Rogue to Rings: Can Dwarves Polish... 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Did I tell ask Shellin to do a 2 part series about Con of the Rings? Did I say "make sure you commit to a list of decks and you have your deck lists pretty much done when we record?" Did I renege on that and build a deck in secret? Look, I'm the lead host and audio editor, I can do what I want. I may or may not bring this deck to the Con anyway.

Anyway, I (Cotr) Present a deck list built around the powerful trait deck of dwarves mixed with my meme card, The Burglar's Turn. As with my usual decks, it's built around ally spam with the contract adding some swingy power levels to the deck. I repurposed a standard deck with Unexpected Courage, Steward of Gondor, Narvi's Belt, Armor of Erebor, Hardy Leadership, King Under the Mountain, and Legacy of Durin into this version. That version is probably stronger and more consistent since you can more easily keep Dain ready and put Narvi's Belt on Bifur to smooth out resources and spam. But this version still plays at a good level because dwarves are strong and this pilots a bit more fun.

Essentially, you just use resources and events to swarm with dwarves, nothing too special. A typical cool dwarf thing to do is use We Are Not Idle to exhaust 2 heroes to play Fili or Kili and then use A Very Good Tale to get more allies while hoping to hit a Hidden Cache or Ered Luin Miner. I like to use Ered Nimrais Prospector to get back Will of the West if it gets milled by mistake. One tip for people who have not played a mill deck: do it often and do it hard; you may be tempted to not want to use the abilities for fear of losing cards, but do it. The deck will go faster and function better doing the thing it's meant to do.

For how I play the deck, I really try to not exhaust Dain to defend unless I have a readying attachment as it helps the combat of the deck. I try to quest with Nori and put the resource and willpower attachments on him. Ori can quest and does early but also can be a good attacker if Dain is ready or with an attacking attachment. I typically keep a few allies for combat to chump or attack and not go too crazy questing. Kill the 1 WP and 0 attack allies first or Fili/Kili if you know you need to play Will of the West soon and one is dead already. That said, I've not played super hard quests, just Wiz Quest, Amon Din, Steward's Fear, Into Fangorn, Nin, Dreadnaught, and Massing. So nothing too crazy hard and you may have to adjust strategy, but this is more of a "for fun" deck than a serious attempt.

A couple of notes about card choices:

-with no Hardy Leadership, I had to use Warden of Healing to overcome the direct damage or damage from attacks

-Ori probably provides enough draw once you have 5 dwarves since the deck doesn't usually have enough resources to afford more than 2 hard casts a round

-Man the Walls over Legacy of Númenor is a multiplayer option. In solo, Legacy probably outperforms the other since if you play 2 dwarves from hand and reduce your threat by 2 with Nori, then it costs Doomed 2 essentially

-the specific ally mix comes down to player preference. The out of sphere allies might be tough to run since you have no way to play them from hand without Narvi and have to get them with AVGT otherwise

Who gets what attachments (generally speaking, some can go on allies like Soldier of Erebor):

Dain: Ancestral Armor, Armor of Erebor, Citadel Plate, Magic Ring, Mithril Shirt, Ring of Thror

Nori: Celebrian's Stone, Horn of Gondor, Narvi's Belt, Necklace of Girion, Stone of Elostirion

Ori: Dwarrowdelf Axe, Glamdring, Orcrist (it's possible to drop some stuff like the Plate or Celebrian for something like Durin's Axe to get more attack)