Eleanor and her Uncle 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

The main idea of this deck is to use the A Elbereth! Gilthoniel! + Vanish from Sight combo and Pillars of the Kings to mass reduce your own threat, while making heavy use of all of the various doomed effects, that will now only affect you, thanks to Tower of Orthanc.
The fact that we can also go easily to ~60 Threat with Castellan Wilhelm, only makes this even better.

Other than that the deck should be mostly self-explanatory. The idea for The Last Alliance of Gondor and Isengard was mostly inspired by And Saruman will answer.
It's mostly here to help with the resource cost for all the swarming. The only real target for the actual "Action:" is only Soldier of Gondor though.

Eleanor is a weirdly underrated hero for how beloved she seems at my table, but even apart from her effect, with At the End of All Things she can also be a solid defender in a pinch.

Spare Pipe can help you fish for the combo or Pillars of the Kings but it is also a neat quasi heal for the first 3 rounds.

Song of Eärendil is another neat tech option with which you can tank pretty much most threat raises of your fellow players if needed.

The search from At the End of All Things can be used for anything depending on the current state. Maybe Fortune or Fate to rez a hero, maybe Saruman The White to delete an encounter card, Song of Eärendil if threat becomes to much etc.

And I guess I also have to address the elephant in the room. Wouldn't this be way better with Gríma and just using Song of Travel to use A Elbereth! Gilthoniel!?
Yeah, kinda?
You'd get access to the rest of the Isengard doomed allies, no The Last Alliance but 28 starting threat which makes the draw 4 of Pillars of the Kings live for the first few rounds, very good resources smoothing with Grimas effect, Deep Knowledge and Far-sighted

But the main drawback, at least to me, is that I just cannot imagine Grima adventuring around with an elderly seemlingly wheelchair-bound steward of Isengard. Regardless of what I tried the deck just felt icky to me..
But once I tried this version with Eleanor it finally clicked. Maybe Wilhelm is a distant relative of hers and he wants to see the world one last time.
Or maybe Saruman just wants him out of the house so he can finally start his orc side-business in peace.
It would also only make sense that they both would bring a small retinue of Isengard and Gondor soldiers with them to wherever they are adventuring.

So I guess this deck is more for people who'd like to trade some optimization for more thematic consistency. Well, as thematic as an Isengard deck can be, that is..