The Valourous Riders Of Doom 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Introduction

I have always been intrigued to build a working Rohan Deck with Gríma and the Doom-mechanic. This deck pushes your threat to 40 as fast as possible and then benefits from the valour triggers. Háma lets you recycle the valour events and Secret Vigil and Favor of the Valar keep your threat between 40-50.

Also this deck uses the lesser popular Rohan heroes and works great with current spirit heavy rohan decks e.g. Théodred, Théoden and Éowyn, which focus more on questing.

Playstyle

Gríma is the heart of this deck. Until you are at 40 threat you normally want use his ability every round. He can get the Golden Shield if you play alone and works as your ermegency defender with Henneth Annûn Guard. Normally you want to Feint all enemies with latter event card or Grimbold OR chump block to boost Éomer. You can even take undefended attacks intentionally and block them with Close Call or heal after with Waters of Nimrodel, to raise your threat faster. Also attach a Song of Battle to Grima, for more flexibility. Rivendell Minstrel will help you find it.

Háma lets you recycle powerful events like Horn's Cry or Hour of Wrath. The latter can be played every round once Grima got the Song of Battle attached and uses his ability. Keep in mind you can also choose other players with the valour effects. He also gets a Raiment of War and you want to attack every round with him and recycle an event. For some scenarios the standard combo with Thicket of Spears and The Hammer-stroke can also work, but this gets very boring very fast....

Card draw like Deep Knowledge or Gléowine lets you build your hand optimally.

Éomer just gets his Firefoot and attacks together with Hama. The reason that I did not include Rohan Warhorse is that Hour of Wrath lets you attack endlessly anyway, so these do not have much use. Attach the Keys of Orthanc to him or to Háma.

You are doomed!

A few words on the doom combos in this deck. Try to get the most out of your Isengard Messenger and play your doomed cards(Waters of Nimrodel, Deep Knowledge,Henneth Annûn Guard) and use Gríma before questing. Do not try to use more than 2 doom triggers each round once Keys of Orthanc are out, because they can only trigger once per round.

Once you are valourious (40 threat) use Secret Vigil carefully to stay above 40 but do not get eliminated. Favor of the Valar helps with that. Stop using Doom cards and Grimas ability as much as you can over 40 threat.

Conclusion

This deck plays very different, than the other decks I played before, but it is definetely a very fun deck. Hama lets you recycle the strongest tactics events there are and this supports your group a lot. Events like Close Call, Deep Knowledge, Horn's Cry, Hour of Wrath and Waters of Nimrodel all have the potential to be game changers. Never forget to use them on other people than yourself.

Grima provides you effectively with 1 extra resource from the start, so you can rush with this deck very fast. If you add the Keys of Orthanc you have effectively 5 resources per round

With some Honour Guards and other allies out you do not have to care much about defending anymore and eliminate quite a number of enemies each round. Balancing your threat between 40-50 is quite the challenge but really fun to play.

This deck suffers a bit on questing but performs outstanding together with a spirit Rohan deck. If you like the concept of this deck, try it out and let me know your experiences and tweaks in the comments :)