A Light from the Shadows 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is a thematic deck built for an ongoing series on my blog, Darkling Door.

Theme: Dúnedain

Played Against: Nightmare Road to Rivendell

"From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be the blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king."

—Strider, The Fellowship of the Ring

Strategy

This is a Dúnedain deck with a focus on ensuring that it never has to deal with Shadow Effects.

The core strategy behind Dúnedain decks is always a little backwards. The goal is to collect 2-4 of the weakest Enemies, never killing them, but instead using them to fuel cards like Heir of Valandil to get normally expensive Dúnedain Allies into play for cheap or free. The problem, of course, is that this exposes me to those Enemies' attacks round after round, and that means lots of potentially nasty Shadow Effects.

The core engine of this deck centers around neutralizing Shadow Effects. Once the deck is set up (which typically takes 2 or 3 rounds) I am perfectly capable of tanking 3-5 Enemies each turn absolutely risk free. The primary defender of the deck is Aragorn, with A Burning Brand in hand while riding atop an Armored Destrier (preferably two, actually). A few Dúnedain Warnings can help to boost his defense, and by the endgame he should have plenty of resources to help pass Dúnedain Remedy around to mop up any extra damage he might have taken.

Amarthiúl can serve as an emergency defender in the early game while Aragorn is still getting set up, but usually he's on attack duty to help kill anything with too dangerous to tank safely. Idraen goes a-questing in the early game, or on any turn that I'm likely to clear a Location (because then she'll ready through her ability) but most of the heavy lifting when it comes to questing actually comes from the Allies. There are plenty of 2 Allies in the deck, and hopefully by the latter part of the game I'm getting a discount for them through Heir of Valandil. This is the first deck in which I've managed to get Warden of Annúminas to work really well, too, often questing for enormous numbers to help close out the end of the game.

I always mulligan for a hand with A Burning Brand or Armored Destrier in it. There's plenty of card draw here, though, so even if I don't get one of them in my starting hand it's usually not too hard to find what I'm looking for.

► For more analysis, check out my blog post on this deck.