Dernhelm Striding 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Strider is certainly one of the most talked about cards in the recent releases, since it contains so many possibilities to play the game in a different way. Already there have been quite a few builds including the new Éowyn hero (also known as Dernhelm), but here's a slightly different build, a thematic take on the bond between her and her uncle.

Attachments

As with any Strider deck, it forms the foundation of the deck, so you should mulligan to find it. It should go on Éowyn, who can then quest for 6 without exhausting. Snowmane is another important keystone, and goes on Théoden, also allowing him to (hopefully!) ready after questing.

Then, we try to set up one hero as a defender and another as our attacker. Because of Théoden's Herugrim discount, I like to make him the attacker. Éowyn therefore gets the Golden Shield, which is probably the most important card after Strider and Snowmane, and so there are 3 copies of each. So with just two attachments, Éowyn can quest for 6 and then defend for a huge 7 ! Meanwhile, with a couple of Dagger of Westernesses, or one and his ancient blade, our king of Rohan can be swinging in for 7 . He also gets Captain of Gondor (the most unthematic card I allowed myself to include), and Unexpected Courage, so he can also defend for 3 in the same round as questing and attacking.

Because our threat starts at 18 thanks to Éowyn's Setup ability, we can use Resourceful in the first few rounds to get a bit of resource acceleration. There's slightly more Spirit than Tactics in this deck, so Théoden probably gets the goods, but make your decision based on the hand that you hold. Raiment of War could go on Théoden, but should be reserved for Boromir, Déorwine or even Gamling! Windfola is for Éowyn, boosting her and so also her .

Allies

In terms of allies, there are quite a lot more than your usual Strider deck, and that's the beauty of Rohan; most of these allies are use 'em and lose 'em. The only allies that you want to keep around are the three mentioned above, keeping your total at a lovely 5 characters to keep that boost for Éowyn. With Théoden's discount, we can drop them cheaper and then discard them once they've outlived their use!

Events

There are only two different events in the deck, Foe-hammer and Ride to Ruin. The former gives us a bit of card draw, assuming we can find the Daggers or Raiments. Remember, we can use Herugrim if Théoden doesn't need the extra bonus! The latter card gives us a bit more location management and allows us to easily discard extraneous allies, especially the Westfold Horse-breeder, who doesn't come with a built-in discard function. Other than that, the allies in this deck tend to serve as pseudo-events. I had originally included Sterner than Steel, but found it unreliable due to the low number of eligible attachments.

Versatility

What I enjoy most about this deck is its versatility; there's no need to play it like I've described here. The attachments can all be switched around as you need. For example, you could give Éowyn Unexpected Courage and Herugrim in addition to the Golden Shield and Strider. This would let her quest for 6 , defend for 7 and then attack for 7 ! Use her ability and her rises to 16, able to deal a decisive blow to just about any end-of-scenario boss!

You could also invert the spheres of our heroes to use Éowyn and Théoden. This turns Éowyn into even more of a monster, able to get her defence to 11 in a four player game! Likewise Théoden starts out much more capable, he can quest for 3 and attack for 6 with Herugrim!

Of course, there are downsides to this. We would lose our Ally discount and Éowyn's one-use splatter-something-into-paste ability. Also, our starting threat would rise to 21, thereby rendering Resourceful unplayable without also something threat-lowering. But the option is there!

Conclusion

This is a fairly well-rounded deck, able to do a fairly sizeable chunk of questing and combat. It should serve you reasonably well as a solo deck. The major weakness is the lack of card draw, as Foe-hammer is our only source and is not completely reliable. Resources are managed through Resourceful and Théoden's discount. It also possesses no healing, though it should hopefully not require a huge amount once Éowyn is set up.

This was built with only one copy of the Core Set in mind, hence only one Unexpected Courage, but you can of course include more if you are able to. I hope you enjoy playing this deck should you wish to try it out!