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| 2-player Dúnedain | |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
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| Dúnedain & Gondor - TRG | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3.0 |
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Urthli 315
Update:
Version 3.0 includes the Hungry Creature Campaign card.
Introduction
This deck attempts to turn what is supposed to be the drawback of The Riddle-game into an advantage by relying on being engaged with a harmless enemy right from the start.
The Dúnedain are undoubtedly the archetype that gains the most benefits from being engaged with one or multiple enemies. They have many powerful allies and provided you have the necessary resources, will allow you to quickly swarm the field. To further accelerate the deck and have some incredible board presence as early as round 2, I added in the Gondor theme with Pillars of the Kings being one of the corner stones of the whole strategy.
The end result is an extremely explosive deck that can handle combat for the entire table, while still contributing a little bit to questing as well.
Gameplan
Mulligan for Pillars of the Kings. Finding cards like Dúnedain Hunter, Wait no Longer, Armored Destrier or Steward of Gondor are always a welcome extra.
During setup, select Halbarad to be the "Thief" and the Stone of Elostirion to be the "Birthday-present". After the Hungry Creature is put into play engaged with you, a couple things will happen.
- Amarthiúl gains a resource icon.
- Halbarad can now quest without exhausting.
- Mablung gains one resource.
Note:
Since Mablung's "once-per-phase" response triggers outside of a phase, it is counted towards the next phase. In this case, the first resource phase.
During the Resource phase you will draw 2 cards thanks to Stone of Elostirion. Then, during the first planning phase, immediately get your threat to 40 with Pillars of the Kings and draw 4 additional cards. You should now have 11 cards in hand, hopefully with a decent cost spread to start playing The Riddle-game.
Next, if you got lucky enough to draw into a Dúnedain Hunter, play it for free and hope you get to engage an enemy. This will Trigger Mablung a second time, giving you a total of 4 tactics resources. This should be enough to play just about any cards you like. Just keep the The Riddle-game in mind when doing so. Also, while you are engaged with at least 2 enemies, Amarthiúl will gain an additional resource during the resource phase.
Once you have Heir of Valandil in play, Your Dúnedain allies become a bit cheaper to play. This should allow you to swarm the field even more quickly with strong allies like Guardian of Arnor or Fornost Bowman.
Most of the time, your allies will be your main defenders in this deck. Give your Guardian of Arnor the Ancestral Armor and drop the Raiment of War onto a Defender of Cair Andros.
The Armored Destrier and either a Warrior Sword or the Ancestral Armor are for Amarthiúl. After he defends an attack, the Armored Destrier can ready him and let you discard a shadow card from another enemy engaged with you. In my experience, it is best to discard a shadow card from a Subdued enemy if possible. This way you can let it attack safely undefended for 0 damage, leaving you with more ready attackers afterwards. Keep your Subdued enemies alive and engaged with you to gain all the benefits from Amarthiúl, Fornost Bowman or Guardian of Arnor. Additional copies of the Warrior Sword are for Mablung.
If you are ever at risk of reaching your threat elimination level, use Pillars of the Kings to reset it back to 40. There is plenty of draw power with an early Pillars of the Kings , Rod of the Steward, Foe-hammer and Stone of Elostirion, so finding a second copy by the time you need it is usually not an issue.
Finally there is one more ruling to be aware of when playing this deck: "putting an enemy into play" does not "revealed" those enemies. This makes cards like Wait no Longer or Dúnedain Hunter even more valuable as they let you play around "when revealed" effects, as well as "Doomed X" and "Surge" . However, since you engage those enemies, it will still trigger forced effects upon engaging. e.g. Forest Spider.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This deck can make a very explosive start to a game with sufficient willpower to survive the first few rounds. It handles heavy combat exceptionally well and performs excellent in battle or siege quests.
It does however run into location locks fairly easily as it suffers from a rather low willpower ceiling of ~12 which is simply insufficient for many scenarios. the second main shortcoming of this deck are treacheries. While Wait no Longer gives you a way to avoid seeing them, there is no way to cancel a treachery when it is revealed. A nasty treachery such as Pursued by Shadow can cause a sudden premature end to any game.
For multiplayer games I recommend pairing this deck with a deck that can handle locations/questing and has a way to deal with treacheries.
Sideboard
In addition to the Birthday present, the sideboard includes some cards that might be useful depending on the scenario.
Keep in mind the cost ratios in the deck when exchanging cards with the sideboard.
For scenarios loaded with sidequests, you can swap out one or two Defender of Cair Andros for Vigilant Dúnadan. He will be able to defend without exhausting against some weaker enemies and can be brought in cheaply with Heir of Valandil.
When you need extra bodies on board, Armored Destrier can be exchanged for Heir of Valandil and/or Andrath Guardsman.
Finally, if you really insist on bringing this deck to a quest heavy scenario, exchange one Ancestral Armor for Faramir.
Dragncard Replays
To view a replay, make sure you are logged in on dragncards. Then click on "View Replay". This will open a new room with the final board state of the scenario. Hold down ctrl and tap the left arrow key to rewind back to round 1. Then use the right arrow key to go through the game one step at a time.
Round 1
A single opening hand with Pillars of the Kings and Dúnedain Hunter will typically give you several possible plays you can make. The following replays all start from the same opening hand but show different ways how you can play it out.
This first line of play puts the Defender of Cair Andros in play to have a tanky ally right from the get go and give Amarthiúl the Warrior Sword. This setup allows you to cash in on Foe-hammer to draw an additional 3 cards.
A second option is to use Armored Destrier to turn Amarthiúl into a defender instead and plays the Fornost Bowman to take out enemies.
A third line of play sets up Amarthiúl with both the Armored Destrier and Warrior Sword and plays Wait no Longer to control the staging step and give a guaranteed 3 progress.
Solo Replays
Passage Through Mirkwood
players 1 rounds 5 score 97
Multiplayer Replays
Journey Along the Anduin
players 2 rounds 4 score 110
The Weather Hills
players 2 rounds 7 score 129
The Three Trials
players 2 rounds 10 score 159