Deck Tech: Old Friends, New Toys 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey all, welcome to week 37 of Deck Tech! Last week we named Treebeard an honorary Eldar, and this week technical difficulties have forced me to give you something a bit unique.

Not the deck, though, the deck is totally fine! I've got Unlikely Friendship, Captain's Wisdom, and the new Greenwood Archer to really ramp the Silvans up quickly. Who's the lucky Dwarf? Bifur! You get resource flexibility and a nice, low starting threat to boot.

The deck, of course, features a ton of different Silvan allies, and two copies of Galadhrim Weaver to shuffle all the fun stuff back into the deck. Yes, trying to get the most out of them will make your brain hurt because of the sequencing.

The technical difficulties I was mentioning mostly resolve around OCTGN crashing on me a ton while trying to test out another deck. And when it's the holiday season and you don't have your physical cards handy, that just makes things no fun. Nothing permanent, just a challenge for this week.

Quest 1: The Weather Hills

Some of you are thinking this is going to go very badly, because you remember some of the cards in this encounter deck and my reluctance to use A Test of Will now. We'll see if you're right.

I start this game off with an opening hand that includes Unlikely Friendship and Galadhrim Weaver, so I'm basically all over it. Being able to give one of these heroes two resources right off the bat will let me surge out a good number of allies. And then, in the resource phase, I draw a Captain's Wisdom and this is probably the best start I've ever had. Play the Captain's Wisdom, exhausting Celeborn. Play Unlikely Friendship for more Silvans and follow it up with a Galadhrim Weaver to get more free cards and resources later. And then a Greenwood Archer and a Naith Guide to use up poor Celeborn's resources for the turn.

So we clear out the first active location, and an Orc appears to force me to discard an ally. The Weaver gets killed, but I have another I can use to recycle her!

Round three I use The Tree People to pull a Galadhrim Minstrel, who finds me an Unlikely Friendship and gives me the resources I need to play Treebeard. Unfortunately, the active location is cleared, revealing a very large Angmar Captain. But I can stall on engaging him until Treebeard is ready.

We keep making steady progress for a while, and on round seven I have a ton more Silvan fun. I use Captain's Wisdom to get some extra resources, an Island Amid Perils to bring back a Greenwood Archer, drop my threat, and replay it to ready Celeborn. Plus a Galadhrim Weaver to shuffle my threat reduction back in. I like never having to engage enemies I don't want in a Silvan deck.

Round ten I experience some Alanis Morissette level irony. I pay five for Gandalf, after holding out on my Silvan shenanigans the previous round, and immediately draw three copies of Sneak Attack. Fortunately, before the end of the round, I can play a Feigned Voices to bring back a Galadhrim Weaver to my hand. And after Gandalf gets discarded, I play the Weaver to shuffle him back in.

And then one round after that, the shit hits the fan. I draw a Biting Wind in a round where I'm forced to reveal two encounter cards. And I don't have any cancellation, so a lot of Silvans have to die. I draw through the rest of my deck (giving me access to Sneak Attack and Gandalf for the first time) in the following round, and I get close to stabilizing before drawing another Biting Wind and scooping. You don't really want to hear me talk about the slowly dwindling hand size as I gradually threat out.

Play Tips:

1. Pull the Galadhrim Weavers back to your hand before you think you'll need them, but after they've quested for 2 with Celeborn's boost. That way you can have more control over what you recycle.
2. Unless you're about to play something immediately with the extra resource, Unlikely Friendship should probably give its resource to Celeborn. There's a lot of great Leadership events that cost in here.
3. Don't forget Galadriel lets your allies quest without exhausting when they come into play. Including Gandalf. Doesn't do anything for Treebeard, though.
4. Valiant Sacrifice is awesome in this deck, if you have the resource to spare. Just draw even more cards, and the ally doesn't actually have to die.
5. Once your deck runs out, you can permanently Feint one enemy with a Galadhrim Weaver and Feigned Voices. It's good fun.

Possible Changes:

1. Skip Island Amid Perils for A Test of Will. The deck's threat gets low enough already that it probably doesn't need it, though I like shrinking it further and increasing the density of effects that will let you pull a Silvan out.
2. Warden of Healing is probably a better choice than Galadhrim Healer, but he's off-theme. And the low health allies will concentrate damage on your heroes. Having a way to heal Treebeard would be nice, though.

Next week: More surprises, but I expect a lot of card draw.

Blog: I'm planning on doing a visual revamp of the blog, (and it has an RSS feed if that's your thing). Once that's done, I'll start sharing other players' decks again with the occasional spotlight.

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