Hope from the Last Homely House 1.0

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• 1.0

Then Aragorn, being now the Heir of Isildur, was taken with his mother to dwell in the house of Elrond; and Elrond took the place of his father and came to love him as a son of his own. But he was called Estel, that is "Hope", and his true name and lineage were kept secret at the bidding of Elrond; for the Wise then knew that the Enemy was seeking to discover the Heir of Isildur, if any remained upon earth.

The Lord of the Rings , Appendix A, part (v)

The deck name is a nod to the time Aragorn spent in Rivendell during his childhood. Glorfindel also hails from Rivenedell and together with Aragorn, they make up some of the most powerful characters of the Third Age. The original inspiration for this deck was to build a multiplayer location control deck that could play two copies of Northern Tracker on turn 4 with the contract and start clearing out locations. Spirit Aragorn was the first hero I knew I wanted to use. Asfaloth was the other card I really wanted to include so the obvious choice for the other hero was Glorfindel. I'm really happy that this deck is able to make good use of two lesser-used heroes and that it pairs a core set hero with the final hero of the game (though both are happy accidents).

Key cards for your opening hand are either Strider (preferred) or Light of Valinor. Master of the Forge is also nice to see early to start searching for your attachments. I typically flip the contract as soon as I can and grab whatever the situation calls for. Sometimes it's healing, sometimes it's a missing critical attachment, sometimes it's actually the Northern Trackers. Importantly, you will need to wait until after the contract flips to play Seasoned Forager or you will not be able to gain the 6 resources from the flip. One of my favorite things to do is get Elendilmir on Aragorn and let him place progress on multiple locations each round while having excellent post-staging progress manipulation. I've never actually used Glorfindel's healing ability, but I suppose if someone at the table is running Elrond, it might actually be useful. The sideboard has different tech that may be situationally useful.

The deck is best at 3-4 players but is actually viable in (though not optimized for) solo. Even if you aren't using the Norther Trackers or Rhovanion Outriders for clearing locations, they make good attackers.