Where now the horse and the rider?

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AutumnRose 996

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?

Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?

Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?

They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;

The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.

Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,

Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

---The King of the Golden Hall, The Two Towers

We return to my series of decks exploring the contract Into the West. We have already covered Dale and Eagles, and this time we look at Rohan build.

The poem above, delivered by Aragorn when he, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf are riding to Edoras, was a huge inspiration for me when crafting this deck. It is such a melancholy look into the past that I knew it would be the perfect inspiration for another Into the West deck.

Opening Hand

When you are taking an opening hand with this deck, there are a few cards to be on the lookout for:

  • Horn of the Mark, which will provide you fairly guaranteed card draw

  • Need Brooks No Delay, which is an incredible way to get a 3-cost unique ally into play on the first round

  • Escort from Edoras, which is a great card to put into play with Lothiriel on the first round and trigger Thengel with to start your board state accelerating

Into the West

This deck is unlike my previous Into the West decks in that you will not always remove an ally from the game every round. We manage that by assigning the Into the West contract to allies that discard themselves, such as Grimbold, Westfold Horse-Breaker, and Westfold Lancer. These cards are special in that they give you lots of freedom on whether or not you want to discard them. If you want the resources from the contract this round, then keep your ally in play and then remove them from the game to cash them out. If you don't need the resources, you can discard them to trigger their effect and replace them with Thengel. The contract won't re-attach to anyone this round and it won't give you any resources, but it will still draw you a card at the end of the refresh phase. This freedom when working with a contract that can seem punishing to your board state is extremely useful.

It may seem like a waste to bring a contract and then purposely not trigger its effect, but consider a game where you discard your Into the West ally every single round. What have you gained by playing Into the West? You got a free 3-cost ally into play at the beginning of the game, and drew an extra card every single round. That is extremely powerful. Pair that with the option to get extra resources back and it becomes even more powerful.

Dire Deeds Awake

Here are a couple of extra little combos that help make the deck run smoothly:

  • The Muster of Rohan is one of only a couple cards that will allow you to "cheat" an ally into play that the Into the West contract can attach to, since there is no action window in the quest phase before the contract attaches. However, with Muster we get a bunch of allies in planning and they last the whole round.
  • Keen as Lances is a staple for my Into the West decks, but in this deck it functions even better. Squire of the Mark adds herself to the victory display, reducing the cost of your Keen as Lances
  • Glorfindel and Jubayr make an appearance in this deck even though they are not Rohan. Glorfindel can be used as a Lothíriel quester, but in addition to that both of these allies have the Warrior trait. That means that they would be valid targets for Thengel pulling out a free ally, as long as the discarded ally was also a Warrior--of which this deck has many.

Have fun!

3 comments

Mar 15, 2022 suwapp 1

This is awesome, so much fun to play! Casual players - like myself - mind that Thengel triggers only for discards where it is explicitly stated - lotr-lcg-quest-companion.gamersdungeon.net . Not for Into the west.

Mar 15, 2022 AutumnRose 996

Yes correct! Thanks @suwapp for pointing that out. I should have mentioned that in my writeup. In order to trigger Thengel's response you will have to use one of the many ways the deck offers for discarding from play.

Thanks for taking a look and I'm glad you enjoy it.

Mar 16, 2022 MurstonThor 1

I have been meaning to make a Rohan deck for a while and got halfway through making one inspired by the first ALeP pack but, I just really need to start with someone else’s deck and modify from there. I figured I’d try again by purchasing the Rohan Starter Deck — zero vibe. Zero inspiration there. Now this, this will give my lazy self inspiration to play it as constructed above and then it and play and swap out a few cards (probably for the worse but whatever). I really like your idea of building several decks around a contract. Things like that inspire me to play the game more. So, thanks! I’ll report back on how this one goes and look forward to trying the others.