Deck Tech: Sam and ɯɐS 1.0

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• 1.0

Hey all, welcome to week 41 of Deck Tech! Last week I built a low threat Leadership Lore deck meant to take advantage of Unlikely Friendship with some resource fixing from Bifur and Théodred. I had some problems actually drawing Unlikely Friendship, though, which is kind of a problem.

This week, I went back to my roots and built a Leadership Secrecy deck around Sam and ɯɐS. I'm half doing this because I just found out I can use upside down text on ringsdb, and half doing this because I enjoy the fact that Denethor's stats are such a great mirror of Sam's. And his absurd resource boosting starts.

We've got basically every extra resource card that doesn't require anything extra. Steward of Gondor for Denethor, Captain's Wisdom, Gaining Strength, and even A Very Good Tale to just cheat out allies even more.

And yeah, I know there are more of these effects available, but I think this deck hits a really good number.

Draw comes primarily from Erestor and Rod of the Steward. It's a little light, especially without Gandalf, but the average power level (and cost...) of these cards is so high it's not a crippling problem.

Quest 1: Intruders in Chetwood

Off to a very strong start in this quest. I play a Gaining Strength to give Denethor 4 resources right off the bat. Then Timely Aid gets me an Erestor. I discard Glorfindel immediately and draw Resourceful for Denethor.

And I've got a Rod of the Steward and Dúnedain Wanderer in my hand, so let's play them, too. I quest in round one, and tie progress. Nothing really exciting has to happen right away when your threat is this low.

My draw in round two is a second Dúnedain Wanderer, so now I can play the A Very Good Tale I've been sitting on. Those two Dunedain find me Beorn and Saruman. I'm not entirely thrilled about Saruman, but he does distract the Orc War Party for a full round. And I use those two to kill another orc enemy, but Iarion has been captured.

Round three gets me Steward of Gondor, and round 4 gets me Gandalf. These things let me spam out a number of other allies and brute force my way to rescuing Iarion in round five, just before he was lost for good.

Eothain, Treebeard, and Faramir come out over the next two rounds, and Faramir lets me make 20 progress to finish up the stage, and then Beorn's battle rage helps me crush the Orc War Party.

Final score: 86. 6 full rounds, 36 threat, 0 damage on heroes, 10 vp.

Quest 2: Wastes of Eriador

This was a crazy setup. I revealed three different treacheries, which had the cumulative effect of Doomed 2, making it Night, and starting us off with the Make Camp sidequest in play. Great.

But my opening hand has a ton of resources. Even more than last time. I start with Resourceful for Denethor, Captain's Wisdom and Gaining Strength. So let's play all of those, and find Gimli and Bill the Pony wandering the wastes.

We basically get one big ally every round from here on out. Faramir in round two. Orophin in round three (plus a Timely Aid for... Rivendell Scout. Disappointing).

Because I played that Timely Aid, I can't play Anborn in round four, but I do draw Steward of Gondor to really get over the top. And in the next round, I pick Gandalf as my ally of choice, instead of the Anborn.

I'm basically topdecking the entire time, but I clear out stage 1 in round eight. And then stage 2 in round ten. I almost pushed all the way through stage 2 in one round, but I remembered how that went the first time I tried it.

(Spoiler alert: It doesn't go well, unless you're set up to probably take multiple undefended attacks.)

And in the following round, I make enough progress to make the Pack Leader vulnerable and utterly destroy it.

Final score: 129. 10 full rounds, 5 damage on heroes, 47 threat, 23 vp.

Play Tips:

1. All the resources go on Denethor, mostly for theme reasons. If you put attachments on Sam, you need to find Steward of Gondor before you can really effectively use the rod. But if you put the attachments on Denethor, you're locked out of Sam's resource for using the rod.
2. Treebeard is basically your best ally. Gandalf is just a little bit shy of that mark, because of how his ability interacts with threat. If you can, play one of those well before anything else.
3. Bill the Pony is the best chump blocker, because you can always play a second copy for free. (And if you lost Sam already, you're probably not going to do very well.)
4. Timely Aid is worth paying 4 resources for, because you're probably pulling in an ally that costs at least that much. And shrinking your deck a bit.
5. Ranger of Cardolan is a great substitute for most of the deck's mix of unique characters, if you want to play nice with others. Faramir and Erestor are very hard to do without, though.

Next week: Okay, haven't done side quests yet, but I just got the Mumakil, so next week's deck is going to be a Kahliel deck.

Blog: I'm still 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.

Twitter: Follow @LOTRDeckTech to get notifications whenever I post a new deck, new blog post, or something random on the twitter feed!