The Children of Aule 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

"Since they were to come in the days of the power of Melkor, Aulë made the dwarves strong to endure. Therefore they are stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity, and they suffer toil and hunger and hurt of body more hardily than all other speaking peoples; and they live long, far beyond the span of Men, yet not forever."

-The Silmarillion, "Of Aulë and Yavanna"

Vigilant Guard is a cool card design, but requires a pretty specific deck focus. I've had it in several lists, but it always seems to get cut. However, I really wanted to try to use it in a deck focusing on taking hits for other players, even if I wasn't able to sentinel every enemy or had ones of my own to deal with. Glóin and Gimli offer some nice bonuses when they take damage (although Glóin cannot actually have a copy of Vigilant Guard attached), so my intent is double down on their value through the use of the attachment and some other Dwarven tricks.

While the deck is definitely focused mostly around attachments for your heroes, Vigilant Guard and Dwarven Shield are particularly important to get ahold of early, and are mulligan worthy. While you do want Glóin to be your primary defender (on your side and across the table as well if you manage to get a copy of Dúnedain Signal into play), you want to make sure he has reasonable defenses given his meager 1 defense to start out with. Ideally, you'd prefer to get to the point where you can defend with Glóin, take two damage (one to fuel his ability and one for Gimli), and then give your heroes a free combat boost and a resource. If two copies of Dwarven Shield are attached to Glóin, you'll be able to exhaust both copies to trade one damage for 3 resources!

I'd recommend putting Narvi's Belt on Glóin as well once you get hold of it, as ideally he will have the bulk of your resources. Once Ioreth is in play, Bifur can make sure you are able to heal 3 damage off a character every round, which should be fairly easy once Glóin is swimming in resources. A Good Harvest and We Are Not Idle round out resource acceleration and smoothing. There is a splash of additional healing and card draw to keep the deck moving as well.

In an ideal world, you would pair this deck with any deck featuring Dain Ironfoot to give your Dwarven heroes and allies a bit more punch, but if you have a very strong questing deck that isn't Dwarf centered on the other side of the table, I think that would work just as well. Good luck, and please make any suggestions to improve the deck in the comments!