Legloas Gimli Two Hunters 2.0

• Versions
• 2.0

First published deck. Ignore the sideboard; I use the sideboard as a placeholder for card ideas.

This is a Beyond the Original Bargain Contract deck, with the new Contract from the new Hobbit scenario from Alep that allows usage of two contracts, with the additional penalty of 4 additional starting threat. With this deck, that ends up starting with 32 threat, which is on par for a typically three hero setup, though on the higher end of that. The deck was designed with multiplayer in mind, though I suspect it would work ok in a fair amount of single player scenarios as well. You can expect the deck to quest for 6-8 turn 1, and once everything is up and running to be questing for 14-16 once Forth, The Three Hunters! flips.

At the End of All Things is a fun contract, and thematically fits several pairs, one natural one being Gimli and Legolas, and I've tried making one in the past. The restriction on At the End of All Things in preventing resource gains via attachments makes it necessary to search for other mechanisms to gain resources to play cards in the first three turns before At the End of All Things flips. While has plenty of such events, they do have the opportunity cost of being cards you draw, and all have various trade offs.

Forth, The Three Hunters! is also a fun contract, with the limitation of not having allies meaning you're typically behind in action economy in a Three Hunters deck until you get the proper attachments on the heroes that enable them to have a ton of readies. It can also take a bit of time to flip the contract to obtain the necessary to make real progress on the quest.

I honestly think these two contracts paired together compliment each other really well. At the End of All Things covers Forth, The Three Hunters! early game by having a built in ready mechanic, while Forth, The Three Hunters! covers At the End of All Things early game via cost reduction on restricted attachments. Then worst comes to worst when At the End of All Things flips it can be used to find that last restricted attachment necessary to flip Forth, The Three Hunters!, and then Forth, The Three Hunters! can start healing the damage used to ready the heroes via At the End of All Things.

Ideal setup for the heroes would typically look as follows: Gimli: Strider, Silver Circlet, Armored Destrier, Shining Shield, Hauberk of Mail, King Under the Mountain Legalos: Light of Valinor, Mirkwood Long-knife, Silver Circlet, Light of Valinor

Where you put the Unexpected Courages will depend on the quest, but I typically find I need more defenses than attacks, and so I prioritize placing them on Gimli.

Strider on Gimli isn't super important though, provided you have enough discard fodder to ready him during the questing phase. It's much more important to get Legolas questing without exhausting. This allows him to be an extra blocker during combat which can be readied via Gimli's readying mechanic, or just have him ready to attack without needing to spend the resource from Gimli. If you happen to have both Strider and Light of Valinor out, remember that both of Legolas's and Gimli's readying mechanics can ready any hero on the board.

In terms of high priority cards for Mulligan, I'm pretty happy when I find King Under the Mountain or Elven-light, as that more or less guarantees consistent card draw to fuel readying via Legolas and also to find the restricted attachments necessary to flip Forth, The Three Hunters!.

The cards I'm not so sure about:

Captain's Wisdom I think this card is straight worse than We Are Not Idle, given that (1) the deck isn't really resource starved at the moment; (2) Captain's Wisdom doesn't replace itself; (3) you have to activate Captain's Wisdom during the planning phase, whereas We Are Not Idle can be played at anytime, and especially after you know you don't need the extra ready. The deck also runs Unlikely Friendship, which itself is a better We Are Not Idle. So probably this card can be replaced.

Light of Valinor is often contested with other decks, whereas Strider I have not seen nearly as often. You could probably replace all instances of Light of Valinor with Strider, put Strider on Legolas, and just accept you need to ready Gimli via discarding.

Power of Orthanc is there because certain scenarios have conditions that just cripple heros, and in a two hero deck this is especially punishing. If you know you're not going into a scenario that has that kind of treachery, I'd recommend swapping out for Defiant Challenge for a cheap panic button for the early game.

I like having a strong panic button in decks like this; I've found it helps with that last little push, especially if the scenario has a climactic battle to it. Need Drives Them can be especially powerful in multiplayer, particularly since this deck starts at 32 threat, but maybe isn't the right choice with lower player counts or playing with low threat decks. I debated including Need Drives Them versus Grim Resolve, and am kinda still unsure. The first version of this deck included Path of Need. Another strong consideration for this slot would be Light the Beacons, especially given the built in sentinel that Gimli has. The one difficulty with the 5 cost panic buttons is I've generally found it difficult to get to 5 resources at that point in the game, but I can fairly consistently arrive at 3 resources. YMMV.