Yet Peril Lay Before Them Along the Way 1.0

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• 1.0

This deck started with an idea of a mono-Spirit Dunedain deck. It's one of the spheres that's pretty under-represented for the trait, so I tried my best to make it work. The result was a week of trial and error, adding and removing cards to make it work, and eventually accepting that I needed the A Perilous Voyage contract to not have to cut back on cards.

The deck is more of a questing-location control deck that can hold its own in combat, though will require some setup to get there. Aragorn and Idraen both hit like a truck, and can double as defenders if you need to. I also added some of the better combat characters from Spirit to the deck, even if I had to break theme a little (Jubayr is just that good).

Since there aren't that many Dúnedain heroes, I added Arwen Undómiel to the list. She is probably one of the characters you will have the most uniqueness conflicts with, but otherwise, you should be fine (the deck doesn't even have Light of Valinor!). Arwen is here for early willpower, a discard option, and resource acceleration. Once you play a Silver Harp on her, you can just default adding the resource to Aragorn each turn. Other discard options are available through Glorfindel and the Steed of Imladris. Arwen also opens up one of my favorite dual-trait events: Tale of Tinúviel. This can make any hero in this deck a monster during combat for a phase, and since you likely have Unexpected Courage on the table, perhaps multiple times! Using it with Idraen can even allow you to use the increased stats over and over again, if you keep exploring locations with some of the events. I have found Backtrack very useful for this. Heirs of Earendil can also discard more locations if you need to, but it won't ready IdraenYou don't care about threat anyways, since you can reset to 40 with the contract. This allows you to blow up a huge location to get you to 50, giving you a free 3-cost card, and the ability to quest with your heroes without exhausting.

Not having to exhaust Aragorn to quest will be useful, since you would ideally like to double-dip with his willpower. This deck aims to increase his in order to use his ability on high threat locations, and quest a bit more. Unexpected Courage will allow you to do that right away, but there are a few other ways to ready him, like Tale of Tinúviel and Magic Ring. In order to raise his willpower, you can use Silver Circlet, Windfola, Miruvor, and Star Brooch (which also protects your willpower from being lowered). For one-time bursts, use Lay of Nimrodel, though that will likely be over-kill.

Another important card to Aragorn is his Ring of Barahir. Not only does that allow you to pay for the Lore allies in the deck, but it also boosts Aragorn's hitpoints. There are several useful artifacts in the deck to help with this, and you can use the extra Spare Pipes to boost it even more. Along with Blood of Númenor and Desperate Defense, you will have enough defence early on, before your allies can take over. Because his access to Lore and his increased defence with Blood of Númenor, all resources Arwen generates should go to Aragorn, even if you don't need them right away. This helps to afford Firyal eventually as well (though you can also discard her and retrieve her with Stand and Fight.

Idraen is here to cover all bases because her stats are just so solid. 2 willpower can easily be increased by the same attachments as Aragorn. Add Warden of Arnor and Steed of Imladris on her, and you will be clearing locations as you quest. Because of that, you will usually be able to ready her during the quest phase. There are several effects in the deck to help place progress on the locations in the game, including Aragorn, Northern Tracker, and Greyflood Wanderer. If she is ready and you travel to a location with just 2 quest points remaining, she is also the perfect target for Strength of Will, a Core Set card that rarely sees play. If you are running out of locations, you can also use Snowmane to ready her after questing, so you can use her stats during combat. Same tricks as Aragorn apply here, as she has nearly identical stats and traits.

The rest of the deck is pretty self-explanatory. The allies in the deck help to find and clear locations, or provide extra stats during combat. Getting both Elladan and Elrohir will be fantastic, though in a thick deck, it's not always ensured. As long as you can find one of the two, you can bring the other into play when the contract flips.

That brings me to the threat of this deck. It's weird building a mono-spirit deck without threat reduction, but it still works. You can use the various Doomed cards in the deck along with Heirs of Earendil to raise your threat. Remember that the contract gives you extra cards for threat on side A. If you worry about engaging too many enemies, Grey Cloak on a character like Emery can allow you to avoid an enemy for a turn. It's only a temporary solution, but it gives you some time.

Healing was the one thing that was missing a bit with the deck. So I included some Warden of Healing into the deck to help with it. You also have access to Magic Ring and Mithril Shirt to help with negating some of the damage. Other than that, the deck prefers to stack some damage onto heroes with increased and perhaps onto some allies that you can revive with Glorfindel and Stand and Fight.

The one joke-card in this deck is Light the Beacons, but it might work out for you in certain situations!