The Rossilvans 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

How many gimmicks can you fit into one deck? This one has:

• Silvans
• Secrecy
• Rossiel victory display shenanigans
• Mono (it's kind of a gimmick I guess)

Is this combination at all a good idea? Probably not. Is it fun? Yes.

I've been doing kind of well with it, and most importantly having a lot of fun. I've soloed many of the earlier quests with this and played some later ones two handed with this deck in a defensive/support role and I'm actually pretty happy with how it has performed.

I'll try to break it down a bit:

First of all, starting at secrecy range with 3 heroes is awesome. There's two turns to get down Resourceful or snipe some encounter cards to the victory display with a discounted Out of the Wild. We also really need the low threat (+ Pippin's ability) to keep enemies at bay as we can't deal well with engaged enemies early on.

Between The Tree People and a ridiculous amount of card draw this deck can pump out a lot of little elves on the board pretty fast. The downside is that almost all of them are incredibly weak, and there's no outlands type bonuses or group buffs to make them any better. This deck is all about quantity over quality.

Honestly attacking and questing are both problems for this deck. The beefiest and most useful character we have is Haldir, who can provide stats wherever needed. Mirlonde and Mirkwood Runners usually do the heavy lifting in combat, while all available little 1 silvans quest with Pippin.

Defense on the other hand is no problem because Rossiel with Cloak of Lórien backed up by one or two Silvan Trackers is one hell of a tank. We of course do need suitable enemies in the victory display but that is usually not a problem, and Rossiel can defend early on without the bonus. Defenders of the Naith also benefit greatly from Silvan Tracker and can fend off smaller enemies while Rossiel covers the bigger ones. Later in the game it's possible we can afford to quest with Rossiel and her elf magic bonuses which will pick up a lot of slack there.

An important piece of strategy to remember is we need to keep the little elves alive! We do not want to chump block with Galadhrim Minstrels for example because we need all the willpower points we can get for questing (and the Minstrels are really good candidates for bouncing back to hand to get some more tree people on the board). Defenders of the Naith also need to be kept around as long for as possible (man I wish they had 3 hp). As such it's probably no surprise that AoE damage from the encounter deck can be a complete disaster for us (those cards are prime targets to pick out of the encounter deck with our victory display shenanigans). Mirlonde and the Trackers are good pincushions for archery and other incidental damage.

Resourceful makes a huge difference, so digging for it with mulligans and Mithrandir's Advice is key. Basically it allows keeping the elf pump going while also having at least one resource open for None Return, Leave No Trace or The Door is Closed! as needed.

I'm currently trying out Orophin in the deck. He has good stats (in the context of this deck) and just getting one activation of his ability is great (the more silvans the better), but the only way to get him into play is with The Tree People so he could be just a bad idea. The jury is still out on this one. The two copies of him used to be two more Galadhrim Healers, who are decent as support for your possible teammates but pretty useless otherwise.