Into the West + Every Other Contract

Part 4

With the release of Beyond the Original Bargain, I am now working on a follow up to my original article on Into the West from over two and a half years ago. For that original article I built a bunch of Into the West decks--this time I'm building a bunch of decks that combine Into the West with every other contract. When I've published that article I will update this deck description with a link to it, and that article will have all my thoughts on this particular contract combination.

Playing this Deck

Firstly, for those wondering what "Laurelindórenan" means, it is Quenya for "Land of the Valley of Singing Gold." This is an archaic name for "Lothlorien" and is still used to refer to that magical forest by characters such as Treebeard and Faramir in the book. I think it is a wonderfully long and magical-sounding word that encapsulates this deck perfectly: overly complicated, but still beautiful.

Silvans make a great archetype for Council of the Wise because of their numerous powerful events. They work great for Into the West because they benefit from entering play frequently, which that contract helps you do. In combining the two contracts I was concerned that I would have to include lots of 1x 5-cost cards, but to minimize the number of dead cards in the deck, I skewed the cost curve heavily toward 0-cost cards.

This turned out as a really fun deck, despite the concessions I had to make to fit the cost curve. Some of the non-silvans can still be quite useful in this deck. Haleth and Gildor Inglorion can help you find some of your key 1x cards, Galdor of the Havens can help offset the discard from Mirror of Galadriel, and Gandalf, Thalion, and Treebeard are just really good value allies.

Every game with this deck feels unique, and every turn feels highly strategic and interesting. I hope you have as much fun with it as I did!