Silvan Snipers 1.0

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• 1.0

Silvan Snipers, or "Hold still, you may feel a bit of a prick"

This deck is built around the new hero Argalad from The Drowned Ruins, and iterates on my previous solo-centric Silvan builds, although this one does provide solid combat support in multiplayer due to it's ranged damage. While I do agree with the general consensus that the standard Celeborn, Haldir of Lórien, Galadriel setup is probably the strongest overall Silvan build, my favourite Silvan decks tend to build around Celeborn and 2 of the Lore Silvan heroes, Haldir, Mirlonde, Rossiel and now Argalad, as this provides a faster and more consistent first turn.

Mulligan:

With the 2 Lore hero setup the absolute best card to find in your opening hand is a Galadhrim Minstrel. Silvan decks are fueled by their event cards allowing them to bounce back to your hand to trigger powerful effects, as well as give you another use of that particular allies 'enter play' ability.

As this deck is built around Argalad's ability to to enhance your questing through reducing enemy threat, Dúnedain Mark is also good to see in your opening hand. These Marks are especially important to this deck's signature combo, we have some card draw options to help us get them as soon as possible. As we're going to be using the Mark's ability to bounce from hero to hero O'Lorien is a good card for the opening hand too as we're going to want to save as many of our Lore resources as possible.

If you're playing solo, Henamarth Riversong is an amazing first turn card, giving you a very cheap ally to fuel our Silvan events.

At the Table:

We're building this deck around two heroes that really don't want to engage enemies if they can help it. Haldir of Lórien is a potent attacker out of the gate, but his Combat Action allows him to soften up or outright eliminate enemies in the staging area before they can cause any mischief or injury by engaging you, or other members of your Fellowship. However when deciding where to place your Dúnedain Mark's consider Argalad as your primary target.

Argalad's ability is unique in the cardpool in that it can directly affect both the questing and combat phase. By increasing Argalad's attack with the Mark's you can provide a much larger boost your questing than his 2 WP alone. In multiplayer especially with the chances of revealing an enemy increasing per player, it's almost always better to hold Argalad back from questing to use his ability. In solo however, particularly if you have Henamarth on the table, you can choose exactly how best to use Argalad.

Argalad's allowed me to visit some older cards I've never used before, namly Fresh Tracks. This card synergises beautifully with both Argalad and Haldir. Imagine the following scenario in solo play

Argalad has a couple of resources and some Dunedain Marks. A 3 threat, 4HP enemy is revealed from the encounter deck. You play Fresh Tracks to Damage the enemy once, and prevent it from engaging you this turn. Argalad uses his action to reduce the enemies threat to zero, negating any increase the threat in the staging area this round, and adding another damage to the enemy. Haldir is now free to use his Combat Action to finish off the enemy while it languishes in the staging area. If the enemies defense is too high for Haldir to finish it off, simply use Argalad's resources to move his Dunedain Mark's to Haldir, before he looses his arrow.

Now like a lot of Silvan traited decks, they do suffer on defense strength a little, relying on allies to chump or Sentinels from another deck coming to their aid. However we have a few tools in the deck to mitigate this a little. Defender of the Naith are respectable defenders the turn they enter play, even more so if you can get a free ready by triggering a The Tree People event and bouncing another Silvan ally to your hand. Celeborn isn't a great defender, at a mediocre 2 Defense, but Lembas and Silvan Tracker can keep him topped up on health if he has to defend in a pinch. But ultimately dont be afraid to chump block if need be, a Valiant Sacrifice in hand can offset the penalty for losing an ally with a couple of extra cards.

Cram can help you get double duty out of Argalad, allowing him to potentially damage an enemy in staging and assist across the table with a ranged attack

Lembas, Silvan Tracker and Galadhrim Healer can help out all over the table with a little healing, especially Lembas, gifting those tasty elf treats to a Sentinel defender acrsso the table should be incentive enough for them to hurl themselves into harms way should an enemy manage to engage you directly.

Sideboard:

The deck list is a little tight on movement, being much more focused and less 'toolboxy' than I usually like to build a deck, so there is much less wriggle room to embellish or tune the deck to additional goals.

For quests where defending is going to be an issue I'd drop The Long Defeat and Wingfoot for some Dúnedain Warning, or a Cloak of Lórien if your quest has you scouting the forests of Middle-Earth.

If you feel you need to pull your weight a little more ion questing then dropping in an extra Wingfoot over The Long Defeat to get Haldir.

And in a purely solo environment then maybe an extra Henamarth might serve you better than the fairly mediocre Silverlode Archer. In multiplayer an extra Galadhrim Healer might be more useful than the Archer