Faramir, Captain of Fangorn 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Introduction

Here is a deck inspired by my previous Ents deck ("Ents are ready"). I wanted to keep the same canvas, but lower the initial and general threat. Círdan the Shipwright + Narya is good and thematic in readying the Ents, but gets a high threat and he is sometimes redundant with Faramir's ability. So I replaced him with Merry who is just incredibly handy here.

Strategy

Elrond brings the drawing sphere, improve the Wellinghall Preserver healing, easies the payment for Ents up (attach Steward of Gondor to him), and has great stats. Attach Light of Valinor and Magic Ring to make double or triple use of that stats. By the way the general stats are massive on this deck, so the setup is really important to make all that potential assets work.

Faramir will accelerate the setup, thanks to the access to Steward of Gondor, A Very Good Tale and Sneak Attack. To mirror its ally avatar and boost the questing power of the deck, I included The One Ring and Power of Command which will be attached to that Gondorian captain.

Merry stabilizes the threat and gives you time to comfortably settle. He and his Hobbit Pony is a micro-combo that I like. Of course one may prefer always committing Merry to the quest then readying it with Unexpected Courage. However there are many cases where a punitive encounter cards effect apply to committed characters (very risky since Merry has only 2 HP), or simply where one doesn't want to progress too fast to the next quest step. Plus, the Hobbit Pony costs 0. To assist him in order to do a more judicious decision about committing to the quest or exhausting to reduce the threat, I added Henamarth Riversong, who is unique hence a good target for Power of Command bonus too. Eventually, Merry as an Hobbit synergizes well with the Ents via The Dam Bursts which serves the readying theme, and the Hobbit optimizes Drinking Song's effect.

Errand-rider moves and smoothes the resources of that tri-sphere (quadri-sphere in fact) deck.

The rest is straight-forward : you try to play Ents quickly ! Some people like to put multiple copies of Treebeard in the deck, but that's not absolutely crucial here since Faramir does a part of the job, so the Treebeard's readying action will be less requested than usual. Anyway neutral Treebeard is a great candidate to trigger a profitable A Very Good Tale.

Adjustments

You can add Will of the West to the list if the scenario hugely delves your deck.