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| MoD #6 - Dain Reinforces | 10 | 2 | 6 | 1.0 |
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Some Sort 3789
If you're on the Cardboard of the Rings Discord, you've probably seen me talk about my love of Reinforcements Recursion decks. It happens so often that it has become something of a meme.
Despite this, I didn't have a good decklist published as a pure example of the form. So I decided to build and post an archetypal, modern example so the next time I talk about it (which will probably be in about 15 minutes) I'll have something to point to and say "This. This is what I'm talking about."
Autumn has kindly requested that I keep my deck descriptions under 50,000 words, so I'll try my best to limit myself to discussions of the deck itself-- what it can do, how it does it, how to drive it, and how to adapt it to your partners. Most of my thoughts on Reinforcements itself can be found in my review on its card page.
Edit to add: since it wasn't clear, Autumn is one of my very favorite people in the community and the above was said in jest!
I think the best way to illustrate why I love these decks so much is to give an example of a sample round showing some of the things this deck can do once it has achieved its stable end state.
At the beginning of the round, we draw two cards (thanks to a Stone of Elostirion on Thranduil). Both cards are Reinforcements. These were the last two cards in the deck, which is now empty. We also gains 7 resources-- two on Alagos (thanks to a Resourceful), three on Beravor (two Resourcefuls), and two on Thranduil (Necklace of Girion). Alagos had a resource left over from last round, so we're at 8 total.
Because Beravor has a Song of Kings, we are able to spend one resource from each hero's pool to play Reinforcements during planning. We drop in a Galadhrim Weaver and an Elrond. We use the Weaver to shuffle the top card of our discard into our deck-- it's the third copy of Reinforcements. We then use Elrond to draw a card-- surprise, it's that third copy of Reinforcements! Everyone else at the table gets a card, too.
Since we don't need anything else from Elrond, so we put him in play under a partner's control; the partner then exhausts him to help fuel a A Very Good Tale. We also trigger Beravor to give another partner two more cards. Elrond and the Weaver return to hand at the end of the phase.
At the beginning of the quest phase, we play Reinforcements again. A partner is running a Last Alliance Rohan/Eagle deck (perhaps this one from Birdman), so he triggers the contract on an Éomund in his hand and we helpfully drop that Eomund into play for him. Everyone can now quest with all their Rohan and Eagle characters and they'll automatically ready again at the end of the phase.
For our second ally, we bring in Gwaihir under our own control. Alagos gives Thranduil a resource (giving us enough for that third Reinforcements) and Gwaihir fetches a Meneldor from our discard, letting us place two progress on any location in play. We quest with Thranduil (who has 5 WP thanks to the two guarded attachments), Alagos (3), Gwahir (2), Meneldor (2), and Eomund (2), contributing 14 total WP.
At the end of the phase, Gwaihir pops back to our hand and Eomund pops back to his owner's (readying all Rohan and Eagle characters in the process), but Meneldor sticks around until the end of the round. We travel and engage a small enemy.
At the beginning of the combat phase, we trigger Magic Ring to gain another resource, which we use with Thranduil's ability to play another Galadhrim Weaver, putting our second copy of Reinforcements back into the deck for next round. We then use The Elvenking to pull her back to our hand and ready Thranduil. Everyone declares their defenses-- Thranduil easily handles the little enemy we took. (If he takes some damage it's not a big deal, we can always heal later with Elrond.)
Then we declare attacks. Alagos and Meneldor are enough to murder our enemy, but a partner deck is engaged with a big boss who is immune to player card effects and needs some help, so after attacking with Meneldor we discard him to Golden Crown to place two more progress and give Alagos an extra resource (which we'll carry into next round), then play our last copy of Reinforcements to drop in Beorn and Gandalf under our partner's control (letting her draw three more cards in the process). The partner triggers Beorn's ability and the two allies attack together for 12.
Altogether, we helped the table draw eight cards, contributed one exhaust (worth three resources) to a Very Good Tale, sent 14 willpower to the quest, readied all Rohan and Eagle characters once, placed four progress tokens on locations in play, defended and killed a small enemy, and attacked (anywhere on the table) for 12.
We also end the round in the same state we began it-- one resource on Alagos, two copies of Reinforcements in our deck, a third copy on top of our discard-- meaning we can make the exact same plays next round if we want.
