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| A Dark Hour (Alternate Art Starter Deck) | 23 | 12 | 5 | 1.0 |
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Galadantien 49
The latest in my series of thematic archetype decks aiming to perform at their most consistent.
Isengard has historically been hard to eek performance out of. Till now I combined Isengard and Outlands, but the theme there always felt like a stretch. Thanks to ALEP and the latest adventure pack "Fangs In The Dark" we now have a wealth of new options for pure Isengard. Even so, trying these, I found myself lacking in the offence department, and so have included some Ents (which feel comfortably in theme for the pre LOTR setting).
Defense: Excels in Isengard now with Ring Wall - You can safely block a Hill Troll and other bigger enemies early on. The issue is having the attack left to kill them. This deck pairs very well with ranged partners. But it's able to take smaller enemies just fine, and knock out larger ones too with a built up board state.
Allies: A Very Good Tale, Herald of Anorien, Grima and Keys of Orthanc all help accelerate your board state nicely. I've had four allies and Saruman's staff in play on round 1 in testing.
Questing: This deck comfortably offers about 10-12 willpower on round 1 and quickly can build that to an average of about 16, with much more possible once you have few Ents in play.
Doomed and Threat Management: Threating out isn't an issue with "Castellan Wilhelm". For each Isengard ally in play your elimination level is raised by 2. So use "Saruman's Staff" wisely and you're very safe. As are your multiplayer partners now thanks to "Tower of Orthanc". Keeping in mind, saving them from the doomed, also keeps the positive effects of your cards to yourself, so give them the choice of whether they can handle the threat on a case by case basis.
Card Draw: Saruman's Staff and "Lord of Isengard" can give you an extra card or two per round. Mulligan for them. Combos like "Palantir" and "Far-sighted" are an option, but I've found building for that to be consistent comes at the cost of consistency in more immediately important areas. Instead, I've opted for "Peace and Thought" as backup. 5 extra cards is amazing, and given Saruman can ready himself after paying the cost easily enough, it works well.
Healing: Is something Isengard can do well, given two lore heroes, but again, I've found the more healing options included, the less consistent the rest of the deck performs. "Waters of Nimrodel" is here, as is "Wellinghall Preserver" but overall, the healing inclusions are the crutch and not intended to cover any significant healing needs for the table. Let your Elrond buddy do that, or I think, you're better to mitigate the damage before it builds too much.
I always test two handed - and I feel I've finally got a reliable solo or partner deck in Isengard. Enjoy!
| 6 comments |
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Jul 04, 2025 |
Jul 04, 2025Two more cards* |
Jul 04, 2025RingsDB doesn't actually count the Ring Wall cards as part of your deck for card count purposes. If you count up the attachments manually, you see there are 9, but RingsDB counts it as 7, meaning there are, in fact, 50 cards in this deck. |
Jul 04, 2025Oh, true! Sorry. :) All is good. |
Jul 04, 2025Looking at Lord of Isengard, would Palantir be a good addition to this deck? With so many allies with doomed in their textbox and Castellan Wilhelm, I think you'd be fine with the threat increase, and since Saruman has some good innate readying effects, the requirement to exhaust him isn't severe either. I guess it's a question of if it really improves the deck or not: the scrying could be useful, but if you aren't going to actually use the Palantir even if you have it, then there's no reason to include it. |
Jul 04, 2025As I mentioned in the description, I tried palantir and found it made the deck less consistent. Plus I found myself not using it because I would have threated out. Never had that issue with the deck otherwise. |
Note that the Ring Wall cards cannot be included in your deck and are instead fetched from your collection. This means that the deck needs to more cards to be tournament-legal.