A Splendid Place for Smoke Rings

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Discard Pile

D4rkWolf10 493

This deck was developed with the intent of being a questing deck to pair alongside a more combat oriented deck. Smoke Rings is such a fun and useful event, and the pipe mechanic in general is just a really cool concept. During my most recent play test with the deck, it's definitely possible to be able to handle some combat once Gandalf gets all his toys, but I would still advise playing with a more combat focused deck if you can.

The main strategy of the deck is of course card draw and questing with your pipes and recycling Smoke Rings via Galadhrim Weaver. I would mulligan for an early Wizard Pipe or Resourceful over almost anything else, as resource generation is probably one of the bigger weaknesses of the deck and you want to be able to utilize Gandalf to play key cards as soon as possible.

I would also like to note that Wandering Took and Send for Aid are placeholders for two cards from the Sands of Harad expansion that have not yet been loaded onto RingsDB. Halfling Bounder is a new Lore ally that, while a side quest is in the victory display, essentially becomes a questing copy of A Test of Will. There is also a new colorless side quest in the new expansion. The name escapes me at present but once it is in the victory display the first ally played by each player each round does not require a resource match, which is pretty powerful.

Please suggest improvements in the comments below. I found this deck extremely enjoyable and would welcome feedback to make it more effective!

2 comments

Dec 07, 2016 toxiczammy 175

Would Daeron's Runes be able to replace Deep Knowledge? I know I would not want to take the doomed in multiplayer. Even if it did give me card draw.

Resourceful seems like it would be difficult to get out since you're not in Secrecy, perhaps Vanish from Sight would be a good card to have?

Also, Narya is a nice card, do you think you'll utilize it's ability? If not I would suggest taking that out.

I am not a great deck builder for Dalf as I have never made a good deck with him. This is not due to any lack of trying though. I simply find it overwhelming because I want to use all the cards that are meant for him. I think it's a trap because I usually end up with too many cards in the deck and I refuse to take any of them out. At any rate, that's my two cents.

Dec 07, 2016 D4rkWolf10 493

So, a caveat I probably should start posting with all my decks is that often I try to get outside the box when it comes to the "power" cards of the game, Daeron's Runes being a prime example. These types of cards are often game breaking with their utility or buff to your fellowship. While that is indeed fun, I really enjoy trying the less flashy cards in decks, either for thematic reasons or just because the stronger cards are in other decks at the time of creation. In this instance, Daeron's Runes was in another deck and my counterpart had Aragorn as one of his heroes, which really alleviated the Doomed pressure.

As to your other insights, you're absolutely correct that Resourceful is expensive and unwieldy in the deck. I added it mainly because I had no Leadership hero and trying to get Narya ASAP to fuel Leadership resource generation cards is simply too hit or miss for me.

Gandalf is a very hard hero to build around in my mind, and while it was a fun exercise, I don't know that I'd use him again in a deck like this. Not only is he fairly average at questing, defending, and attacking (and his toys don't buff him in any way to help him with this issue), you're basically forcing everyone else in the game to give up an arguably superior ally in Gandalf, even if he is only around 1 turn. The utility he provides in his Core Set ally design is so well done it's hard to argue everyone at the table giving that up so you can play the hero version.