The Steward's Here 1.0

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• 1.0

And now, for the latest in my series of concept decks you'll never actually sleeve!

Justice Shall Be Done is an odd card.

It seems like the best time to use it would be when you're right on the knife's edge of winning a quest and just need that one big push before the encounter deck completely overwhelms you. But even if you think it might be useful in that context, it's "limit one per deck"! Either you won't have it available when you need it most, or it's been sitting in your hand, having clogged up a space in your deck that could've instead gone towards you avoiding the situation in the first place...

Allow me to propose a different use.

The kamikaze helper deck

There has long been a fringe interest in this kind of deck, including from me -- I am still sad the Love of Tales erratum nerfs that one -- as well as the likes of @Some Sort,@rajam, and@Denison.

JSBD represents an ultimate opportunity for this kind of deck. But can you get it in time? With Erestor/Leadenethor/Gandalf and the full-deck search effects of Heed the Dream & Word of Command, the answer is often going to be yes. How often? We'll do some math at the end, but SPOILER ALERT it's easily better than 95% of the time, maybe way better than even that.

But what to do with all those resources and a few extra cards?

Whatever you want.

Well, not quite, obviously. But there are multiple different ways you can go with this. The main goal with this particular decklist is rather prosaic: get Steward of Gondor into play, as this is commonly a card that people want on the board as soon as possible. Well, dammit, JSBD will get you there.

See, all the mechanisms built into the deck for maximizing the chance of getting JSBD played work just as well for any other card. Better, in fact, since the vast majority of cards aren't forced to be 1x per deck. Also, and this is key, once you've played JSBD, you have a minimum of 3 resources on each hero, which snowballs the draw much more smoothly than what I'll be describing below to ensure getting JSBD in the first place. In the case of the decklist here, you need to keep 2 resources to eventually play Steward, which gives you at least 7 other resources to draw/search with.

Wait, don't I still have to reveal an extra encounter card?

Yes.

I've put Gildor's Counsel in this list to mitigate even that small price, but it is an expensive card, and you may not get to play it (though A Good Harvest can help). So what if you don't, though? In many quests, a single extra encounter card reveal isn't that big a deal in the face of guaranteeing Steward (and more... stay tuned...) into play turn 1. Plus, lest we forget: the deck still has heroes! They can quest! Especially if you've avoided exhausting Gandalf (even if you use him for Word of Command, The White Council can stand him right back up): you can quest for 6, which ain't bad. (Hell, you can Siege quest for 8.) Let enemies engage you... The deck's leaving at the end of the round anyway; might as well enjoy the freedom of not worrying much about undefended attacks.

In fact, dropping the expense of Gildor's Counsel can enable all sorts of other shenanigans. Because if getting Steward was all there was to this, it really wouldn't be worth the big writeup. After all,@Seastanhas a proof-of-concept deck floating around somewhere that gets Steward into play on the 1st turn at some similarly absurdly high percentage. However, besides the fact that this deck helpfully goes on its way after doing its thing, the JSBD framework allows more. Much more.

More?

Well, just in this decklist, you may have noticed Henamarth and Defender of the West hanging out. On your way to securing Steward, you will very often draw into a copy of both of these cards. Now, you've made sure that the 1st-player deck is this one, right? That way, if you play out Henny and attach Defender, during the refresh phase, Henny will scoot on over to the other deck, then stay there forever as Gandalf et al. bow out. I can't think of a solo deck that wouldn't benefit by having Steward and Henamarth consistently out from the end of the 1st turn on. I don't think I've ever had a test draw where I got to JSBD and didn't get one of the two out. The vast majority of the time, I get both.

But maybe you're more risk-averse: you'd rather keep your crucial attachments in the deck they're meant for and just want this sacrificial deck to have a toolbox of helpful things. Then sure, you can throw in 1x of a bunch of generically useful cards -- there are 3 sidequests you have natural access to, Cram, Protector of Lórien, Thror's Map, traps, Signals, The Long Defeat, maybe even the thematically-apt Parting Gifts... You'll notice that I filled this particular one out to 50 cards with a Dúnedain Remedy.

Let's get a little bigger. Defender of the West can have other impactful targets. Treebeard is simple enough, but my favorite move is a little more roundabout: for this one, you have to make the other deck the 1st player. In addition to Defender, have Ioreth and Sword-thain in here. Then, after playing Ioreth and Defender of the West, shunting her over to the other deck, put Sword-thain on her. The wording turns off Defender of the West. and voila: a one-stop healing solution even if the recipient deck has no Lore. (Until Ioreth takes direct damage from some treachery, at least...)

Bigger? Sure, why not? Have an Elrond-Glorfindel deck but tired of fishing for all their major attachments? I've tested 3x Vilya/Light of Valinor/Asfaloth, along with Songs of Travel and Good Harvests to get out LoV, and they still all get out on the table pretty often. For those of you who really hate that feel-bad moment of Vilya hitting another copy of Vilya, well, here's a sledgehammer of a solution. (You'll probably want Deep Knowledge in here if you're going for these bigger combos. See the odds & ends section for why it's not here already.)

