The Three Hunters 2.0

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My latest iteration and take on a Three Hunters deck using the Forth, The Three Hunters! contract.

Pairs with this deck: https://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/44297/thewhitecouncil-1.0

Extremely combat focused but also capable of contributing a ton of as well via the boosted that the contract itself provides combined with readying effects.

Due to the low cost of attachments, lack of any allies due to the Contract and varying resource generation cards this deck ends up with a plethora of extra resources pretty quickly. This allows you to actually pay for and use both Aragorn and Gimli's abilities very often providing two reliable readying effects. This also allows you to easily pay for cards like Hour of Wrath and Captains of the West when you need them. Ideally Steward of Gondor goes on Gimli so that Gondorian Shield provides him with +2 rather than only +1 but it can easily be placed on Aragorn instead as he makes great use of Gondorian Shield as well and also needs resources for his ability.

You want to get two restricted onto the three heroes as fast as possible to flip the contract and receive not only boosted but also the insanely strong healing effect that can be used every single turn (with Elrond hero in play it heals 2 damage at a time off all three heroes not 1). Other decks using this contract that I have built in the past tended to really rely on flipping the contract ASAP and when they failed to do so it would often spell trouble or even disaster. I find that with this particular three hunters deck however flipping the contract doesn't seem nearly as key or important. Legolas can still place progress via attacks (often multiple times a turn thanks to Gimli's readying effect, Hands Upon the Bow, Swift and Strong or Hour of Wrath), Aragorn can still quest and ready himself and you can still do a big quest push with Captains of the West even if the contract hasn't flipped yet.

Ideally you would want the following restricted on each Hero (assuming they have a Golden Belt attached as well):

-Legolas - War Axe, Rivendell Blade, Bow of the Galadhrim and Valiant Sword/Dagger of Westernesse. This results in Legolas having a whopping 9 Base attack that can potentially be further boosted if attacking an enemy engaged with the other deck or in the staging area, when attacking an enemy with higher engagement cost than your threat or if you have 40 or more threat. The Rivendell Blade will also reduce the defense of any enemy he attacks by 2. Obviously any combination of these weapons works extremely well but War Axe is the key one you eventually want especially if you can get a Golden Belt and four restricted attachments on him.

-Gimli - Gondorian Shield, Ancestral Armor, Armored Destrier and Dwarven Shield/Dagger of Westernesse/Valiant Sword. Gimli becomes an absolute beast of a defender once you get him loaded up. If you got lucky and also drew one of the Dunedain Warnings and the Hauberk of Mail you could potentially get his up to 9 while also boosting his by 3 as well. Even just at 6 or 7 he still becomes near indestructible especially when you can heal him for 2 every turn as well thanks to the flipped contract. You can even throw a weapon on him as he often is ready for counter attacks (Light the Beacons, Armored Destrier, UC etc) after defending.

-Aragorn - Aragorn is a bit more flexible than the other two and doesn't have a sort of set group of specific restricted you want for him. Instead you can mix and match from Gondorian Shield, Ancestral Armor, Armored Destrier, Valiant Sword, Sword of Numenor, Dagger of Westerness and War Axe (can be placed on him if he gain the tactic icon via Roheryn or via Thorongil). Aragorn basically gets turned into a strong jack of all trades who can quest for up to 6 (with four restricted attachments) and ready himself and can then also defend or attack multiple times. You can defend with him and ready him via Gimli's response so that he is also available for offense or even a second defense. Armored Destrier allows him to ready and provide a counter attack or second defense even without Gimli's ability. Basically Aragorn fills any gaps he is needed for and is a strong quester, defender and attacker across the board often fulfilling all three duties in a single turn.

A few of the restricted are also fantastic played across the board on the companion deck's heroes. A copy of Gondorian Shield goes great on Gandalf especially if he has Shadowfax, same goes for Dagger of Westernesse or Armored Destrier (Shadowfax allows Destrier) giving him boosted , or an additional action and the discard of a shadow card. Similarly if you want to use Elrond as an additional/emergency defender Ancestral Armor and Gondorian Shield work great on him as well. Even Glorfindel can benefit from Ancestral Armor turning him into a 3 and 7 wall. Spare weapons also work great on Glorfindel especially if he has Light of Valinor attached. Finally, even the second copy of Bow of the Galadhrim or Rivendell Blade fit perfectly on Haldir, Orophin or a Marksman of Lorien.

