This deck is part of Mormegil’s Deckbox, an effort to create an extensive catalogue of decks for the different archetypes, themes and playing styles available to players. Click here to check out the whole project.
Preferred Player Count: 2-4
Rating: .5
Premise
All credit for the original idea for this deck goes to Seastan and Sappidus. I merely tweaked Seastan's deck a small bit (for example I added Angbor the Fearless, a card he didn't have access to when building the deck). The idea here is combining the ally brought into play by Prince Imrahil with Spare Hood and Cloak to ready that ally and then getting Spare Hood and Cloak back to hand with Bard son of Brand's ability after the ally leaves play to play it next round again, drawing a card through Brand son of Bain.
The deck might not be as consistently strong as you typical Dale decks due to the random nature (and continuous resource strain) of Imrahil's ability, but it is loads of fun. While building up a steady board state is something you are doing a little slower than usual, you can have very useful "bursty" combat phases early on that can alleviate pressure from the whole table.
How To Play
Seeing Spare Hood and Cloak in your opening hand is good to get the whole thing going of course. North Realm Lookout is the prime target for it (due to not exhausting to quest and not that useful in combat anyways, therefore being the prime target to exhaust for Spare Hood and Cloak to ready another ally), but a Long Lake Fisherman or Bard son of Brand are nice substitutes in a pinch. Legacy of Númenor provides a nice resource kicker but is not desperately needed, you still are happy to see it early on of course!
Considerations
Jubayr is the next ally to include if there are any uniqueness issues (alongside more copies of your non-unique Dale allies). The attachments are also worth a look, especially if something like Steward of Gondor is taken somewhere else, it provides a nice bonus but is not desperately needed in this deck. Double Back is not important for you with Sneak Attack/Gandalf but should be included in case other people run into threat issues.
Enjoy!!!