Or we can make completely different plays-- maybe using an extra Weaver to help a partner recur an Hour of Wrath, an Elrond to help them draw it (while also giving everyone else at the table a card), and Halfast Gamgee or Alagos and an Eagle to pass them a resource or two so they can play it.
Maybe we use three Gandalfs to drop the table's threat by 15. Maybe we use Mablung to toss an enemy back into the staging area and have Gwahir bring in a Descendant of Thorondor instead of Meneldor to finish it off. Or we play Mablung in the quest phase to pull an enemy out of staging, then play him again during combat to push the enemy back into staging, letting us avoid it indefinitely. (Better still-- if we're paired with a Hobbit deck, we let that deck engage and disengage the enemy so they can draw an extra card with Pippin and get an extra boost on Sam.)
Maybe we decide to get really crazy, Reinforcing a Gandalf and Mablung during the resource phase to push an enemy into staging, Reinforcing a Gandalf and Descendant of Thorondor during planning and discarding the Descendent to Golden Crown, then Reinforcing a Gandalf and Gwaihir during the quest phase and fetching that Descendant again, which brings our total damage against the enemy Mablung pushed back into staging up to 18-- enough to, say, burn down a full-health Stormcaller in one salvo.
Instead of spreading them out to get extra uses out of Gandalf, maybe we play all three copies of Reinforcements during the quest phase to flood the board with willpower. Maybe we play them all during combat to wipe out the enemy army. Maybe we only play one or two copies of Reinforcements to save up resources so we can drop 4, 5, 6, or more during a later round.
Maybe we just spam Meneldor in every phase to clear the board of locations.
I've never played a deck that had anywhere near this number of meaningful decisions per round. In my opinion, that's what makes it so fun, though note that it does tend to slow games down significantly. If you're the type who tends to fall prey to analysis paralysis, perhaps look elsewhere.
Playing a Reinforcements Recursion deck well is a game of balancing competing wants and needs. There's the obvious: you need to decide which allies to drop, when to drop them, and also who to give them to. Every player at the table probably wants that copy of Gandalf for the draw or the threat reduction, so who gets him? Do you drop him during planning so they can use the draw immediately or save it for the quest phase so he adds his 4 willpower?
But it's more than that. Getting three plays of Reinforcements per round requires setting up your stable end state, and doing that requires lots of draw (so you can empty your deck) and threat reduction (so you can play those three Resourcefuls).
Reinforcements (and its little brother, Sneak Attack), of course, provide both of those things (via Gandalf). If you're greedy with your events and Beravor's action, you can get to that stable state within 5-7 rounds. The benefit of doing so is obvious (see above), but the cost to your group is high: you won't contribute a ton (mostly just Alagos, Thranduil, and Gandalf's stats every round) and your partners will have to pick up the slack.
On the other hand, you can divert some of those early plays to more useful ends-- setting one of your Gandalfs to direct damage to kill an enemy, reinforcing in an Elrond to discard a condition or net up to four cards, etc. Doing so lets you contribute a lot more while getting set up, but extends the "setup" period. Mastering the balance between contributing to the group and getting set up is a big part of playing the archetype.
The other part is navigating the massive field of choices once you're set up and working them in a way that doesn't disrupt the timing of your recursion. The Galadhrim Weaver makes this a lot easier-- just use one of your Reinforcement slots on a Weaver while a different copy of Reinforcements is on top of your discard to put it back into the deck, and once per round you can use Thranduil and Elvenking for a "free" recursion that doesn't use one of your precious Reinforcements slots. (Tome of Atanatar is great for digging Reinforcements from the bottom of your discard once you're set up, and the Weaver can recur it so you can dig out all of your copies as long as you save one Tome for the end.)
If you have two Reinforcements in hand and one on top of your discard, you can also do a double non-Weaver reinforcements followed by a double Weaver reinforcements to recur two copies at once. This is very useful in quests with direct damage-- you can bring in the Weavers during the travel, encounter, or refresh phase when there's no risk from staging or shadows. If you do lose a Weaver, you do have Orophin to get her back. If you really want to go nuclear, you can just use an "Oops, all Weavers!" Reinforcements strategy to recur everything in your discard pile until it's empty, saving anything important that you might have lost earlier.
