[Thematic Nightmare] The Birds and the Beasts 1.0

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• 1.0

This is a thematic deck built as part of my Thematic Nightmare series on my blog, Darkling Door.

The theme for this deck is "Eagles at the Carrock" and it was built to defeat Nightmare Conflict at the Carrock.

Strategy

There are 3 really important cards that this deck needs before it starts to work:

• Song of Battle, which goes on Aragorn so that I can start to afford Eagle cards
• Radagast, who helps both with questing and paying for Eagles
• Athelas, because without it I am vulnerable to the Sacked! Treachery

Even though I really need all 3 of these cards ASAP, I actually don't mulligan for any of them. Unless I happen to get all 3 in my starting hand, I mulligan for Elven-light, which generally provides enough card draw to ensure I'll find the other 3 cards.

I also want to see one of my Side Quests early in the game to buy myself a little more time, since progress against a Side Quest doesn't do anything to hasten the coming of the Trolls. As written, I think the Nightmare card actually places progress on your Side Quests as well, which is awfully nice of it.

With the exception of the River Langflood Location, which gets +1 for each Troll in play, nothing coming out of the encounter deck will have more than 3 , so I keep that in mind when I'm aiming not to make too much progress. I usually commit no more than 1 more than what's in the staging area in the early game, preferring to take some extra threat rather than make too much progress.

I have to keep the staging area as clear as possible, since this deck can't muster too much at once. The only thing I'll leave in the staging area is the Hives and Hives Location which deals 1 damage to each character when progress is placed upon it. Even then, I usually travel to the first one that comes out so they don't build up.

Once my threat is too high, or it looks likely that I will be advancing to stage 2, I trigger Aragorn's ability and drop my threat back to 33. I hold all of my threat reduction cards until this point, and and play them all at once to give me as much time as possible before I'm forced to engage all of the Trolls.

By the time the named Trolls show up, hopefully I have a copy or two of Support of the Eagles down on Aragorn and a whole host of Eagles in play, and I can start to take the Trolls down one turn at a time. I usually go for Louis (the one that raises my threat) last, but the order of the others doesn't usually matter too much. If I happen to have a copy of the Battle Side Quest Delay the Enemy in play at this point, I usually use it to help to clear The Carrock in one go, making things a little easier and unblocking my ability to travel to other Locations.

After that, it's just a question of bringing the Trolls down one by one until they're all dead, which usually isn't too hard once one of my Eagles of the Misty Mountains has 4 or 5 Eagle Attachments behind it.

For more analysis, check out my blog post on this deck.