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AutumnRose 998
"...before the Children awake there shall go forth with wings like the wind the Eagles of the Lords of the West." -Manwë, The Silmarillion
Here continues my series of decks using the ALeP contract, Into the West. This deck is highly thematic, following the eagles of Manwë and the Istari as they come to Middle Earth to aid in the fight against evil, and then their return to the West.
Check out the previous deck in my Into the West series here: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/24689/dalepassesintothewest-1.0
Beginning the Game
Just like with pretty much any Radagast deck, you want to find Radagast's Staff as quickly as possible, so mulligan pretty aggressively for it. If you don't manage to find the staff, other good cards to see in your opening hand are The Eagles Are Coming!, Gandalf, or some cheap eagles to get into play. Once you have the staff, you should be able to start maintaining a constant flow of Eagles in and out of play.
Into the West
The advantage to using the Into the West contract in an Eagle deck is that it is much easier to maintain a constant flow of eagles entering and leaving play to not only fuel their "After X enters or leaves play" abilities, but also to keep Gwaihir constantly readying. This deck does not focus on building a massive board state, instead it focuses on being able to play a wide array of Eagles and events for any situation that can come up. By refunding the resources on eagles that leave play with the contract, and giving you an extra card per turn, Into the West puts you into a state of never being short on resources or cards to do what you need.
Faunith is especially useful in this playstyle. She lets you delay the playing of allies until after the staging step of questing, letting you hit locations with Meneldor, and letting you hit enemies with Descendant of Thorondor. She can even let Eagles who are played during questing exhaust to deal damage or commit to the quest, giving you even more flexibility. There's also no limit to the number of times you can use her ability in a quest phase. Just remember that you have to designate the ally to attach Into the West to at the start of the quest phase, so none of the allies played with Faunith's ability are eligible to leave play at the end of the round.
Powering up Gwaihir
Alongside your toolkit of Eagles for any situation, Gwaihir makes a powerful lord. Give him 1 or 2 copies of Support of the Eagles to make his stats truly terrifying, and with all the extra resources you have coming in from the contract, play Hour of Wrath on him to block for the whole table and then attack every engaged enemy. You can even play Hour of Wrath alongside Charge into Battle to allow Gwaihir to easily defeat every enemy in the staging area when the need arises.
Disclaimer: If you want to follow the rules in the strictest way, Gwaihir's ability to ready from an Eagle leaving play does not trigger when an ally leaves play due to the contract. This is because Gwaihir's ability is once per phase, and abilities limited to once per phase cannot be triggered during the "at the end of the phase" window of time. However, if you are like me and think that is one of the stupidest rulings in this game, feel free to ignore that. With all the Eagles entering and leaving, you typically don't need the ready at the end of Refresh, but still.
Weaknesses
This deck is particularly vulnerable to nasty treacheries and shadow effects, having no way to cancel either one. It also has no healing. Because you have access to Lore, if you are finding you need healing, sub in Ioreth for another 0 or x-cost card. I omitted her here because I wanted this deck to be as thematic as possible.
This deck also never gets to a state of having tons of willpower. Quests that require really heavy quest pushes will challenge this deck quite a bit. I recommend playing this deck as a multiplayer deck alongside decks that can handle a larger portion of the questing.
Good luck and happy flying!
| 14 comments |
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Feb 02, 2022 |
Feb 02, 2022Follow-Up question: Can the Eagles of the Misty Mountain attach eagle allies removed by Into the West? I'm guessing 'no,' since the contract removes them from the game... though I guess I'm not sure that the EotMM effect requires a card to be not-removed from the game (we know certain cards can, explicitly, interact with collections). |
Feb 02, 2022
I haven't considered Wizard Pipe + Messenger Raven, and while I do think it would be great for card draw, the 1-cost slots in the deck are pretty limited. I think favoring eagles and Gwaihir's Debt for those one costs should be the priority. And no, Eagles of the Misty Mountains cannot take eagles when they are removed from the game. There is a ruling on this because Eagles of the North are removed from from when game when they are defeated. |
Feb 02, 2022
Ah, thanks for the reminder about the contract having deckbuilding restrictions based on cost! That does indeed put an extra bit of pressure upon the 1 Cost cards of the Pipe/Raven. |
Feb 04, 2022Loving this series almost as much as I love Eagles! And the two together? Priceless. Great work! |
Feb 04, 2022Thanks so much |
Feb 05, 2022@leaving st the end of turn/phase, should work even following the rules precisely: his abilty is a reaction, so he needs no widow, and reactions can be triggert by end of....... if several reactions are triggert, startingplayer resolve the order (after permanent, forced,....) |
Feb 05, 2022
And unfortunately no there is a ruling from Caleb that abilities (even responses) that are limited to "once per phase" CANNOT trigger at the end of a phase. Since Into the West removes an ally at the end of the Refresh phase, Gwaihir cannot use his response. In the same way as another example, if an enemy made an attack at the end of the Encounter phase (i.e. Black Serpent), then Dáin Ironfoot would not be able to use his action during that attack. Mind you, I think this ruling is dumb and I don't follow it, but I do want people to be aware of Celeb's ruling if they play my deck. |
Feb 05, 2022can you link that statement? it seems really dump, to dump for caleb (usually ;) ) (and, dain should work he is neither action nor reaction, its a permanent effect) |
Feb 05, 2022
Ruling is when Caleb was on Cardboard of the Rings, episode 132 around the 35:40 mark. Also summarized here: ffg-forum-archive.entropicdreams.com |
Feb 05, 2022Tried this deck against Battle of the Five Armies -- very thematic, satisfying, and crushed it quite easily! |
Feb 06, 2022
also the "limit per phase" does not hinder it to use it at the end ( gwaihirs readying should work, also dain, he refers to the attack and not the end of the phase, the limit per phase is irrelevant for cancel and end of phase) |
Mar 03, 2022I agree with
and
Those only refer to "until the end" and not "limit". It's also worth noting that HOWEVER: The other question is whether the lenient interpretation causes anything ridiculous. For the most part, the answer seems to be "no". There's no action window, so we're mostly left with responses and those are limited by the number of triggers. Unfortunately, an end-of-phase attack (e.g. from Black Serpent) grants an action window, so that does pose a risk. There are 64 player cards with the text "per phase". A quick skim did not reveal anything obviously game breaking. Many of the effects are either "until end of the phase" and so illegal, or effects such as readying which aren't typically worth doing more than once anyway. So I don't see any downside to the lenient version here. |
Mar 03, 2022(Also, nice deck |
This is such a good use of Into the West. Awesome deck.
While you've got card draw in the form of The Eagles are Coming! and the contract itself, do you feel that a Wizard's Pipe + Messenger Raven combo would be worthwhile, or overkill on the card draw? The pipe could also set up top-deck Gandalfs for the Gwaihir's Debts, I suppose.