Friend of Friend of Friends 1.0

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• 1.0

The idea here was to try to maximize the consistency of Friend of Friends through Erestor's card draw, which also makes other Hobbit tricks like Drinking Song much more effective.

As the deck benefits from a large number of unique allies and Steward of Gondor, I found that running 3x A Fair Exchange works really nicely to fetch Steward of Gondor consistently, and later to find useful cards like Red Book of Westmarch, Angbor the Fearless, Merry, etc.

First turn, mulligan for Steward of Gondor. If you don't find it, hopefully some combination of a super-charged Drinking Song and/or Henamarth Riversong/Bill the Pony + A Fair Exchange will allow you to get it. I haven't missed yet in testing. Steward of Gondor goes on Frodo Baggins to ensure that he can consistently use his ability to keep your threat in check, especially early. Most cards are low-cost so that you can play your entire hand every turn -- the exception is Turn 1, where you'll have to make some tough choices, but there's plenty of duplicates to ensure you don't dump something critical. If you DO discard something important, either shuffle it back in with The White Council or Will of the West (once you get Song of Travel on Frodo).

From there, it's just about setting up board state, particularly getting out Friend of Friends to make Frodo Baggins + Sam Gamgee + Rosie Cotton a potent combat machine. Your relatively low starting threat gives you some time.

By end game, you want Red Book of Westmarch on Frodo to keep your up. You should be able to hit 20 easily and still have Sam, Frodo, and Rosie ready to go.

A note on Lily Cotton: If you use her ability, generally you will lose the ally due to Erestor's forced discard. This may be worth it for emergency uses of Rosie Cotton or to emergency chump with a Hobbit Archer. More commonly I like Lily Cotton for her combo with Merry to repeat his willpower burst. Use her ability on Merry during the Resource Phase so that he's back in your hand for the Planning Phase.

Other ideas:

Song of Hope and Song of Healing could be alternates to Dúnedain Remedy and Protector of Lórien. Though generally I find that I don't have too many extra cards to discard, so I prefer spending resources for healing late game, and Protector works great on Sam to provide extra in a pinch.

A Test of Will. Could also consider side quests -- maybe Scout Ahead and Double Back -- for use with Halfling Bounder (and/or Legacy Blade). However, (a) the side quests aren't that useful, and (b) the Bounder is a bit expensive for your limited resources.

Sword-thain for Rosie Cotton. I don't find this to be necessary most of the time with this dck, but could open up some further possibilities in a combat-heavy quest.

Additional useful unique cards such as Box of Earth, The Renewer (can go on a hero with Steward of Gondor), Thrór's Map, Gaffer Gamgee or Mablung (in case you're engaged with an unwieldy enemy and have 2 resources).