Flight to the Ford 1.0

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Fight to the Ford or "Noro lim Asfaloth! Noro lim!"

"Aragorn and the others with flaming brands. Caught between fire and water, and seeing an Elf-lord revealed in his wrath, they were dismayed, and their horses were stricken with madness." - The Fellowship of the Ring

One of my absolute favourite parts of Lord of the Rings is the Flight to the Ford, everything about that portion of the book is just perfect, the tension and urgency of the chase, Frodo's bravery and the first hint of the power of the elves in Glorfindel's revealed in wrath.

This deck is a modified version of a very old deck by Beorn, he originally published on his blog prior to the release of The Black Riders, so I thought as the card pool has gotten 'swole' since then, I'd update it with a few newer cards, while still keep to my filthy theme-player principals. You can find Beorn's original deck list here http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/850/flight-to-the-ford-1.0

Opening Hand:

Well we're rocking Glorfindel so I guess that means we're looking for Light of Valinor in the opening hand, but at 24 starting threat, and the fact we're using the version of Aragorn means we can probably afford a few turns with out it if necessary.

We've got a smattering of cards which we're going to use A Good Harvest to get into play, so having Good Harvest and Sword that was Broken is also probably a good choice for first turn to give you an explosive questing start, especially if you're playing alongside another deck that can handle combat on the first turn.

Either of the other action advantage cards, Wingfoot or Fast Hitch are also both great options, all 3 of our heroes have great stats for doing double duty so the earlier you can grab those the better.

At the Table:

At it's core the deck is primarily a questing deck with a little bit of location control and healing, so you should focus on that for the most part. But we're not without our combat tricks, Frodo Baggins is an incredibly resilient little Hobbit, so he can take our attacks undefended in a pinch, leaving 2 great attackers in Aragorn and Glorfindel to mop up the enemies.

Most of the cards were chosen to keep the theme and story of this part of the book so we've got a few odd '1x' choices like Tale of Tinúviel, Silver Lamp and Ring of Barahir, which can be a great help if they do show up. Silver Lamp can help you determine if you want Aragorn or Frodo defending an attack, and the Tale of Tinúviel can turn Aragorn into a beastly defender/attacker against a big foe using Glorfindel 3 willpower as a boost.

Sideboard:

So some of the cards in the sideboard are left over from the changes made to Beorn's original deck, however we also have some cards to make the deck...THE MOVIE EDITION!

Replace Glorfindel with Arwen Undómiel, replace the Arwen ally with the ally version of Glorfindel. Add some Elven-light' maybe drop Light of Valinor to a 1x or 2x. You could also drop Asfaloth to 1x and add some more Tale of Tinúviel, though I'd think it'd be a shame if you played through the deck and Asfaloth didn't make an appearance.

Given the added resource acceleration and card draw from using Arwen Undómiel and Elven-light it's probably a better and more consistent version of the deck, do people prefer the movie version of this section of the story?

One sideboard change i'm not entirely clear on which is better is Heed the Dream over Daeron's Runes. We have the ability to give Aragorn the icon so we could in theory pay for the kicker, and given the amount of 1x in the deck it might be preferable to dig for that one toolboxey card we need rather than drawing 2 and discarding 1 for Daeron's?