Grief Hunters (A Battle of Pelennor Fields Story) 1.0

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• 1.0

Been playing a bit again, and Forth, the Three Hunters has always been my thematically favorite contract. Decided I was finally going to make a one deck (a deck that can beat every quest in the game) out of it, even though it would certainly be one that was admittedly nowhere near as consistent as the others, and certainly not a Valar Deck (what I call a one deck that can also beat campaign mode).

I made a pretty efficient Gandlaf/Glorfindel/Beregond deck that started trudging through the gauntlet. It could handle NM Dol Guldor and even NM Rhosgobel (Thorongil Glorfindel has never been so clutch). With some deep binder tweaks I could even beat NM Shadow and Flame (give that a try with your generalized Three Hunters Deck sometime, its hilarious).

So I was making pretty good progress through the Reduced Quest Gauntlet but before I got any further I decided to take a little sojourn to the Battle of Pelennor Fields. It was lingering in the back of my mind. I knew this was going to be a unique experience - The Battle of Pelennor Fields will make you discard your entire deck looking for an ally. I expected this only to be a minor inconvenience and was the reason I included the obligatory 1x Will of the West in my deck. I figured I would just wait for my deck to empty and then fill it right back up. And that works. The problem is the Stage 2 Quest Card (which is the prime stall and build spot) requires all of 0 quest points without an ally in the staging area and immediately completes itself. Is this the only time a quest that isn't designed to self-completes? I believe it is.

Well then comes the Wraith on Wings, Grond, and the Witch King all at once. The latter also puts an enemy into play at the beginning of every quest phase (which always seemed to be a Mumak). By turn 2 you need to be able to quest for about 12 and defend/counterattack about 3 enemies. This deck hates Forth, the Three Hunters like NM Dol Guldor hates The Grey Wanderer.

So after sending this deck, which could do so many other wonderful things, straight to its death over and over and over I decided to change my objective. It appears Building a Forth, the Three Hunters one deck is impossible. Instead it was time to build a Forth, the Three Hunters deck to beat Pennelor Fields. In the words of Legolas Everdeen: Dear the Battle of Pennelor Fieds - if we burn, you burn with us.

Even this proved no easy task. It is incredibly difficult to outpace this encounter deck. Three Hunter Decks have nowhere to hide if they find themselves overwhelmed. Along with some archery mechanics and a doomsday timer (40 damage on Minas Tirith) that approaches far faster than you'd expect, I knew some draw and stall shenanigans we're on the horizon.

Turn 1: Draw hard with Beravor all game (where have I heard that before?), a Steed of the North will give her some combat utility. You start at 23 threat. Ideally you want to play one Deep Knowledge and one Legacy of Númenor before you play your first Pillars of the Kings to draw four more cards. Hopefully you can get Steward of Gondor on Denethor. Play all the one cost restricteds you can. Round one refresh phrase use Glorfindel and Aragorn to Peace, and Thought if you got it.

Turn 2: Use all your card draw again before committing to any plays. Don't be afraid of using more doomed cards and going into your mid 40's, there's only a few doomed 1 encounter cards in this quest. Now is time to use your Open the Armory's before you shuffle some now useless events into your deck. Ideally this is when you get a free Ancestral Armor on Denethor, or an out of sphare Dagger of Westernesse on Aragorn. There's also two A Good Harvest's to help with those. Then make your best restricted plays, saving at least 1 Spirit Resource and 5 Leadership Resources. Your ideal loadouts are:

Denethor - Ancestral Armor/Armored Destrier/Shining Shield

Beravor - Ranger Spear/Ranger Spear/Steed of the North

Glorfindel (Esquire of Gondor) - Valiant Sword/Sword of Numenor/Silver Circlet [+Light of Valinor]

Aragorn (Esquire of Rohan) - Herugrim/Celebrian's Stone/Dagger of Westernese [+Strider]

There is a lot of wiggle room with the restircteds, don't be afraid to go off script. Just make sure Aragon has at least one artifact so he can quest exhausted. You also probably want to get an Unexpected Courage courage on Denethor sooner rather than later.

Good old Doom Hangs Still is next, the LotR LCG equivalent of taking your ball and going home. At the end of planning you still have to discard your deck but this is what your Will of the West and Spirit Resource is for. Skipping the quest phase will buy some time as well as slow down Grond and keep the Witch King from spawning an enemy. Depending on your threat you might have to pull down the Wraith on Wings, but hopefully Denethor can block him by now.

Turn 3: It's go time. There should only be 1-2 damage on Minas Tirith, and your contract should be flipped already if not by the end of the turn. Draw with Beravor and quest unexhaused with Glorfindel and Aragorn and WEAR. THEM. DOWN. I don't know what the win percentage is but it only took me a couple tries to beat it.

Have fun winning the biggest battle in Third Age Middlearth history (#don'tFactCheckMe) with three measly little hunters.