Harabbits (Emissary of the East) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Sharing this deck today thanks to the card of the day being Emissary of the East!

Emissary of the East is an AleP card from the Strange News in Bree pack. It features a means to advance through stages without sending anyone questing. Everytime an Easterling or Harad character exhausts as part of a card effect, you place a progress on the main quest for each character exhausted this way. While these decks can be slow to spin up, once they get rolling they are truly impressive to behold. The main focus of this deck was utilizing as many cards as possible that exhaust my heroes and allies to trigger Emissary.

The Last Alliance is used almost exclusively on Emissary of the east so that Hobbits and Harad can trigger the main effect on Emissary, and so that I can ignore the quest phase altogether since they will have more than enough characters on the board to negate missing questing by a fairly wide amount.

Cards that Trigger Emissary of the East:

Heroes: Merry and Nob were both selected as heroes because their powers trigger emissary of the east. Whenever Merry reduces threat, or whenever Nob draws an extra card, place progress on the quest. Similarly when Bilbo's Walking Song is placed on them alongside a Fast Hitch or two, that also triggers Emissary allowing you place two tokens every time you sing that good old song.

Allies: Emissary of the East pairs really well with Harad since Southron Refugee and Kahliel's Tribesman trigger it everytime they exhaust to use their action. It's important to keep in mind that you can trigger the refugee even if you then do not play a Harad ally later in the phase. Many of the allies are there to meet the requirement of last alliance, but walking song can be placed on any hobbit character so many of those allies work well as a host for that card. Frodo Baggins can trigger it once and can fetch an event card to great effect for later on. Rosie Cotton, always a fan favorite, is able to place a progress every time she uses her power. Couple that with the fact that she isn't going to be questing or using her power for questing, and you have Rosie giving a massive boost to combat and helping put progress tokens down.

Events: Perhaps the most overlooked corner of the Emissary of the East deck, Events have huge potential for dropping progress. Peace, and Thought has quickly become a staple in my decks because it exhausts two characters gaining you two resources, and draws an enormous handful of cards. Normally the lack of hero's for questing would be a problem, but with Emissary protecting your threat raise, it usually works out just fine. A Very Good Tale becomes even better here as it places progress on a quest as well.

Emissary of the East is one of my favorite cards AleP has added to the game, and I hope this deck inspires some people to give it a try!