"Friends Don't Let Friends Play.... 1.0

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• 1.0

Outlands" - Sage words from The Grey Company.

But if they did, here would be a decent deck to start. Since outlands allies soon become your heroes, your actual heroes are selected more for their abilities & threat. Hirluin the Fair is a gimme. Denethor boosts you out the gate and can help fund those non- allies once Steward of Gondor is on Hirluin. Balin adds shadow cancelation to the deck and is a dwarf allowing for a powerful card-draw effect.

Outlands thrive mid-late game so if you're running multiplayer a good strong early deck works well or another ally swarm deck to get maximum power from Strength of Arms.

You want to Mulligan for Steward of Gondor (attaches to Hirluin) or Anfalas Herdsman.

Resource Acceleration

Steward of Gondor is the workhorse and can be supplimented by Hidden Cache and potentially We Are Not Idle if need be. You want to spend your resorces from Denethor first, then Balin, then Hirluin the Fair. If you can hit your Hidden Caches, put their wealth onto Hirluin

Card Draw

Balin enables King Under the Mountain. Lord of Morthond will do good work once you've found it. We Are Not Idle will thin down the deck as will any accidentally drawn Hidden Caches and Hunter of Lamedon's enters play ability.

A Very Good Tale isn't exactly card draw but again thins your deck whilst accelerting it. Use it whenever reasonable especially with a hard cast Gandalf in the Refresh Phase action window. Should this result in a beloved outlands ally hitting your discard pile then Men of the West shall revive them.

Threat Reduction

Given the raw power of the outlands, starting at such a reasonable 25 threat seems ridiculous. Even so, with all the other card draw and the strength of your allys I usually use (Sneak Attack+)Gandalf for threat control.

Shadow Cancelation

Balin is the boy! While his resources are less flexible than Hirluin's for bringing in allys, it's worth having 1 or 2 saved on him if possible (not difficult after a couple of rounds).

Healing

The deck doesn't contain any by default though you can sideboard in Dúnedain Remedys if the quest is particularly punishing your heroes. What I did while testing was to let allies die and then Men of the West them back to re-play them achieving a similar result

Other Notes

Ally Faramir is a bit of a win-more card and completely not required if someone else is running the Hero. He can help smooth out an early game if you find him before the Ethir Swordsman. I'd swap him for the last copy of Gandalf.

Tome of Atanatar usually ends up grabbing Sneak Attack but Strength of Arms works well too.

In multiplayer, swapping in Campfire Tales and Errand-rider will be appreciated.

Sam Gamgee can come in for Denethor without effecting how the deck works too badly. You will start slower without Denethor's setup and potentially continue a touch slower if you cant's give his resources to Hirluin each round. You will, however, quest with 3 from the off which is nice. That soon becomes outclassed by your allies though.