Thorongil is a card that up until recently I had not read properly and had never used. It is frankly insanely strong transforming one of your heroes into another version while still retaining any abilities and the original sphere that they had. Gaining or Aragorn's abilities on top of Aragorn's readying ability is honestly just crazy good. The vast majority of the time I use Thorongil to bring out Aragorn to give the deck yet another combat boost reducing all engaged enemies by 1 and providing his "Get over here!" Scorpagorn ability as well. In quests with tons of threat raising mechanics or cards I will use Aragorn instead for the big threat reset. Thorongil also provides a second way for Aragorn to gain the icon giving him access to War Axe.

Most of the events are fairly straightforward but a few are a little more interesting.

-Open the Armory provides card search for those missing restricted attachments you need to flip the contract. Even in valour I will often use the first ability considering most restricted attachments are quite cheap, discounted or the cost doesn't matter later in a game. That being said getting a copy of Ancestral Armor out for only 1 resource is pretty nice too.

-Proud Hunters provides a nice resource boost early game and can often provide Legolas with 2/3 resources within the first few turns making it much easier to play Hour of Wrath on a later turn when you need it for a huge combat round.

-Hour of Wrath is huge and can absolutely trivialise combat for a round not only allowing Gimli to literally defend every single attack made against both decks thanks to sentinel but also allowing Legolas to attack every enemy engaged with both decks thanks to Ranged and also allowing him to potentially place a simply ridiculous amount of progress via his response. I have placed ten progress this way before on a few occasions.

-Keen as Lances seems like a really weird inclusion at first glance but it is actually extremely useful in both this deck and it's companion deck The White Council. As mentioned above, this deck ends up with an absolute plethora of resources earlier than you'd think with no real use for them outside of regularly using Gimli and Aragorn's abilities and paying for high cost events like Captains of the West and Hour of Wrath. This means there are often plenty of resources to spend on a copy of Keen as Lances. Keen as Lances provides threat reduction which is extremely useful for this deck given its high starting threat and lack of any other threat reduction, card draw which again is extremely useful given Foe-Hammer and Open the Armory are the only other card draw/search in the deck and finally resource acceleration. The resource generation aspect is probably the least useful for this deck HOWEVER it is also the only ability that can be bestowed on another player/deck as it is simply worded "add 2 resources to a hero's resource pool". With this deck absolutely flush with resources it can actually be very beneficial to use this event to provide 2 resources to Elrond across the board who can then use them on allies of any sphere or spirit cards as well as lore if he has Vilya attached. Any copies of Keen as Lances that this deck plays with otherwise unused resources lowers the cost of future copies that either this deck OR The White Council plays as well. This card basically replaces ally Gandalf providing flexible and useful options for both decks whilst also shoring up weaker areas like card draw and threat reduction.

-Captains of the West while straightforward is absolutely killer and even better than it looks. It effects every hero in both decks except Gandalf which provides an additional 5 . In reality it provides MUCH more than 5 as it allows you to quest with heroes you wouldn't have otherwise and would have saved for combat or other duties. Provides a HUGE quest push while also keeping your heroes ready for combat as well. Crazy good.

Sideboard

-Dunedain Remedy for quests with a ton of archery and direct damage effects. Due to the decks abundance of resources mid to late game it becomes very easy to move a Remedy around the board healing almost everyone at once. Elrond boosts its healing to 2 at a time making it much more worthwhile and useful.

-Durins Axe and Orcrist are absolutely AMAZING in this deck however Guarded cards in general are dangerous and in some quests could easily spell your doom. I only really sub these in or include them when playing quests that are a bit more forgiving.

-Unseen Strike is basically just a replacement for Hands Upon the Bow for quests where Hands Upon the Bow doesn't really work or isn't worth it because every enemy is too big to snipe in staging (Saga quests where Nazgul are basically the only enemy in the encounter deck are a great example of this). It may also just replace Hands Upon the Bow in a quest where it is far more useful against a boss enemy that has a high engagement cost.