Event-heavy Multiplayer Vilya 1.0

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• 1.0

This deck is my first attempt at building a Vilya deck and also playing around with Gandalf (who has received a couple of nice review write-ups in the recent past if you're interested in reading card reviews). The Vilya-Gandalf archetype is hardly a new concept, as evidenced by decks like this, this, and this just to highlight a few different decks. Something that I've noticed, however, is that many Vilya decks focus rather heavily on allies and attachments. Any why wouldn't you? Allies and attachments are (usually) permanent assets that you are able to use round after round, allowing you to steadily build up your power over the course of a scenario. For me, I wanted to take a try at another type of Vilya deck, namely one that focusing on recycling expensive events.

Design Concept

This deck design is grounded in the following assumptions/principles:

• I most frequently play LotR with a 4-player fellowship. This will affect which events are considered to be "strong" and will affect which uniques I might want to include.
• To maximize Gandalf's ability play cards off the top of the deck, I'd like to include a variety no-/low-cost events in my deck that will allow me to leverage this as much as possible. Similarly, having some cards that allow me to "pop the top" of the deck or rearrange the the top of the deck will also be useful for leveraging Gandalf's ability by placing other cards on top of the deck.
• While Vilya is indeed a fabulous card, playing one expensive event per turn just doesn't cut it. This deck should be able to generate enough resources to play one expensive event per turn in addition to potentially using Vilya to play one expensive event. On top of this, you can't play expensive events if you can't find them, so this deck needs a way to dig through its deck to find the events of interest.

Let's walk through each principle one by one.

Principle #1: 4p-strong Events

In looking over events that are strong for 4-player fellowships, the best option (to me) is too look for card effects that have global effects across the entire fellowship. For example, Lords of the Eldar affects all Noldor characters regardless of who controls them, as do Astonishing Speed and We Do Not Sleep for Rohan. These cards have very strong effects across an entire fellowship, however they rely on the other decks playing to specific traits, which rather constrain fellowship design. The cards that seem to have the most generic yet powerful global effects across an entire fellowship are (to me) Grim Resolve and Light the Beacons.

Grim Resolve is the ultimate when it comes to 4p global card advantage. It is incredibly flexible and allows for more questing, more defending, more attacking, and more utility from exhaust actions. You get more of everything. (Legal disclaimer: you do not actually get more of everything.) If there were only one event that I could build this deck around, Grim Resolve would be it.

In general, the best time to use Grim Resolve is usually after committing to the quest before starting staging. This way everyone is ready before you start revealing Treachery cards that affect exhausted characters.

Leverage Grim Resolve to get the most out of your allies' actions. For example:

• Use Imladris Stargazer to set up the top five cards of your deck.
• Use 1-2x Zigil Miner to get resources and dig through cards you don't card about.
• Use Gildor Inglorion to again stack the top of your deck.
• Use another Zigil Miner, leaving the desired card on top of your deck.
• Play the top card on your deck with Gandalf, or draw it with another card effect, or play it with Vilya.
• Play Grim Resolve.
• Use Imladris Stargazer, Gildor Inglorion, and Zigil Miner all again before the Refresh phase.

You will be up to your pointy Noldor ears in resources and will have sculpted your hand and deck in the process.

Light the Beacons provides 4p fellowships with two things that they regularly need rather desperately in combat-heavy scenarios: bonus and action advantage. When you start a scenario with 4 enemies in the staging area and then are regularly revealing 2-3 more enemies during staging, you need a way to handle this, and Light the Beacons does just that. The bonus of +2 turns many mediocre defenders into strong defenders who can take a variety of hits, and being able to block without exhausting allows you to defend every attack with your best defender. Blocking without exhausting also provides you with more because you have more readied characters available to attack.

There are many obvious combinations you can pair with Light the Beacons. The most obvious is using any of the classic Sentinel heroes to block for the entire fellowship for a turn: Beregond or Beregond with a Gondorian Shield is an oldie and a goodie, Erkenbrand with some healing support (which is then boosted by Elrond) is amazingly strong, and there's always Aragorn with a A Burning Brand. Something that is important to remember is that Light the Beacons affects characters, not just heroes. This means that allies with Sentinel such as Jubayr or Warden of Helm's Deep could potentially block for an entire fellowship as well.

Last but not necessarily least, we have Gildor's Counsel. Having only 6x core events was too few, and Gildor's Counsel fit a good niche in this deck based on testing. At "only" 3-cost it's a comparatively inexpensive event, meaning you can regularly play it without Vilya, and there are times when reducing the number of encounter cards you draw is more important than action advantage.

With respect to unique cards, hero Gandalf is always inconvenient as it prevents the Gandalf + Sneak Attack combo. Similarly, hero Arwen Undómiel prevents the use of ally Arwen Undómiel, which continues to be one of the best allies in the game. Beyond hero selection, none of the other four unique cards are likely to conflict with most decks (especially since two of them are hero-specific).

Principle #2: Low-/No-cost events, "Pop the top" cards

This deck has 34 events, which already is rather strong for leveraging Gandalf's ability to play cards off the top of the deck. In particular, 17 events are 1-/0-cost events that can be played during any phase. (Perhaps not optimally, such as Elrond's Counsel outside of the Questing phase.)

This deck also has a lot of cards that allow you to "pop the top" of the deck to uncover a new card for Gandalf (or otherwise restructure your deck): Gildor Inglorion, Imladris Stargazer, Wizard Pipe, Gandalf's Staff, Daeron's Runes, Deep Knowledge, Campfire Tales, We Are Not Idle, and even Hidden Cache depending on the situation.