You ain't seen nothin' yet. Slotting Gaining Strength and Wealth of Gondor can increase your chances of playing even more expensive combos. Here's a ridiculous one: Sword-thain'ing a Defender'ed ally Glorfindel, then playing Asfaloth on him. With A Good Harvest, this is a 5-card, 12-cost combo. I kid you not: it still often works. (You can even try doing it with To the Sea, to the Sea!; I pulled off this variant the one time I tried it, but it made my head hurt.)

Do you want more? How about Sword-thain'ing a Defender'ed unique dwarf -- say, Dori or Glóin -- then getting Steward of Gondor and Narvi's Belt on him to produce an all-purpose moneybags? This is pushing the limits of possible, as in addition to being another 5-card, 12-resource combo, it has pretty specific demands on the resource spread needed to plonk it down. Even with Wizard Pipe and Well-Equipped shenanigans, it's no gimme to land. But it can be done surprisingly often. If you drop the Steward requirement, it almost becomes easy.

The math you've been dreading

All right, let's do this! 50 card deck. If you can get any one of 7 cards into your opening hand -- 3x Heed, 3x Word, or obviously JSBD itself, which I'll call "the Magnificent7" -- you will be able to play JSBD during your 1st planning phase. Pre-mulligan, you'll see the 6 cards in your hand, as well as the top card of your deck (thanks, Gandalf). Chances of NOT seeing a Magnificent7 card among those is (43 choose 7)/(50 choose 7) = ~32%. (Check out the hypergeometric distribution for details.) So, about 1/3rd of the time, you'll have to mulligan.

Then what happens? Courtesy of Erestor, you'll have 10 cards in hand, plus again Gandalf's access to the top card. Chance of still not seeing the Magnificent7 amongst those 11? (43 choose 11)/(50 choose 11) = ~15%. In other words, the overall chance of not catching a Magnificent7 card when taking into account a mulligan is 0.32*0.15 = 0.05, i.e. about a 1 in 20 chance of failure.

But, we haven't yet taken into account the fact that almost every // draw effect in the game is in this deck. The math becomes less tenable, but let's put it this way: in order to clear that 1 in 20 hurdle and still not have draw cards, the 11 post-mulligan cards you can see must all come from the set of 13 cards in the deck that are not in the Magnificent7 nor have anything to do with draw (i.e., the attachments, Henny, and Gildor's Counsel). Given the mulligan, the chances of that are (13 choose 11)/(50 choose 11), which turns out to be less than 1 in 450 million.

So it's pretty safe to say you'll have at least one draw card. Probably more. And guess what: Say you can draw even just 3 more cards. Then you have almost a 50% chance of finally hitting a Magnificent7 card (1-(32 choose 3)/(39 choose 3), that is). This would overall put us down to a 1 in 40 chance of failure.

Having the "free" draw cards of Daeron's Runes or We Are Not Idle makes further draw idiot-proof. The other draw effects are trickier because you have to be careful what you spend: if the Magnificent7 card you eventually find is Heed the Dream, you'll have needed to have kept your starting 1 and 3 resources. That essentially means you'll have to spend no more than a net of 1 neutral resource (Gandalf's) to trigger further draws. Hidden Cache can do that from hand, and in 2-player The White Council can too; in addition, Mithrandir's Advice, Campfire Tales, and Follow Me! can do it off the top of the deck.

Don't believe me that this could possibly be that consistent? Try it for yourself with the draw simulator. See just how often you succeed in hitting a Magnificent7 card vs. how often you fail. (And remember in your trials that Gandalf lets you see, and sometimes play, 1 more card than usual. Also keep in mind that you can do all these draw shenanigans in the resource phase and the planning phase, allowing double use of Gandalf's off-the-top play.)

Odds and ends

I mentioned above the curious absence of Deep Knowledge; I simply wanted to disturb the other deck as little as possible. But most decks are happy to take 2 more threat for a couple of extra cards, so feel free to slot them in. (Subbing out Lórien's Wealth is the obvious change, as Keen as Lances can be surprisingly helpful at times.) For the crazier combos, The Seeing-stone may be helpful.

If you go all-in on this stuff, remember that attachment hate in quests will make you sad.

Some care must be taken with 1st-player details if you're playing a quest has some can't-die ally or Saga hero, or if you're doing some Defender of the West/Sword-thain shenanigans. (You might need to drop Follow Me!.)

This thread, among other excellent ideas, highlights the use of the Palantir in a what-me-worry? deck, which is absolutely a fun include.

Don't make the mistake I did and think that you can use Gandalf's resources for anything with A Good Harvest: read the card text again carefully.

In case you were wondering, I found that making Ceorl with Songs and Steward into an all-comers moneybags a la a Narvi's Belt dwarf proved to be a little too much for even this framework, at least if you wanted to have all 3 Songs on him. Letting the other deck contribute the Songs can make it viable, though.

Finally, for a laugh you can forget attachments and just put in Galadriel, Elrond, and Saruman for the ultimate in temporary ally shenanigans. Make that guy at the Meetup who always has to leave before the end of the quest play it.