Support of the Dúnedain 1.0

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• 1.0

Support of the Dúnedain or "You're giving me mixed Signals"

I've been in a bit of a deck building funk lately, very few cards in the last couple of packs have got me really excited enough to warrant building a couple of decks around. So the last couple of days I've been trawling through ringsdb looking for some decks to spark some inspiration. This deck http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/2768/all-but-the-brightest-stars-1.0 caught my eye, which is primarily a 3rd-4th player support deck, and I tweaked it into this list to fit my dopey little 'theme player' principals

Opening Hand:

So, once the deck gets going it's a bit of an all-rounder leaning a bit more towards defense then questing. So any of the defensive attachments, Armored Destrier, or Dúnedain Warning are good to see at the start of the game. One advantage this deck has is that as you're relying on the Signal cards for your defense and attack boosts you can start with Amarthiúl as your primary defender and then transition to Halbarad if you need to in the mid-game by transfering your Dúnedain Marks and Dúnedain Warnings between the two Dúnedain.

Another cool card to pull in the first hand or two is Ranger Summons, we can use these to really give us a better chance of triggering Lanwyn's Response for some extra action advantage or questing power.

At the Table:

So this deck is primarily meant to be played as a support style deck, it doesn't particularly shine in any area but it can allow other more focused decks to really do so. You can hurl a Dúnedain Warning across the table to help another player's hero with a tricky defense, allow a little extra card draw with Ancient Mathom and Campfire Tales, or send a few extra resources with Errand-rider as the Spirit portion of the deck is pretty low-cost so there's a good chance Lanwyn will be accumulating some resources throughout the course of the game. You can use her resources to fuel the signal swapping shenanigans of her Dúnedain escorts too.

Dúnedain Remedy is an absolutely great card, a free initial point of healing is a great investment and being able to keep throwing it around the table to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat following a tricky defense is really strong. Advise your table mates to keep a resource or two on their defender if they can afford it so you can keep the remedy bouncing.

Tides of Fate is a card I really really like, a lot, and while it is incredibly quest specific as long as you keep an enemy engaged with you, you'll be able to pay for the bonus effect with Amarthiúl's resources. But to be honest a 0 cost event that gives a defender +3 defense is really bloody good in my opinion.

Sideboard:

So I tested the deck single handed without making any card changes against Flight to the Ford. Which isn't a particularly difficult quest, but it really did surprise me how well the deck performed. But it did give me a bunch of ideas on how to make the deck more solo/two-player friendly

Lanwyn really only got to trigger her response once the entire game due to the lack of surge native to the quest, even with 3 Ranger of the North shuffled into the encounter deck. Each time they appeared was as a shadow card, and when they were discarded they went into MY discard pile on OCTGN so never got to show up again despite the encounter deck being depleted to 6 cards when I eventually lost the game.

With a bit of quest foreknowledge you can decide if you want to swap out Lanwyn for Eleanor, you'll lose a bit of attack, and board presence from Lanwyn's ranged, but in 3-4 player game your play group will appreciate the extra cancel.

Shadow of the Past is a oft-maligned card that is perfect for task when your Ranger of the North shows up as a shadow card. Now I have it on good authority (read: Blame Sean if it's wrong) that when you discard shadow cards you decide on the order they go into the discard pile as it happens simultaneously. So put your Ranger of the North on the top of the encounter discard pile if it shows up as a shadow and then bounce it to the top of the encounter deck with Shadow of the Past. Perfect!

The added bonus with the Ranger of the North, and Shadow of the Past shenanigans is that if you have a Minas Tirith Lampwright on the table, you might actually get lucky and cancel an encounter card entirely.

I'd recommend dropping the Tides of Fate and one of the player side quests, Double Back or Send for Aid to make room for the Shadow of the Past. Or if you're playing one handed/two player and the quest has a bunch of +attack shadow cards, then Campfire Tales is probably the better choice to drop

The original deck this is based on had Galadriel and her suite of support cards in the sideboard to allow for a conflict with your spirit hero at the table (Lanwyn's popular right?) and I think that's a great call, and in the rare instance no one is running Arwen Undómiel then the ally version is a good substitute for Minas Tirith Lampwright, another oft-maligned but actually a decent, if very quest dependent, card.

So in summation, if you're going to play one handed/two player make the following changes:

-3 Campfire Tales +3 Shadow of the Past -1 Dúnedain Quest +1 Errand Rider/Star Brooch

and if the quest isn't bringing alot of +attack shadow effects:

-2 Tides of Fate, +2 Arwen/Unexpected Courage

All in all considering how much of a hatchet job I did to the original decklist I'm surprised it turned out as well as it did to be honest. So next time you're stuck for ideas, just have a browse through the site, who knows something might just grab you.