The Alagos / Gwaihir / Golden Crown combo is incredibly cool tech for Reinforcements-- it lets him functionally bring in three allies with one Reinforcements (one of whom lasts until the end of the round!) and makes him one of the few heroes capable of generating two extra resources per round. He can also easily pass one of his resources to anyone at the table, which is fantastically useful in multiplayer. And while you're getting set up, you can skip the Golden Crown and use your "bonus eagle" as a chump blocker (since you want him in the discard pile for Gwaihir to fetch, anyway), which lets you take an extra attack every round without much issue (or risk to your heroes).
But it complicates the timing because discarding an Eagle to get the resource from Golden Crown means that eagle (and not Reinforcements) becomes the top card of your discard. It becomes much trickier to recur around this Eagle and sometimes means you won't be able to discard a Meneldor or Descendant of Thorondor exactly when you want to get the resource, progress, or damage out of them.
This is why Alagos carries that extra resource in our sample round above-- it means we don't need that Golden Crown trigger to get our third Reinforcements, we can save it for the end of combat so it doesn't get in the way of our Weaver recursion. As a general rule of thumb, you want to avoid using Golden Crown when the top card of your discard is a Reinforcements. (Though you can always work around it by reinforcing Gwaihir alongside a Weaver to pull the eagle off the top of your discard pile first. Likewise, the Orophin/Weaver duo can save a situation where you accidentally lose one of your weavers on top of a Reinforcements.)
If you struggle with the timing (or if someone else wants to play eagles), the easiest solution is to replace Alagos with Théodred and drop Gwaihir and the Golden Crown, which greatly simplifies things-- barring unforeseen circumstances, the top card of your discard will pretty much always be Reinforcements (or one of your Halfling Bounders, but you probably want to recur them, too).
Because the goal was to make a relatively archetypal Reinforcements deck (to the extent that such a thing exists), I wanted to make it as multiplayer-friendly as possible (since larger player counts are Reinforcements' best and highest purpose). That means (where possible) no uniques that partner decks might be dependent on (such as Steward of Gondor and Sword-thain) and three heroes who don't have any ally or alternate hero versions. Instead, we rely on a pair of lightly-used Guarded attachments and four non-unique resource generators for our extra resource and card draw needs.
(If Steward or Sword-thain aren't spoken for, note that as long as you're spreading the resource generation around, every three extra resources translates to one extra play of Reinforcements. If running Sword-thain, Faramir is usually the highest-value target, though Ceorl is a fun alternative as you can use him to carry surplus resources around the table.)
If someone else wants one of these heroes, that's fine-- pretty much any leadership or lore heroes will work as replacements (though it hurts a bit to lose Thranduil and his extra 1-resource Reinforcements recursion). I've included some suggestions in the sideboard. (Thengel isn't a good replacement, I just wanted to call him out because Golden Crown gets nuts when he's at the table-- you'll definitely want to include a lot more Eagles or Creatures in that case. Or else play with an Eagle or Creature deck somewhere else and let them benefit.)
The allies can create some unique conflicts, but as I often say, Reinforcements is just an engine, the things you use that engine for are flexible. If you wind up sharing a table with "Gandalf Guy" (or the hipster alternative, "Hobbit Gandalf Guy"), losing your Gandalfs is a big blow, but there's plenty of other viable targets. The sideboard has a bunch of ideas (including some that are meant to be used with specific partner decks-- trying Reinforcing two copies of Ethir Swordsman under control of an Outlands deck sometime and see what happens).
The sideboard also has a couple other directions you can take the deck. Reinforcements Recursion is my favorite deck for Guarded cards since Gandalf and Meneldor make claiming them easy. In higher player counts, Campfire Tales and Love of Tales (with Song of Wisdom) become incredibly potent. Drinking Song gives you a recurrable song so you can get Love of Tales' resource bonus in perpetuity (Hope Rekindled is another option), and any partner decks can also include their own copies of Love of Tales to take advantage, fueling huge resource acceleration for the entire fellowship at once.
Also, while it's most fun in multiplayer, Reinforcements Recursion can also be quite strong in solo. Even this deck, which wasn't built for solo, can hold its own. During testing, I ran it against several quests with success, including The Three Trials (which is a famously difficult solo quest, though it presents a fairly good matchup because it is light on enemies, long on ally hate, and does let you play slow and get set up).
Still doing my homework and studying to play this to its fullest, but I plan to "main" this deck in the short term and try to find all the placing to shove value in four player.
Full multiplayer is my only format, and I feel it is truly going to shine there.