Principle #3: Paying for events without Vilya

First and foremost, Zigil Miner plus Gandalf, Imladris Stargazer, and Gildor's Counsel is a classic way of reliably generating resources every turn. On top of this, once the deck gets set up it generates 5 resources per turn on its own without the Zigil Miner's, which is enough for one expensive event per turn. Nothing special to see here.

What may not be immediately obvious is that Light the Beacons itself makes playing multiple events per turn easier for a deck like this. Light the Beacons does not last for a phase like most events do, but rather lasts for the entire round. This means it can be played during the Resource, Planning, Questing, Travel, Engagement, or Combat phases and still have the desired effect. In fact, given that some scenarios involve enemies attacking during non-Combat phases, playing this card earlier in the round can be beneficial.

Why does this timing help with paying for events without Vilya? Because you can play it from the top of the deck with Gandalf's ability with great flexibility. All of this deck's heroes can pay for cards from the top of the deck (once Elrond has Vilya), so if you can arrange for Light the Beacons to be on top of the deck then you can very often readily pay for it straight up with resources. While 5 resources is a hefty cost, it's not as difficult to come up with as you might think.

Empirical testing!

I've spent so much time writing up the other portions of these notes that I don't have all that much energy left to write up detailed empirical testing notes.

In short, I've tested this single-player simulations (to see how quickly the deck gets set up), in one 2p game, and in several 4p games. Overall it performs quite well and usually is playing (at least) one of Grim Resolve or Light the Beacons starting on turn two. Sometimes it happens on turn one, but you really need the cards to be aligned in your favor.

This deck can contribute 6 every turn from the start using heroes, and another 3 from Elrond if you haven't found Vilya yet or don't need to use Vilya for a turn. It's not the strongest set of questors, to be sure, but it does carry its own. Largely thanks to Gandalf, this deck also battle quests for 4(6) and siege quests for 5(8) (with Elrond if needed), which isn't too shabby by any means. Bilbo Baggins adds in another 2 and you can always use Gildor Inglorion for hero-level normal, battle, or siege questing as well.

For your starting hand, you always want to see Vilya if you're playing a Vilya deck. However, if you don't see the ring in your hand, you might still want to keep your hand if you see a Zigil Miner along with another high-utility card (Imladris Stargazer, Gandalf's Staff, Bilbo Baggins/Wizard Pipe) and/or significant card draw.

Other card comments

Zigil Miners are really what makes this deck work for cycling (along with the support cards for mining). In some Vilya-Gandalf decks you only need one Zigil Miner for generating some resources. In this deck you really want to leverage 3x Zigil Miner so that you can dig through your deck to find your key events. When you play Will of the West you're likely going to be shuffling ~30 cards to make your new deck, and depending on Grim Resolve, Light the Beacons, and Gildor's Counsel are distributed through the deck you're may need to work to find them. Do not be afraid to dig through things that you might need later if you need to find your next big event.

Expert Treasure-hunter goes on Arwen Undómiel and Gandalf as they will be questing every turn while Elrond may stay back to use Vilya.

Song of Kings goes on Elrond (so you can put mining resources on a single hero and have maximal spending flexibility) and Gandalf, though often you don't need a second Song of Kings in play and can just keep it in your hand or discard it with Arwen Undómiel.

Deep Knowledge and Legacy of Númenor are often both played during the first cycle through the deck to jump start the fellowship. Later on you will often just Zigil Miner through them because of threat reasons. Do not feel that you need to play each of these for their card effect when you see them.

If you don't need to mine through cards, you can use We Are Not Idle to exhaust Zigil Miners and to provide resources to yourself or, better yet, others.

Sideboard

Gléowine is a great card in general and particularly good with Gandalf. This deck design assumes that another player in the fellowship will be playing Gléowine. If not, definitely make room for him.

Light of Valinor and Narya can be useful in this deck, and they aren't needed to make it work. Tinker as desired.

As with many decks, Glorfindel can be used instead of Arwen Undómiel if desired. For this deck the resource generation is quite valuable. However, another deck playing ally Arwen Undómiel synergizes very well with Light the Beacons.

This deck assumes that another deck will be taking care of healing. If not, adding in a Warden of Healing along with Elrond's innate bonus will take care of a lot of healing, especially because you'll be Zigil Miner-ing a lot of resources onto Elrond to allow you to regularly pay the 2 to get multiple uses out of the Warden of Healing. You can also leverage Grim Resolve to get multiple heals in a round by exhausting Warden of Healing prior to the event.

For an alternate expensive event, Doom Hangs Still is an interesting choice. The normal effect allows you to not quest if you don't want to, which could be better or worse than Grim Resolve depending on the situation. The Valour effect (which is rather easy to reach given this deck's starting 36 threat and Doomed cards) allows you to slow down the scenario, which again could be much better than Grim Resolve. For me, I think that Grim Resolve (and Light the Beacons) are more broadly useful in general, and Doom Hangs Still still has potential.

Heed the Dream could take the place of Campfire Tales. Heed the Dream has the advantage of requiring instead of (meaning you don't need Song of Kings to play it from your hand) and allows this deck to better find what it needs to get set up. On the other hand, Campfire Tales is a more team-strong card.

While this deck focuses on regularly playing multiple high-cost global events, do not forget that some minor events can have very strong global effects. For example, For Gondor! pairs incredibly well with Grim Resolve and Light the Beacons. Just looking at the +1 bonus to all characters and ignoring the Gondor bonus, that +1 goes a very long way when you have global action advantage. And For Gondor! can easily fit into other decks in the fellowship without needing to take up space in this one. For similar reasons, Inspiring Presence can also be leveraged well (given Gandalf having maximal hero threat), though it needs to be played in this deck and not another deck for the greatest benefit.