Keen-Eyed Took Shenanigans

Questlogs using this decklist
None.
Fellowships using this decklist
None.
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
None yet.
Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
The gameplay simulator is an experimental feature and is currently only available for those that support RingsDB development on Patreon.
Gameplay simulator
Round
0
Threat
0
Hand
In Play
Deck
Discard Pile

Box of Hats 697

I only started playing this game at the tail end of 2015, so I don't know what the general opinion of Keen-Eyed Took was in the bygone era of its initial printing. Nowadays, its only use is perhaps as an extra Hobbit trait character for Pipe decks. However, maybe under a lens of four player support, it can find a single shred of usefulness.

The Plan: Each other player gets an Expert Treasure-Hunter on a hero. Keen-Eyed Took comes down, everyone else draws a card from questing, then you can return Took to hand after. Campfire Tales is a fantastic card and I'd be pretty content to pay two resources to do it once per turn when I have nothing else to do.

However, we only have three Expert Treasure-Hunters to go around. By using Elrond/Vilya, we can gain some advantage for ourselves with Keen-Eyed Took, enabling plays such as Vilya-ing into a Forest Snare, knowing our top card so we can activate at the most beneficial point in turn order. Then we can pair with our other heroes, Halbarad and Amarthiul, to get free questing and extra resources (which helps mitigate the cost of playing Keen-Eyed Took repeatedly).

The rest of the deck runs high cost allies to hit with Vilya, focusing on location control, plus some card draw and filtering options. With Heir of Mardil+Steward of Gondor and Light of Valinor, Elrond can get three actions per turn.

Black Arrow, Born Aloft, and Dunedain Cache were designed to synergize with the four player fellowship of two Dwarf Swarm decks and a Mono-Tactics Hama deck. These slots can fit some of the sideboard pieces. I left these in the maindeck as a reminder simply because playing Expert Treasure-Hunter for these decks adds extra benefits when they get use out of discarding from the top of the deck.

It's worth noting that the deck does use some valuable uniques. The allies are interchangeable and could be pretty much anything. Light of Valinor isn't absolutely necessary if someone else is running Hero Glorfindel, for example. Steward of Gondor is really required, though. Perhaps if a group can reliably get Amarthiul's extra resource trigger, such as with Beorn blocking some of the many one attack nuisance enemies, then maybe Steward could go elsewhere.

0 comments