Siege of Annuminas: Pick-Up Deck 1.0

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• 1.0

The 2016 LotR LCG Fellowship Event is right around the corner and I figured I would post the deck I will be bringing to face down the Siege of Annuminas. This description contains minor spoilers for the fellowship quest, so if you want to go in fresh don't read any further. For everyone else, I will be discussing the main areas of Siege of Annuminas that this deck is designed to address.

Enemies:

The Siege of Annuminas has 17 enemies in the encounter deck. Fortunately I have included one of my favorite heroes, Haldir of Lórien, to try and make short work of these minions. In this list you will find 9 weapons and 1 artifact that are all meant to be equipped onto Haldir first. Of the 17 enemies in the encounter deck, 6 can be KO'd by Haldir alone with 1 attachment and 11 can be KO'd by Haldir alone with 2 attachments. This deck's low starting threat and threat reducing cards should help to avoid engagements, thus allowing Haldir to use his combat action. By using Haldir's ability to kill enemies before they can attack, this frees up other characters' actions during combat and makes defending/attacking decisions easier.

Once you have Haldir stacked with attachments, the rest can be equipped to Glorfindel or a fellow companion's heroes. The enemies that Haldir can't 1-shot are all pretty big heavy-hitters. It will be important to dispatch them as quickly as possible, so the more damage you can put on the board, the better. Also, don't forget about Éowyn's ability. It can be a great tool to help down the boss enemies quickly.

Locations:

The encounter deck contains 15 locations, all with nasty travel effects. This is where Glorfindel and his trusty steed, Asfaloth, shine. 3 of the locations are immune to player card effects, but for the rest this deck tries to explore as many as possible while they are in the staging area. This bypasses the travel effects and hopefully helps keep questing manageable. Cards like Woodland Courier, The Evening Star, and a few others will further assist to explore locations without having to endure the harsh effects of traveling.

Another great interaction with locations in this deck is Ghân-buri-Ghân. Of the 15 locations in the encounter deck, 11 of them have 3 to 5 threat. If you can stomach the travel effect to get to one of these locations, your wose ally will become a great quester. If you can't stomach the travel effect, just discard Ghân-buri-Ghân to make the journey easier.

Treacheries:

The encounter deck includes only 10 treacheries. However, this deck has very few ways to counteract these effects. One of the worst when-revealed effects in this set is on Weary Warriors which blanks the text box of damaged characters. With a lot of archery in the encounter deck, it will be important to keep everyone healed up with Warden of Healing to avoid a potential calamity. Aside from this, you will just have to eat the treacheries or hope that someone else at the table is packing cancellation.

Opening Hand:

In your opening hand you really want to see at least 1 weapon, ideally a Bow of the Galadhrim or Dagger of Westernesse. You also want to see Asfaloth and hopefully Light of Valinor. 1 or 2 allies should be able to help quest or chump block if needed. Beyond that, anything else you draw is icing on the cake. Most of the cards in this deck cost 2 or less, so you should be able to consistently play any allies or events you draw.

Side Board:

This list of cards is designed as a pick-up deck for the Fellowship event. This means it is for those people that have not had time to coordinate their build with the other players. For this reason, the sideboard is important. If someone else is using Éowyn, her function is not critical to the deck, so she can be swapped out for Merry with little issue. If there is a conflict with Haldir of Lórien, this is a little bit more deleterious, but not terrible. You can sub in Argalad and not worry about changing the deck very much. Argalad can equip all the same weapons/items as Haldir and can become a formidable ranged attacker. The other allies in the side board are there for any other unique character conflicts that may arise.

The End;

Have fun out there and good luck.