don't mind exhausting, such as a readied Erebor Record Keeper.

Disclaimer: this deck does depend on Steward of Gondor at least a little, and will probably come into conflict with someone else if you intend to play multiplayer. Substitute responsibly before playing.

Progression Journal

So far, the dwarrowdelf cycle has been a great journey, with scenarios and player cards leagues above the shadows of mirkwood adventure packs. The cards are enthralling and very strong in a way that I feel that the previous cycle seemed timid to reach for.

The cycle's central dwarf archetype has ended up being an interesting new archetype. at first, I got bogged down in Khazad-dum as there was heavy support for dwarves, but not enough to feel like I had options with deck building. But after unlocking cards like Bofur and Legacy of Durin, I'm actually left excited to beat Shadow and Flame so that I may get to my first saga expansion to unlock even more dwarf support!

Cycles

<table style="width : 320px !important; background-color : white !important; border : 1px solid grey  !important; border-left-width : 1px !important; border-bottom-width : 0px !important; box-shadow: 1px 1px grey !important; margin-bottom : 2px !important;">
  <tr style="border : 1px solid #5F9136; background-color : #5F9136;"><th style="text-align: center; color : white;" colspan="2" scope="colgroup">Dwarrowdelf APs<th></tr>
  <tr><td>  <s>The Redhorn Gate </s> </td><td> Difficulty 6 </td></tr>
  <tr><td>  <s>Road to Rivendell </s> </td><td> Difficulty 4 </td></tr>
  <tr><td>  <s>The Watcher in the Water </s> </td><td> Difficulty 5 </td></tr>
  <tr><td> <s>The Long Dark</s> </td><td> Difficulty 7 </td></tr>
  <tr><td> <s>Foundation of Stone</s> </td><td> Difficulty 6 </td></tr>
  <tr><td> Shadow and Flame </td><td> Difficulty 8 </td></tr>
</table>
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Saga Expansions

<table style="width : 320px !important;  display : inline-block !important; padding : 2px 0px !important;box-shadow: 1px 1px grey !important; background-color : #076F48;">
  <tr><th style="width : 320px !important; text-align: center !important; color : white !important;">The Fellowship of the Ring</th></tr>
</table>
<table style="width : 320px !important;  display : inline-block !important; padding : 2px 0px !important;box-shadow: 1px 1px grey !important;background-color : #B95B36;">
  <tr><th style="width : 320px !important; text-align: center !important; color : white !important;">The Two Towers</th></tr>
</table>
<table  style="width : 320px !important;  display : inline-block !important; padding : 2px 0px !important;box-shadow: 1px 1px grey !important;background-color : #911E23;" >
  <tr><th style="width : 320px !important; text-align: center !important; color : white !important;">Return of the King</th></tr>
</table>