Long has my father, the Steward of Gondor... 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This a strict Gondor mono leadership deck. It's built around 2 concepts: heavy willpower and action advantage. The main tactic is playing Gandalf over and over again: with Sneak Attack and Reinforcements, you could theoretically play him up to 9 times in the game. Our wizard will provide threat reduction, direct damage or card draw, as you see fit.

Mulligan for Gandalf and/or card draw, you don't actually need the Steward of Gondor in your opening hand.

Card draw is provided via Gandalf, Campfire Tales (this deck is even better in multiplayer, although it performs very well solo too) and the Rod of the Steward. You have plenty of resources to trigger the Rod with the obvious and ubiquitous Steward of Gondor, Wealth of Gondor, Captain's Wisdom and Denethor starting pool, so flooding the board with expensive allies should be no problem once you get your card draw online. The Sword of Númenor are actually there for the attack bonus, don't expect them to trigger often.

Action advantage is accomplished via the combo Heir of Mardil + Denethor's action/Wealth of Gondor/Steward of Gondor. If you need multi-defense and the Armored Destrier doesn't show up, place it on Denethor along with the Steward of Gondor. Otherwise, the usual play is on Boromir to attack twice, since Prince Imrahil has his own built-in readying. Speaking about the Prince, he's a perfect target for Captain's Wisdom, since he will ready once you play Sneak Attack or Reinforcements, thus negating the downside of the card. The allies should be quite obvious: the Veteran of Osgiliath are worth mentioning, since if you hit Valour threshold, they can be a 3/4/2/2. Don't hesitate to ready Faramir to trigger him twice thanks to Strength of Arms. Also, once you run out of Sneak attacks and Reinforcements, playing Gandalf from your hand and using him for double duty is fantastic. If willpower is not a problem, you may swap Ingold for Anborn.

The weak point of the deck is defending against heavy enemies, since we don't have healing nor big shields: your defender is Denethor with Armored Destrier (Note that Staff of Lebethron and Dúnedain Warning are both in the sideboard). If you happen to meet trolls or the like, either use White Tower Watchman to take one for the team, or Gandalf (he's pretty much the answer to everything in the deck).

Obviously, to pair up with any deck using Gondor themes or Silvan decks that don't use the Steward and will benefit from Reinforcements, and obviously as well avoid any deck using Gandalf.