Elrond, the Bright Lord 2.0

• Versions
• 2.0

This is a work in progress.

This deck is meant for fun and flavor, to play out the what-if fantasy of Elrond taking the One Ring for himself. Of course, Strider should always be grabbed by the contract, and as for The One Ring, whether or not you fetch Power of Command or Inner Strength will depend on the quest. That being said, with Inner Strength, Elrond becomes a very good defender with 4 defense and the ability to cancel harmful shadow effects. That reliable defense allows you to focus on building your board state early as you hopefully won't have to sacrifice your allies as chump blockers very often. Ancestral Armor is just the cherry on top and allows Elrond to tank nearly any enemy you're likely to come across, especially when you factor in his once-a-round ability to heal for 4 with The Grey Wanderer.

There is quite a bit of player effects that can raise your threat, but I've tried to work in a good amount of threat reduction to help balance it out. Regardless, you likely won't be staying under the Secrecy threshold for incredibly long.

The Palantir is in here mostly for the theme as Elrond has begun to consolidate power around himself, but Risk Some Light and Ithilien Lookout synergize with it.

Canonically, Thorin was buried with The Arkenstone at the conclusion of the Hobbit, but I included it here because I love the idea of a corrupted Elrond digging up Thorin's corpse to claim the jewel for himself, all while claiming it's for the greater good somehow, making "good seem detestable", as Tolkien wrote Gandalf and the others would have done with the Ring. If you're playing a quest where location lock is a concern, I'd probably swap it out for Asfaloth.

If you're playing a combat-heavy quest, Strength and Courage may be worth considering, especially considering with Strider and The Grey Wanderer Elrond can reliably quest, defend and attack all in the same round when needed.

Gather Information has plenty of obvious utility in a deck with so many one-off's, but I'm not sure yet if it's a great idea in a mono-hero deck, so it's in the sideboard for now.

Lastly, I put this together with true solo play in mind, but if I were to play two or three-handed I would probably play alongside Gondor and/or Rohan decks just to simulate Elrond taking dominion over the realms of Men, again as Tolkien said would be the case in Letter 246 were he or Galadriel to actually claim the One Ring.