Introduction

This deck was created for a two player campaign where both player decks use the Rohan archetype. The first of the two decks - Ride of the Horse Lords - leans heavily into the discard mechanic and mount aspect of the Rohan theme while the second deck - Warriors of the Riddermark - revolves around attacking into the staging area while maintaining low threat.

Disclaimer

When crafting these two decks, I used a single cardpool for both decks in which every Adventure Pack or Expansion is only included once. So if one deck plays 3x Escort from Edoras, the other deck won't be playing that card at all.

Gameplan

In terms of strategy, you will want to quest with Lothíriel and give her the mount Windfola and Horn of the Mark for free card draw almost every turn. Thengel is your primary defender. Once boosted with Golden Shield his defense goes up to a solid 6 . If you can manage to give him a Light-footed Steed on top of that, he can both contribute to questing and be ready to defend an attack during the combat phase. Éomer is your attacker, with a base 3 that gets boosted to 5 after any ally leaves play he can take down weaker enemies in one hit. When he has Firefoot attached, this gets boosted even further to a grand total of 7 . As a bonus, I included Arod to allow Éomer to assist with clearing locations as well.

This deck plays a ton of allies which can be put into play quickly through Thengel's ability. Hard drawing into them is also not the end of the world as Lothíriel ability lets you put them into play from your hand, quest and then recycle them into the deck where Thengel can find them again later during the game. Getting your allies into play this way leaves you with resources to spend on valuable attachments or events instead.

The best targets for Lothíriel's ability are the Escort from Edoras and Westfold Lancer since they do a good job at contributing to questing and their discard ability triggers before the end of the quest phase, allowing you to use Thengel's ability and hopefully put a higher cost ally in play for free. If you don't have these in your hand, Théodwyn, Éomund or the Westfold Horse-breeder are also great targets that have valuable abilties of their own. To get access to these allies more reliably I decided to include both Mustering the Rohirrim and Need Brooks No Delay as well as one copy of The Muster of Rohan to search your deck for what ever ally you might need and either add it to your hand or just put them into play directly.

A key piece in this is Gamling. He allows you to recycle Westfold Lancer or Escort from Edoras turn after turn making sure you always have an excellent target to trigger the abilities of all your heroes.

Other unique allies include: Elfhelm for a nice cheap way to have an extra attacker or defender in play whenever you need it. Háma and Éothain are there for basically the same reason. Since Éothain does not have a resource match, the only way to get him into play permanently is through Thengel. But once he is in play, he can quest for 2 and assist in combat every turn.

Morwen Steelsheen is not only there to heal or reduce threat she can do a lot more. Her action lets you play her from your hand for no cost other than discarding an ally. This does not need to be a drawback since it can be an already exhausted ally or an ally temporarily brought in play with Lothíriel. This discard allows you to trigger discard responses like those of Éothain or Éomund as well as her own response the moment she hits the field. With her 2 and 2 she can enter play during the combat phase and defend against an *3 ** attack after discarding an exhausted ally. This makes her a valuable card to keep in your hand and play at the right time.

The rest of the events in this deck are a couple power cards like A Test of Will to handle nasty treacheries and Worthy of Remembrance to deal damage to enemies and trigger the discard abilities of your heroes and allies.

The Opening Hand

In your opening hand you're primarily hoping to find a Light-footed Steed, the Horn of the Mark for card draw or the Golden Shield to make Thengel more bulky. Next on the list are allies to play with Lothíriel like the Westfold Lancer, Escort from Edoras or Westfold Horse-breeder. Finally, you're always happy to see Morwen Steelsheen or Need Brooks No Delay.

Dragncard Replays

To view these replays you click the replay link, this will take you to a dragncards room with the final gamestate loaded. Rewind to the start of turn 1 and then let it play out, going forwards step by step.

Note

These replays assume a successful searches! Consider these as best case scenarios.

• replay 1

  This is a simple but very consistent little combo requiring just Morwen Steelsheen & any Rohan ally, in this case Théodwyn, which was great since she has a nice ability of her own. You end with Morwen on field not exhausted (unless you trigger her ability) and if you get lucky with thengel, a valuable ally from his response.

• replay 2

  This replay showcases how to capitalize on cards like Ride to Ruin or Worthy of Remembrance to their full extent. Depending on what other cards you have access to (e.g. Horn of the Mark) this combo can get more involved. The most minimal version requires Éomund, and either Ride to Ruin or Worthy of Remembrance

• replay 3

  This combo features Need Brooks No Delay to access Gamling early on with either the Escort from Edoras or Westfold Lancer in hand. In the replay I got lucky to also find the Light-footed Steed, allowing me to quest with Thengel.

• replay 4

  This replay shows some things that you can do with Éomund and Morwen Steelsheen. If you choose the order in which you resolve your "After an ally leaves play / is discarded" responses well, you can use Morwen's ability more than once per round. In this case, I resolved Eomund last, allowing me to ready Morwen Steelsheen almost immediately after exhausting her to heal 2 damage on Éomer.

• replay 5

  This is a replay where I played out a random but excellent opening hand. Some key cards to the combo are Morwen Steelsheen, Escort from Edoras, Westfold Horse-breeder. I got lucky to find Éomund with Thengel allowing me to get full value out of Worthy of Remembrance similarly to what we did in replay 2.

• replay 6

  This is pretty much as good as it gets. Access to Gamling right from the get go through Need Brooks No Delay and Morwen Steelsheen as an extender to trigger those discard responses. I played it out for 2 turns to demonstrate just how fast this deck can snowball advantage.

Sideboard

Note

This is more of an idea section. Use it to tune the deck to the deck your friend(s) play and the scenario you're up against.

If your party has access to leadership resources, Déorwine is a valuable ally for this deck since it allows you to handle those nasty shadow effects for the cost of a single resource every time he defends.

A Test of Will and Hasty Stroke can be swapped with eachother depending on the scenario. If the scenario is going hard with both shadow effects and treacheries you can drop cards that are not key to the functioning of the deck, like Éomund, Arod, Windfola or Worthy of Remembrance.

Is the scenario more quest heavy, you could also consider adding in Astonishing Speed for that late game questing boost. Bear in mind that this is a rather costly card to play.

Similarly, for a more combat oriented scenario you can swap out Windfola and/or Arod for a Rohan Warhorse or two.

There are many more options to consider here, too many to list them all.

In general it is a good idea to keep the card ratios of your deck in mind when swapping out cards. With this deck specifically, try to keep allies around 25 so that Thengel can dig for them consistently. I found that when I played less allies, Thengel would often miss. For similar reasons, keep at mounts attachments at 6 - 8 copies to make sure you can hit them with Westfold Horse-breeder. Finally, avoid playing too many copies of the same cards, as multiple copies are often dead in the hand. The only two cards I would consider playing at 3 with this deck are the Golden Shield and Horn of the Mark.

Lore

Since these two decks play a ton of Rohan characters, I thought it'd be nice to see how they relate. Many of these characters are descendants from the line of Eorl. Below you can find a Family Tree of the House of Eorl as well as a listing of Rohirrim of notable renown. These warriors served under King Théoden, as high ranking commanders, banner men, messengers, or soldiers of Rohan.

Characters with a tiny deckbox icon are included in either this deck or in Warriors of the Riddermark. Golden portrait frames indicate Rohirrim heritage while the silver frame indicates Gondorian heritage.