Gandalf Carpet Bomb 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Then Gandalf...stood upon the hill-top and called; and down to him came the great eagle, Gwaihir the Windlord, and stood before him.

'Twice you have borne, me Gwaihir my friend,' said Gandalf. 'Thrice shall pay for all, if you are willing. You will not find me a burden much greater than when you bore me from Zirakzigil...'

'Yo, I'll finna drop you like a bomb on some fools again and again,' answered Gwaihir, 'I mean dang, whatever you want, you don't gotta be so extra about it. Even if you was made of, I dunno, a rock or something you'd be living rent-free in my talons.'

--Gandalf and Gwaihir in The Return on the King (...kind of...)

Purpose

This deck is meant to set you up to drop Gandalf in every round. It does it pretty well though it requires a bit of setup. This isn't meant to be a power deck, but it IS meant to be fun! With that in mind, even if you COULD win just by playing the Eagle allies, you SHOULD wait and get yourself to launch Gandalf like a heat-seeking missile from the claws of an Eagle every round instead.

Heroes

Radagast and Elrond make it really easy to flex their resources to pay for Eagle allies. You will want to use Radagast as your main defender until you are capable of comfortably defending with a Winged Guardian or an Eagles of the Misty Mountains. Radagast is also extremely helpful for access to Wizard Pipe. Elrond also gives you access to Vilya which sort of functions as a missile silo in this deck. Éowyn is here to give us chunky willpower and more Tactics resources.

Dropping Istari Bombs 101

Get Wizard Pipe out ASAP. Master of the Forge, Heed the Dream, and Word of Command will help you search for it and Vilya.

Now, you have some options. You can blindly fire-off Vilya and Gwaihir's Debt in the hopes of running into Gandalf. (The latter option requires you to have one of your Eagles in play already). There are more consistent options though.

If you have enough resources, you can pay for Gandalf outright. This is generally your solution later in the game when the resources will be more likely to pile up on your heroes. Radagast's Staff and Vilya will save you a bunch of resources so it isn't uncommon for this to happen. Be sure to use Born Aloft to call Gandalf back home before the end of the round!

You can also pop Gandalf onto the top of your deck using Wizard's Pipe and Vilya him into play. This works especially well during Planning so that you can put Born Aloft on him.

Gwaihir's Debt is another option. For best results, get Gandalf into your hand with Word of Command or Gather Information, put him on top of the deck with Wizard Pipe, and launch him from the top of Zirakzigil to show Sauron you aren't afraid to fight dirty.

You can keep this up for a long time. Blow stuff up. Draw some cards. See how low you can get your threat. Gandalf is a special kind of awesome.

Other Considerations

I tried using Resourceful with Vilya just to see how it felt to generate a bunch of resources and pay for Gandalf and other cards that way, but every time I got Resourceful in my hand I just wished it was something more useful.

You might try running a copy of Light of Valinor to give Elrond some flexibility. I used Magic Ring for the same purpose.

Originally I was trying to make an Eagle deck without Gwaihir Hero, and it accidentally turned into this. It ended up becoming focused on Gandalf because I got inspired by the Galadriel Plays Gandalf Every Turn deck!

Feel free to leave comments or suggestions.