Book Club: Begone If You Be Not Deathless! 1.0

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Book Club: "Begone, If You Be Not Deathless"

"But no living man am I! You are looking upon a woman. Eowyn am I, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him."

I've decided to build a series of decks that encapsulate a specific point in the Lord of the Rings books, so they're essentially broad "theme" decks and the cards within are selected primarily for 'thematic fit' than their 'raw power'. As such these decks probably won't work against every quest, and should probably always be played as part of a two-handed/two player setup, so plan accordingly.

With this first deck I've tried to recreate one of my favourite parts of the book, Éowyn's battle with the Witch King.

Opening Hand:

Good choices to look for in our opening hand are either of our mounts Windfola or Snowmane, or a Westfold Horse-breeder. Also being able to defend consistently out the gate is important to many quests so Golden Shield for Théoden would be ideal.

At the Table:

We're going to use few of the a Rohan, discard to do X effects, so we'd ideally like to see Gamling earlier rather than later. We can setup Théoden as our defender with Golden Shield, we're gonna need a way to ready Théoden again if he's going to get much use out of Herugrim though. We have a couple of ways to do this in the current list, though more consistent might be to drop a couple of Westfold Horse-Breaker for Unexpected Courage.

Merry with Good Meal under his belt can help us pay for any of our pricey Tactics events, especially Hour of Wrath, which can turn either Éowyn or Théoden into a beast for a turn, or all our heroes if we're pressed into Valour range with our threat. As well as help Éowyn attack when she triggers her Action to get another use out of her substantial attack boost. And for theme we've got Halfling Determination to represent Merry confronting his fear and coming to Éowyn's aid as she faces the Witch King.

When it finally comes to deal with the quest's big 'boss' enemy, or a swarm of enemies we'll ideally have Hour of Wrath, which we can play for free if we have Hope Rekindled and a Good Meal, and have her clear the board.

I would pair this deck with Seastan's Pyre of Denethor deck which you can find here for a perfectly thematic complimentary deck. Remove the Gandalf from this deck and replace with something from the sideboard, probably the Ancient Mathom as you'd probably use the card draw from Gandalf.

Sideboard:

There's a few alternative cards in the sideboard to cover various things the deck is a little short on, as previously mentioned swapping out the Westfold Horse-Breaker for Unexpected Courage is a little more consistent. Desperate Defense is a rather finite way to ready our defender Théoden and have him ready to attack with Herugrim

Card draw suffers a lot for Rohan, as they're primarily Tactics and Spirit, so our options are very limited, with only Ancient Mathom really fitting the theme/story. Not packing enough weapons for Foe-hammer really hurts in the card draw department.