Three Hunters: Enter Sandmen 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is the deck that I used to campaign through Sands of Harad, and had a really fun time with it. This is my second deck to make it through the box (the other being Three Hunters: Learn to Play) and was the more fun of the two.

What makes this deck enjoyable is that the play style changes a little bit depending on what the particular scenario is going to throw at you. With the deck being highly focused on the heroes the strategy is to quest heavy, use the readying abilities, and not to let enemies hang around due to the lack of ally defenders.

In your opening hand, Unlikely Friendship and Steward of Gondor help Gimli begin piling up resources. Since his ability costs resources and he is the target for resource smoothing with Narvi's Belt applied. The attachments are all pretty straight forward in who they go on, with A Burning Brand going on Gimli after using Narvi's Belt to temporarily give him a resource icon.

Between Galadriel, Gandalf (with Sneak Attack), Ancient Mathom, Foe-hammer, and Elven-light the deck can actually get enough of the attachments in hand pretty consistently, to get the engine rolling. The bonus is that the heroes have good survivability while you work on setting up your board state. If you happen to get both Unexpected Courage cards in a game, the first one goes on Aragorn and the second depends; if you feel like you need more defense, give it to Gimli, or if you want to melt enemies away give it to Legolas.

As far as strategy goes, I found the most useful option for Gandalf is to reserve him for the combat phase, and I mostly used him as a defender and archery sponge. If you can get Light of Valinor out early, you can effectively quest with all your heroes, and in combat, use Gimli's ability to ready Aragorn to have more action advantage. If Aragorn and Legolas each have a weapon, there are very few enemies that they would not be able to kill, while attacking together. The new weapons (Mirkwood Long-knife and Dwarven Shield) have not received the greatest reception from the community at large, but I believe the offer a fresh combat strategy outside of the obvious power combos.

I hope some other give this three colored three hunters deck a try and have fun doing so. Also, if you are using these card to play through Sands of Harad, I highly suggest using the cancelation events from the sideboard for the last quest, The Long Arm of Mordor