Scions of the House of El: Campaign Edition 1.0

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• 1.0

Scions of the House of El 2: Campaign Harder, or "Oh NO-ldor you didn't play Steward of Gondor??"

So this is an iteration on my go to Twins deck, built for campaign alongside AtaruSlash's Gloin/Treebeard/Elrond deck. Anyone hanging around on the CotR Discord knows by now that I really don't like playing Steward of Gondor. It's an amazing card, and as is often said to me it's the "defining card of the sphere", and yes I agree for the most part. However, for me, one of the primary problems with Steward is that too often it becomes the primary gear in your decks 'engine' without it, the deck pootles along in first gear or flat out stalls.

So as a player who primarily plays solo, or jumps into 'pick up' games either in OCTGN or a FLGS, there's nothing worse than bringing your Steward deck to the table and having someone else play it out before you. Your deck sits there trundling along while the other players deck is (out)performing, and you feel like you're just along for the ride rather than actively contributing.

And Steward isn't the sort of card that you just swap out your 3 copies for an alternative and you're good to go. While we do have a dearth of alternatives for resource generation in the card pool now, bringing enough to the deck to make up for the 'loss' of Steward takes up too much deck space.

All that being said, starting up a 2 player campaign alongside a deck that didn't rely on Steward (coughnerfgloincough) and me stubbornly sticking to my no Steward rule, meant that we had a couple of rough quests in the early part of the campaign. While the original version of my Twins deck performed well and pretty consistently, it didn't really have the explosive starts an early Steward can provide a deck. So this decklist is tweaked and tinkered to get the absolute best performance out of it possible.

Opening Hand:

The only card absolutely critical to see in your opening hand is Elven-light, and as such you should mulligan aggressively for it. The rest of your hand is very flexible, with the cost curve of the deck is weighted to the less than 2 cost end, so you should look for one solid 2 cost card, with the best choices being Steward of Gondor, Elven Mail or Silver Harp over any of the 2 cost allies, and use Arwen Undómiel's ability to get that into play on turn 1.

Steward should always go on Arwen, while either of the Twins can really swing for some spectacular turns with the extra resources, the base cards for the deck are slanted towards Spirit, and a generally more expensive than the Leadership/Tactics cards in the deck. Although in Campaign mode, there's a compelling argument for Steward on either version of Fellowship Aragorn

At the Table:

Most of the tactics from the previous version of the deck still apply to this super-charged Steward version. Though the base list for this deck is now much more 'toolboxy' to allow for you to really dig down and tailor your deck to the different styles of quests in the campaign with the sideboard.

One of the questions that gets talked about alot with Noldor decks, is how many cards do you include to fuel all your discard effects? The answer is really all of them. You can't afford to be too precious about the vast majority of cards the deck. While yes, ideally you'll be wanting to horde as many precious resources on Elladan and Elrohir as possible, it's rare you'll need to attack or defend with either more than once or twice per turn, and even rarer every turn unless things have gone especially poorly. The best way to decide which cards are 'expendable', fuel for the Noldor discard bonfire, is to set a priority based on what you and your table-mates have under control the most.

With some lucky draws, the rest of the more specific discard fodder, like Glorfindel, Elwing's Flight and Lords of the Eldar will make the decisions for you that much easier.

Revealed in Wrath is one my absolute favourite cards to be released recently. It's such a versatile card, for enemies that make an immediate attack when they engage, it's essentially a Feint, and while it isn't quite a Tactics A Test of Will it can really neuter a tricky enemy that has some engagement related effect, or allow you to smash a Mumak in a single turn.

Light of Valinor can be a little bit of a contentious card at the table, depending on how your fellow players have their decks setup. If another player has Elrond or Glorfindel you can bet they'll want it to be hitting the table. So why not play it across the table for them if you draw it early. It's only there to provide you with a little questing boost/action advantage in the early turns for Elladan, and is probably one of the first things you can afford to drop when you're considering your sideboard substitutions.

Sideboard:

The sideboard got a complete overhaul for campaign mode, packed with goodies for the road ahead. We knew going forward Elladan was going to be our captive for Uruk-Hai so cards like Miruvor, Cram were going to help us with the lost action advantage. And The Three Hunters is going to replace our Elwing's Flight once Aragorn hits the board.

Tides of Fate is, in my opinion, a great card, though very quest specific, hence it's position in the sideboard. Some quests in campaign (The Road Darkens box, and Passing of the Grey Company specifically) have quite a few shadow effects that boost enemy attack. And usually between the Ranger boon, and Dúnedain Warnings they don't even scratch Elrohir anyway but for 2 Tactics resources you get +3 Def, +3 Att and a readying effect, really is too good to pass up.

Add the fact that Arwen Undómiel is flush with resources to play Lords of the Eldar and you get some incredible combat numbers on the Twins alone for multiple exchanges in a single combat phase.

Heir of Mardil is a great card on Elrohir, you can start holding back Arwen Undómiel's ability to grant a resource to get a free readying effect for Elrohir, either allowing him to quest for those truly YOLO questing turns, or for an extra couple of defenses, which can be especially useful once he has an Elven Mail too.

Skyward Volley if another player is bringing a lot of questing power to the table then subbing out Elwing's Flight for Volley will bring a substantial amount of attack power to the table. Having Trollshaw Scout's on the table also make it that much easier to ensure you have a ready character with ranged to exhaust for the additional cost.

The original version of this deck was heavily based on Matt Newman's Dread Realm release article deck, which can be found here and his deck list can also be found here on ringsdb in the Derived from section below