Decks for New Players: Minimum Purchase Noldor 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This deck is designed with newer players in mind, and is part of a series of decks that can be contructed using cards from only the Revised Core Set and one other purchase: The Grey Havens.

This deck has a consistently low cost curve, with only one card costing more than 2 resources (Faramir). Card draw will hopefully not be too much of a problem. Círdan the Shipwright will allow you to draw an extra card each turn, Lórien's Wealth will allow for an extra burst of cards here and there, and if your hand is ever depleted then Galdor of the Havens will be able to reset your hand size to six once in the game. The ability to discard cards to fuel abilities effectively turns the cards themselves into resources to pay for various effects, especially once you start using it in conjunction with To the Sea, to the Sea!. Will of the West is necessary for this deck due to the amount of drawing and discarding that will be going on.

This deck opens strong before the game even begins with what is essentially a tailored mulligan. Galdor lets you craft your opening hand, allowing you to discard cards that will not be useful to you immediately and draw different cards from your deck in the hopes of something better. Ideally you’ll find copies of Unexpected Courage and Narya. Once you enter your first quest phase, assuming you have added no allies you can still achieve an impressive combined of 11, allowing you to make progress quickly before the encounter deck can marshall its forces. Lindon Navigator and Sailor of Lune will be your primary questers from your allies, just be sure to use Éowyn’s ability to discard an event to give the Sailor that extra as well. After Faramir is in play, this will quickly get to ridiculous levels of so take advantage and blow through those quest stages at your leisure. It should be said at this point that while Eowyn is a Rohan hero, her ability fits too perfectly into the Noldor discard mechanic to exclude her from this deck. Once you get copies of The Evening Star and Elwing's Flight into your discard pile, subsequent occasions you play them will yield greater results. The former will allow you to nuke locations from orbit, blowing them out of the water entirely, while the latter boosts more of your characters’ and readies them for subsequent rounds.

Combat will largely need to be handled by your Mithlond Sea-watcher and Warden of the Havens, who will cover attacking and defence respectively. Assuming you can find your Unexpected Courage and Narya, use Cirdan and his Ring to boost your allies even further so they can stand up to more enemies for you, and hopefully survive those punches. Key to this deck’s consistent performance however is Protector of Lórien, which not only boosts your hero's and when you need it, but it allows you to manipulate the top of your discard pile as many as three times per phase. As much as Unexpected Courage and Narya, you should be looking for this attachment to gain as much control over your board state as possible. That said, combat is not this deck’s strong suit. Avoid enemies if you can, focus your attacks if you can’t, and quest as hard and as fast as you can. Sacrifice an ally or two if you need to chump some attacks, you can always bring them back through Stand and Fight or recycle them round with Will of the West.

For more decks that can be built with only the Revised Core Set and one additional purchase, check out this article on Vision of the Palantir here: https://visionofthepalantir.com/2023/01/13/ten-decks-for-new-players/