Men and their Toys 1.0

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• 1.0

Aragorn and Gandalf - there are few who have done more to thwart the power of Sauron more during or before the War of the Ring. They have been on many journeys together, and Aragorn gained Gandalf's trust enough that Gandalf opened his heart to Aragorn, who then worked with Gandalf to track down and capture Gollum.

In this game, each also has a love for their toys - attachments specifically designed for them. Including all of their toys makes enough attachments to justify running Forth, The Three Hunters!, and using just the two of them lends itself well to At the End of All Things, made possible together with ALeP's recent Beyond the Original Bargain contract. Yes, that's two starting heroes with the stupidly high threat of 38. But, each hero is strong enough and flexible enough to justify such a threat and be able to manage it.

At the End of All Things accomplishes a few things here. Because Gandalf gains the main printed spheres when playing a card from the top of the deck, Aragorn gains all of the resource icons when doing so, allowing for very flexible spending once per round - provided you want to pay for the card on the top of your deck. It also restricts resource acceleration, so Gandalf's Staff can either discard a shadow or be a restricted (better for the contract) attachment version of Gléowine. This can be problematic in the early stage of the game - this is not a deck where the goal is to flip Forth, The Three Hunters! on the first round. However, the readying and innate high stats of each hero should allow you to survive until you can flip At the End of All Things. Wizard Pipe, Expert Treasure-hunter, and Hidden Cache then act as a pseudo-Steward of Gondor to get around the resource restrictions.

Strider is one of the most important attachments, and goes on Gandalf for increased willpower and action advantage. Gandalf will likely need to play cards from the top of the deck to get his restricted attachments because so many have a sphere requirement, checked when playing the attachment. Because Aragorn starts with Estel, he can equip Light of Valinor, as well as play cards like Elrond's Counsel to manage your threat.

Speaking of Estel, it's key to having any sort of consistency. It's such good card search, you can always find a card that's useful. Elessar is useful to gain the sphere and boost the card search, though Nor am I a Stranger and Andúril are an alternative. Ring of Barahir or Protector of Lórien will both give Aragorn access, and Roheryn will give , making this a firmly quad-sphere deck.

When you get to the fourth round, it's time to flip At the End of All Things and supercharge your deck. At this point, work towards the goal of Roheryn, Nor am I a Stranger, and Herugrim on Aragorn so he can optionally engage any enemy that comes out and easily hit for 10+ before the enemy even has a chance to hit you. For all the drawbacks of At the End of All Things, it's these 6 resources and a 2-card search from you entire deck that really pays it off.

So give it a shot. Play with the double-Voltron, questing for 15+ with two non-exhausting heroes deck.