Rule of the Steward - TRG 3.0

• Versions
• 3.0
• 2.0
• 1.0

Introduction

It is a gift ... a gift to the foes of Mordor! Why not use this Ring? Long has my father, the Steward of Gondor, kept the forces of Mordor at bay ... by the blood of our people are your lands kept safe. Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy ... let us use it against him!

This Gondor themed support deck is not exactly your typical Gondor ally swarm strategy. While allies still play a key role in the deck, it is more because of their abilities than because of their stats. As a player you take a back seat at the table, providing strong group support with a powerful sentinel defender and a means around some game ending condition attachments, shadow cards and when revealed effects.

Note:

This is a Gondor themed support deck that has excellent synergy with Ride of the Horse Lords.

This is not a stand-alone deck!

Gameplan

Always mulligan for Steward of Gondor, Livery of the Tower and/or Visionary Leadership. You will also want to have some cheap allies like Envoy of Pelargir, Knight of Belfalas or Errand-rider. Cards like Unexpected Courage and Armored Destrier that allow Beregond to defend multiple times per round are a nice cherry on top. Finally, having access to excellent utility cards like A Test of Will or Bulwark of the West never hurts either.

During setup: attach The One Ring to Beregond and search your deck for Inner Strength. Next, attach the Stone of Elostirion to Prince Imrahil and engage the Hungry Creature as instructed by The Riddle-game. Flip the contract to side B. Finally, Denethor also gains 2 resources.

• Beregond is the main defender of the party. With The One Ring and Inner Strength he can immediately defend for 5 . Give him now also his signature armor, Livery of the Tower, as well as Hauberk of Mail to bring his stats to 6 , 5 and every Unexpected Courage you can find turning him into a juggernaut that comes with built in shadow cancelation and can defend for the entire table.
• Prince Imrahil is both the attacker and the quester. Playing The Riddle-game grants him the Stone of Elostirion to give him a total of 4 and provide extra card draw.
• Denethor is a back-up tank. He can also reach a respectable 5 , 5 with the Ancestral Armor. Also the Armored Destrier is for him. Most of the time you will however not need to defend with him and you can even safely exhaust him during the resource phase to play Captain's Wisdom. As the actual Steward of Gondor, it is only fitting to give him said title. His ability allows you to flexibly allocate resources to your two other heroes or to other players, granted they have a Gondor hero. Visionary Leadership can go on any hero, though Denethor is probably the safest choice.

Using Inner Strength to cancel a shadow effect comes at a cost of raising your own threat by 1. This is not desirable but often better than what the shadow effect would have been. Beregond's own response can help to off-set this cost as well as The Galadhrim's Greeting.

One key interaction with the discard engine in Ride of the Horse Lords is the response of Prince Imrahil to self ready whenever a character leaves play. This is what allows him to consistently quest and attack in the same round.

The cost ratio's in the deck have been optimized to play nicely with The Riddle-game in most scenarios.

Knight of Belfalas also has a nice interaction with the The Riddle-game as it allows you to recover valuable discarded allies. Many of the 3-cost and 4-cost discard options in this deck are allies that you might want to play eventually such as Anborn and Faramir.

Another major aspect of the deck is resource funnelling to other players. This is facilitated through Denethor's built in ability and cards like Envoy of Pelargir,Errand-rider and Parting Gifts

Lastly, the deck provides some healing with Dúnedain Remedy, when revealed cancelation with A Test of Will and removal of condition attachments with Bulwark of the West

Strengths and Weaknesses

This deck provides amazing group support through powerful sentinel defending, resource funneling and other utilities like threat reduction, healing, shadow/when revealed cancelation and condition removal.

When defending with Beregond, you want to keep your own threat as low as possible and only engage weaker enemies. This is because the offense this deck provides is not the greatest, so it is better to rely mostly on his sentinel ability and let other players do the attacking for you. Therefore, preferably trigger Beregond's response when he defends against an enemy engaged with you so you can reduce your own threat.

You can also rely on Anborn's response to help out here. If other players are unable to optionally engage an enemy that is coming your way, you can sometimes still push it their direction by Increasing their engagement cost above your current threat level.

sideboard

The sideboard contains some situationally useful cards like Campfire Tales, Mutual Accord or For Gondor!. Inspiring Presence is surprisingly good in this deck as Prince Imrahil's threat level is higher than that of both Denethor and Beregond.

You can swap them in depending on the scenario. Just keep in mind the ratio's for the The Riddle-game.

Dragncard Replays

To view a replay, make sure you are logged in on dragncards. Then click on "View Replay". This will open a new room with the final board state of the scenario. Hold down ctrl and tap the left arrow key to rewind back to round 1. Then use the right arrow key to go through the game one step at a time.

Scenario Replays

Passage Through Mirkwood

View Replay

players	1
rounds	4
score	69

Journey Along the Anduin

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players	2
rounds	5
score	97