'And she stood then as still as a white tree, looking into the West, and at last she said: "I will cleave to you, Dúnadan, and turn from the Twilight. Yet there lies the land of my people and the long home of all my kin."' -Arwen, The Return of the King

In case you didn't already see it, a few weeks ago FFG released an article showing off a few of their commissioned pieces of artwork and making them available for use as wallpapers. One of these pieces depicts Aragorn and Arwen in Rivendell, saying their last goodbyes before the Fellowship sets out. They clasp hands and gaze deep into each other's eyes with shared looks of sorrow, hope, determination, and--most of all--love. The article doesn't give any credit to a particular artist, but whoever did this piece has created one of my favorite pieces of art for the Lord of the Rings. The beauty of the surroundings and the emotion between Aragorn and Arwen are simply incredible.

Here we continue my Into the West series with a deck based entirely on that artwork. If you haven't seen them already, you can see the previous decks in the series here: Dale, Eagles, and Rohan.

The Deck

This deck is at its core a Dúnedain deck. That means you want to get engaged with enemies and keep them engaged in order to get benefit from them. In your opening hand you typically want to look for Heir of Valandil or Steward of Gondor in order to start accelerating your resources to get your allies down. Elven-light is also a very useful card to find early so that you can leverage Arwen Undómiel's ability into card draw instead of just resources acceleration.

Once you start to get a few enemies engaged, Amarthiúl will start generating more resources and your allies will become more powerful, but nasty shadow effects can become an issue. Use Armored Destrier and Bree-land Protector to protect yourself from nasty shadows.

Once you are ready to make a big quest push, put in a few Warden of Annúminas and equip Aragorn with Celebrían's Stone and Sword that was Broken in order to skyrocket your questing ability.

Into the West

Into the West functions to accomplish a few things in this deck. Firstly, it establishes the theme that I was going for. A big part of understanding the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen is understanding what Arwen has been through, and what she is giving up by being with Aragorn. Elrond said to Aragorn:

"But as for Arwen the Fair, Lady of Imladris and of Lórien, Evenstar of her people, she is of lineage greater than yours, and she has lived in the world already so long that to her you are but as a yearling shoot beside a young birch of many summers."

By using Into the West, you can feel the age of Arwen: allies disappear but the heroes remain. You also are reminded what she is giving up: the West--the land of her people, and immortality.

Secondly, Into the West serves as a useful way to pump resources into Gondorian Fire and Blood of Númenor, which, when paired with consistent readying from Armored Destrier and Unexpected Courage, turn your heroes into powerhouses able to take down the biggest boss fights this game has to offer.

Since this is a quad-sphere deck, Into the West also functions to provide really reliable and flexible resources smoothing, allowing you to play whatever allies you have in your hand.

Here ends this tale, as it has come to us from the South; and with the passing of the Evenstar no more is said in this book of the days of old